I Didn’t Have a Blanket Pin, So I Made One - Making my second penannular brooch in the hills around Edinburgh
There are times when being out in the woods makes you appreciate just how many things we normally take for granted.
A blanket, for example.
I'd been watching a video about using a blanket as a wearable piece of clothing when I noticed the simple way it was being secured with a pin. It was one of those beautifully uncomplicated bits of kit: a small piece of metal doing a very useful job.
Then I realised something. I didn't own a blanket pin. But I did have the materials and tools to make one. So, I did.
That first penannular brooch was made at home after watching the video. It was very much an experiment — taking what I'd seen and working out how I could reproduce it myself.
This story, however, is about the second one.
This time I wasn't sitting at a workbench at home. I was out in the hills around Edinburgh, surrounded by snow, with the tools I normally carry for bushcraft and a piece of brass that was about to become something rather more useful.
And I wanted to see what I could do with just the basics.
My forest workshop
I didn't bring a metalworking setup with me. There was no anvil, no vice and no collection of specialist jewellery-making tools. Instead, I had a couple of pairs of pliers, files, some brass rod and a few other simple bits and pieces. Oh, and my wildlife hatchet.
The poll of the hatchet would become my hammer.
It might sound a little crude compared with making one in a workshop, but this is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy about bushcraft. You look at what you have and work out what it can do.
The hatchet wasn't just a cutting tool. Its poll could become a hammering surface.
The birch log wasn't just a piece of fallen timber. It became my workbench.
And the forest itself became the workshop.
Starting with a piece of brass
The finished brooch looks deceptively simple. It's essentially a ring with an opening and a separate pin that slides around the ring to hold the blanket in place.
But getting a piece of brass rod to become that simple shape takes a little more work than you might think.
I started by forming the brass into the basic circular shape, gradually working the bends with the pliers and forming it round a log with the poll of the hatchet.
Having made one previously certainly helped.
I already knew roughly what I wanted the finished brooch to look like, and I had a better understanding of how the material behaved.
There is something quite satisfying about working metal this way. There are no shortcuts. You bend it. Check it. Bend it again. Check it again. And slowly, the shape begins to emerge.
The little details
One of the things I particularly like about penannular brooches is the little curled ends. They're what hold the pin onto the brooch, but I think they also give a bit of character. I worked the ends of the brass around to form the small loops, using the pliers to make the tighter bends.
The second one was easier than the first, simply because I'd already made the mistakes once. That's one of the great things about making your own equipment. The first attempt teaches you. The second attempt lets you improve.
I'm not trying to make something that looks like it came out of a factory. In fact, I quite like seeing the evidence of the hand tools in a finished piece. A slight irregularity in the curve. A mark from the pliers. A little variation between one side and the other.
Those things tell you that somebody actually sat down and made it.
Making the pin
The pin is the part that really makes a penannular brooch work, and in this case it was made from some wire coat hanger.
I formed the end of the pin into a small loop and then worked the shaft so that it would sit properly against the ring. This was probably the fiddliest part of the job.
The nice thing about having a few simple files with you is that they allow you to gradually refine things. Rather than trying to get everything perfect in one go, I could take a little material off, try it, adjust it and try again.
It's slow, but there's something almost meditative about it. Especially when you're sitting in the snow.
The axe as a hammer
At one point I needed to work the metal against a solid surface, forming it round the log, curling the ends and the pin.
I didn't have a hammer. I did have my axe. So I used the poll of the axe as a hammer, not something I'd usually do with it, but brass is far softer than steel.
It's a good example of something I think gets overlooked when we talk about bushcraft equipment. It's not necessarily about having a tool for every individual job. It's about understanding the tools you have well enough to find other uses for them.
My axe is obviously primarily there for cutting wood, but the poll can be used for hammering and various other tasks.
Knowing your tools is often more useful than simply owning more of them.
From brass rod to blanket pin
Eventually, after plenty of bending, filing and adjusting, the two parts came together.
A simple brass ring. A small steel pin. And a functional penannular brooch.
Looking at it, I couldn't help thinking how much history there is contained in such a simple object. People have been using variations of this basic design for centuries to fasten clothing and blankets.
There's no complicated mechanism. No springs. No plastic. No batteries. Just a clever piece of geometry and a bit of shaped metal. It's one of those designs that makes you wonder how much more complicated we've made things than they actually need to be.
Why make something you could simply buy?
That's probably the question someone might reasonably ask. I could have bought a blanket pin. It would have been quicker. It would probably have been cheaper. And it would almost certainly have been more perfectly finished.
But that's not really the point. I wasn't making it because a blanket pin is difficult to buy. I was making it because I could. For me, that's one of the most rewarding parts of bushcraft.
It's that little shift in thinking from:
“I don't have one.”
to:
“I wonder if I can make one?”
The finished object is almost secondary. The important thing is knowing that if I needed another one, I could make another. And this time I didn't even need a workshop. I just needed some brass, a few basic hand tools, an axe, a piece of birch and somewhere in the hills around Edinburgh to sit down and work.
The second one
The first brooch was made at home after watching that video. This second one was different. This one was made outside, in the cold, with snow on the ground and the hills around Edinburgh providing the backdrop.
It wasn't about proving that I could make a perfect historical reproduction. It was about taking a simple idea and making something useful with what I had available. And perhaps that's what I like most about it.
I started the day with a plan to make a blanket pin. I finished it with a blanket pin and a sense of achievement. It's not perfect. But every bend, every file mark and every little imperfection is mine.
And when I eventually use it to hold a blanket around me, I'll know exactly where it came from.
The hills, a bit of brass, a few simple tools — and a little bit of time.
That's more than enough for me.
