I was working on a sewing project yesterday (more on that in a later post) and halfway through I seem to have lost my thimble. Yeah, I have a real talent for losing things in my own house over lunch. After searching for a good half hour I gave up and decided to make a new one, and documented the process for your entertainment.
Step 1: Polymorph. Polymorph is the brand name for a thermoplastic polymer, aka melty plastic. The cool thing about this stuff is that it melts at around 60 degrees Celsius while being very solid at room temperature, so I threw some into a cup of hot water. (It’s normally white, turning transparent, but I added brown paint to this for a previous project and had leftovers.)
Step 2: The perfect fit. It takes some fiddling to get this into a thimble shape because it’s very good at stretching but not very good at shrinking so it quickly ends up too big as you’re molding it. I ended up molding it on my pinky and then transfered it to my middle finger for its final stretch and let it cool.
Step 3: Holes. Because fingers get sweaty when enclosed in plastic, I’m drilling some air holes into the bottom, where I won’t be pushing needles anyway. The drill generates enough heat that the plastic around it melts again. Rapidly trying to pull the excess away helps, but it does end up looking like something tried to eat it.
Pro tip: Drill holes when the thimble is not on your finger. 
Much smoother after blasting.
Step 4: More heat. To smooth it out, I want to melt the surface and the little wisps of plastic sticking out without melting the whole thing again. Fortunately I have a device that dispenses heat at will in my closet: a hair dryer. Blast it on high, try not to blister my fingers, and nudge the holes into a smoother shape.
Step 5: Grip. To make sure the needle doesn’t slip off the thimble it needs some grip. I put a tiny engraving bit on my dremel tool and dug rows and rows of little dimples across the top. Of course, this results in frilly bits of molten plastic again. But a bit of sanding and more hair-drying and it looks reasonable.
Step 6: Cleanup. I’m pretty happy with my new thimble, so time to put the dremel and the hairdryer away and… Oh noez! I should probably have removed the thimble from my finger or waited for it to cool, because now the molten plastic has found other polymers to make friends with and I’m stuck to the power cord. Fortunately it breaks loose once cooled, and it’s nothing that another round with the hair dryer won’t fix.
Step 7: Happy sewing 🙂
