Zipper Pulls V2 (Titanium boyyyyyye)

Okay so I was feeling a little frisky in the shop the other day. I ordered a 12" chunk of commercially pure titanium and decided to turn the whole thing into a bunch of zipper pulls. All of this was done on my Hardinge HLV-H manual lathe. No fancy computer stuff here, just old school handle crankin'.

Clean as...well, you come up with something

My friend Wilson looked at my first prototype and suggested I come up with some way to hide the knot. After some reflection I decided that was (1) a good idea and (2) perhaps even possible. This is what I came up with. The bottom of the pull has to be flat, instead of rounded, but I'm happy with the well balanced result.

So dear public, is this something you'd be interested in owning? Let's not talk about price yet...but keep in mind titanium is ridiculously expensive. I think these are awesome for adding a little custom touch to any mass produced garment, messenger bag, flashlight, pocket knife, camera bag, key chain, whatevs. I also think they would make awesome gifts that are unusual and classy (remember, it's titanium). Dear public, what say you?

Read on after the jump for more photos and explanation!

The "knot garage" in action

I think it might have been Arc'Teryx that came up with the "zipper garage" and in that spirit...this is the "knot garage." I back bored the pull with a 1/4" drill bit. After you tie the knot just yank down on the pull and seat the knot in the garage. The fit is very close so the pull will not (ever) slip up the cord. The smaller hole where the cord passes through is actually reamed after being drilled. This creates a much smoother surface inside the bore. Drilling creates a rough surface and I wasn't able, without tools, to pass both pieces of cord through the hole. After reaming the cord ends slide through easily. Most people would have just drilled a bigger hole...but I'm a machinist and we do all sorts of silly precision things.

12" inches of Ti and 13 pulls

Each pull is .65 inches long. The width of the cut-off blade is about .1 inches so that gets wasted on each one. I actually ended up with 15, but I'm keeping those two :) Ti sure is pretty isn't it? It's actually almost identical in color to the electroless nickel I use on my flashlights.

Wait a sec...that's not a zipper!

These little dingle-dangles can (and hopefully will) serve a lot of different purposes. I decided to put one on my light and I like it a lot. It makes it even easier to grab out of my pocket. It also serves as a mini retaining lanyard that you can slip around a couple of fingers instead of your whole wrist. Come to think of it, that's probably a lot safer too since this nylon cord as a breaking strength of 250 lbs.

walk into the light...

So things that glow are pretty awesome and here is the photo to prove it. The head of the light is glowing with self-illuminating tritium vials and the zipper pull has 3 glow in the dark o-rings around it. Those have to be charged with light in order to glow...you know...like those stars on the ceiling above your bed?