Introduction Spring Design Spring Materials Wire Safety Equipment Tooling Basic Coiling Setup Torsion Springs Extension Springs Compression Springs Clock and Power Springs Finishing Techniques Other Types of Springs How Spring Shops Work Glossary of Springmaking Terms Links and Resources Credits Site map

CREDITS

“Old springmakers never die ... they just lose their initial.” (Don Coache)

I hope you've found the information here useful. I know I've forgotten to mention a whole slew of stuff that'll probably occur to me at 3 in the morning. But enough is enough, and if I don't quit now, this site will never get launched at all! Before I do that though, some credits are due:

  • This site was done with the aid of Arachnophilia, with technical graphics prepared in Windows Paint and converted with LViewPlus. Navigation graphics were done in Paint Shop Pro, which is widely regarded as the poor man's PhotoShop. It was optimized for Netscape 3.0+. The graphics and drawings are mine, mistakes and all.

  • The site was completely redone in February of 2006 by Wendy Hart. She is amazing and I'm still learning lessons from her code.

  • Since this site was first published on the Web in 1997, I've had literally hundreds of emails from people who were seeking information on how to make springs or just happened to breeze by accidentally. To those who asked questions, I hope I've been able to help. Others offered suggestions, shared technical knowledge, pointed out errors, and sent links. To each of those people — and there were many — my heartfelt thanks.

  • My springmaking career began in grinding and progressed through secondary to short order work. I worked in San Francisco- and Los Angeles-area shops from 1974 to 1979, and I still remember a thing or two about the trade. Some of my teachers were Don “a little pain never hurt anybody” Nyswonger and Charlie “you're gonna have problems if you do it that way” Gamble.

Feel free to download this site in zip format - it's about 350KB uncompressed, graphics and all. The contents of this archive are current to December, 2001.

Or, if you prefer, you can have the printable PDF version, courtesy of Harry Seibert. (You'll need Adobe's Acrobat reader to view this document. If you don't have Acrobat, you can download it here for free.) The contents of this document are current to November, 2002.

Lastly, if you want to go really high class, you can buy the official print version of the site, current to July 2007. This is a 6" x 9" book with 126 pages jam-packed with just about everything you see here with a few important differences: there links in the book dn't work (surprise surprise) but there are a few new graphics that are not yet on the site that should make coiling compression springs easier to understand. Couple that with a snazzy plastic coil binding and you have a reference that will actually lay flat on your workbench, which is something your monitor probably won't do very well at all. Anyway, get your copy here.

And don't forget to drop me a line if you've got the notion :-)

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