Peg Hands

It was last week when I need more hands to solder the ESP-12 chip and desolder one of its tiny smd resistors. I needed to hold the chip firmly. I needed to hold the solder wire. I needed to hold the solder iron. Anyway.. I succeeded with my soldering. Later I think that more hands will make it easier and also better soldering result.

A flash looked at my previous instructables I saw this DIY PegBoard at DIY Tools Organizer, and my MultiFunction Twister Wire combined would bring me an Even-More-Flexible-Helping-Hands.

So the "Peg" can refers to both cloth-peg and peg-board. Why I choose pegs as the clippers instead of alligator clips? Because these cloth-pegs are made of soft wood, so they will produce little scratches on boards. I also use it to clip my phone for photography. Although they are frangible, they can hold things pretty well. The peg-board itself is intended for even more flexibility. I have flexible twister-wire hands, yes. Then I can move them in the positions so that they don't block my hands while soldering. Ah... give it a try and see what you can do with it ;-)

Materials :

• A piece of board with minimum 2 centimeters of thickness for better plug the hands.
• Some fuel hoses.
• Some 2 millimeters wire; measured a little longer then the fuel hose.
• Some cloth-pegs.

Why "some"? Because you can make as many hands as you want. Here I make five.

Tools :

• A pliers or two.
• A wire cutter.
• A drill along with an appropriate drill bit (equals or a little bit larger than the fuel hose).

You can drill anywhere on the board (forming a good pattern or a shape of something maybe), as many as you like. Here I distributed the holes 5 centimeters each.

I make 4 short hands and one long hand. I think I might need a long one in some circumstances. Cut the wire a little longer than the hose, let's say about 3 or 4 centimeters, we can cut it off later if it is too long.

Make a node at one end of the wire. The board's hole is slightly larger than the hose. So we make a node to make it firmly fit in the hole. The hose itself is elastic, nothing to worry. You only need to get the node fit in the hole. I simply fold it back a little. All I can press with my pliers leaving an oval shape like the wire in the photo above. After covered with fuel hose, it makes a good grip in the board's hole.

Make another node on the wire where the hose ended. Twist it like the picture below.

Put the remaining wire through the cloth-peg's spring hole.

Bend the wire down through the hole next to the peg's spring.

Then bend it toward the node on the spring's hole and cut the excessive wire off.

Sleeves the wire in the fuel hose and we are done. Now you can make as many as you want. It's okay if you make an ugly nodes for the first one. You will make a better one on the second, third, and so on... trust me ^_^

You can simply bend the wire after going through the spring's hole and cut the excessive wire off instead of bending it around through the hole next to the spring's hole. This produce a 360 free spin clipper. It is easier to get a position and it will hold still when clipping something although not that rigid.

They can hold a bare harddisk drive. One hand can hold my pliers. I also use them for smartphone photography, taking pictures for iBles projects. Of course the main purpose is holding electronic boards for service and soldering and this one can hold a computer motherboard for sure ;-) although I never repair a motherboard ha..ha..ha..

It can hold a mini flashlight while working. And we can also use 'Hand in Hand', another hands can help holding one hand steady. So Flex and useful to me.