Hi everybody out there.

Since I am already at it, I will add another technique I explained within a building blog: my way of making seat springs, e.g. for the drivers chair of a jeep or a M151 Mutt.

Here it is:

I start with a wooden board and place two 0,4 mm syringe needles adjacend to each other.



Then I take 0,1 mm copper wire. The one you can retrieve from any flexible household cable after you removed the insulation. This I bend around the pins.



The bent wire is then released from the pins, turned upside down and reinserted onto the pins as shown...



...and bend another time for 180 degrees.



That´s the way it looks after this has been repeated a couple of times.



After I added the number of turns I need (e.g. 11 for the chair of a Mutt)...



...the edges are trimmed...



...and final adjustments are made with fine tweezers.



Finished:



Here you see the set of springs needed for one chair of a M151 and one (almost) completed chair (two PE-parts for the seat adjustment are still missing).



and finally a closeup:








I hope it became clear. Otherwise don´t hesitate to address me again.



Thanks for viewing
and enjoy your week.

Michael

very good tutorial, thankyou!

Excellent, Michael! Thanks!

Very nice, thanks for sharing.

Nice clear tutorial on seat springs. Now that's detail

Wouldn't it be faster and easier to make your jig with the required amount of needles to make a full length of spring rather than to continually having to remove and change it's position?

Hi Michael. Great tip and the results look great. Nice one.

Theoretically Yes. Practically No (at least not in my experience). Flipping the wire is quick with a steep learning curve. It took me less than 5 minutes to fully complete one spring. Fumbling the wire through a forest of pins is more demanding and time consuming. And - its not as easy as it sounds to place all the pins precisely in the right distance and angle. And if they are not 100 % straight, you´ll mess up the whole spring when you try to remove it. With only two pins you´ll always manage to wriggle it out somehow.
For mass production your suggestion would be a must but for just a couple I prefer to stick to my two pin-technique.
In case you try, give us a feedback.

Michael

Great way to add some fantastic detail !!!!!

You were saying that would be hard to do a line of pins for mass production of rows of springs !!!

One way would be to mark the positions carefully on plastic card and pin the card to the wood temporarily with long pins !!!!

Use a single pin to mark through the plastic through to the wood to mark where each of the short pins are to be placed in the wood !!!!

Take the plastic card off again and drill the holes marked on the card slightly wider than the pin holes and place back down on the wood over the long, locating pins !!!!

Fix the shorter template pins in the wood securely, all straight and vertical !!!!

Wind the springs in single rows !!!!!

Lift the card each time a spring is done to keep the wire straight until it falls over the short pins !!!!!!!

Nige

Now that's just to darn nice .