I've posted this in modern armour but it could be beneficial to all AFV era's. As I was waiting for my computer to boot just now, I had to move some of my wife's stuff out of the way, and thought: that could be useful. The thing I was looking at was a box of metal staples (you know, for holding paper together!). They come in various sizes and it shouldn't be too hard to match up with an unsuitable kit part. And they come pre-bent. The only problem is they are square in cross section. the ones I'm looking at now are .69 pence (Stirling) for 5000 and are about 10-12 mm along their longest edge.
Tom

I'm also using staple wire to make grab handles for my Sherman.

Angela

That will work,depending on the length you need.It wouldn't hurt to straighten out the bends,then roll a flat piece of thick styrene sheet on it to make it very straight.Then you can rebend to the length you actually need.
I myself have forund some small diameter copper wire. (++) (++)

An alternative to staples, which work fine if that is the size you need, is checking out the model railroading section, they have grab handles already made it in various sizes from brass wire, in different shapes, in HO, N, and O gauge.

I've recently bought the grabhandler made by mission models it works fairly well and allows you to make any number of equal sized handles. Prior to this I would use a similar method of bending different sized wire around different sized wire. Iwould then use the plastic strip a the drilling guide.

I figured that company that makes that wire bending tool would have come down on their price by now.
The tool isn't much bigger then a house key, and you would think that the way industry is, that they will figure a way around the legal parts.

But it seems as though it could be cut out with a normal key cutting machine, and a lot faster then it would cut a double sided key, cause the cuts are straight. Then I don't know, I can understand a profit, but not a killing.