Home Made Snake Hook

[jclaiborne]

I was cleaning out one of our storage areas at work and came across some stainless steel and aluminum and decided that I was going to give making my own snake hooks a try. The aluminum bar stock is 3ft long and 1/2in diameter. I drilled and tapped one end and then put a taper on it for the hook to thread into. The hooks are made of stainless steel and are 1/4in thick. I started by trimming them down to size and grinding the tip down to the angle I wanted, removed all the sharp edges, then clamped it up in a bender and went to work. Once I got the shapes I wanted I threaded the end of the hooks so they could screw into the aluminum. There is 1in of thread engagement on each hook which is way overkill, but figured why not. I then bead blasted the hooks and poles to get any marks, imperfections, and sharp edges in the parts removed. I am pretty pleased overall with them, they came out pretty nice and seem pretty strong.

[jclaiborne]

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[Reinz]

They look great!

[jclaiborne]

They look great!

Thanks! I am going to make 2 more. One will be a short 2ft hook for at home cage use and the other, I am going to make a "break down" field hook, so it will be 4ft in length, but separate in the middle to 2ft sections to fit in a backpack. That one is going to take a little more machining time in order to get it right, but once I get it done I am going to do a weight test on it to see if I get it to fail.

[Reinz]

That backpacker sounds like a great idea!

[Tsanford]

Man those look nice! Space age aluminum developed by NASA

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[jclaiborne]

That backpacker sounds like a great idea!

Thanks, hoping to have it drawn up and done in a week or two depending on free time at open machine time on the lathe. I may also try to knurl it in order to give it a little grip, we will see. The nice thing about all these hooks is they can be replaced since they are threaded in vs some of the ones I have seen that use JB Weld to hold them in place.

[John1982]

Looking good! Now just slap some grips on those babies and send them my way so I can take them out for a few test runs.

[Tsanford]

Some golf club grips!

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[jclaiborne]

Actually the bead blasting made the bar pretty course, it feels pretty good in my hand, I might try some grips if it slips at all while I do the weight tests.