Google has failed me.
My MIL gave me all of her sewing stuff when we got married. This included a box of striaght pins and a pin cusion.
Ove the years I’ve lost a few but, I’ve been in the habit of dragging a magnet around the room if I know I’ve dropped any.
Afew days ago the box crashed on the floor. I got out my trusty magnet. It picked up about 3/4 of them, but there werw many that seened to be non-ferous. They completely ignored the magnet.
My WAG is that during WWII the steel that was used to make straight pins was diverted to the war effort, but what could they be made from? I couldn’t find anything on Google. Just having the word “Straight” gave we sites that scared me.
My wife tells me that she has some brass pins for use in situations where the pin might stay in place for a long time (pinning up curtains was one thought). They are still available here for example
Yeah, my money would be on some non-magnetic alloy of steel. Even if they were made during the war, my impression is that other likely candidates (copper, aluminum, tin, and their alloys) were in even shorter supply than steel was at the time.
Most of my wife’s sewing pins used to be plated brass. This was a problem for me because I used pins in building model airplanes and the brass ones bent much easier.
Maybe she bought the brass ones to keep me from swiping them?
Small pieces of steel CAN act nonmagnetic if they are too thin to interact with the magnetic lines of force. I doubt if there are stainless steel pins - stainless can’t be sharpened as well and cannot be heat treated for strength. I suggest a stronger magnet or try different orientations over the pile of pins.
When I married my husband, his mother gave me her sewing machine and much of her sewing supplies, including an Altoids box of straight pins. Straight pins, as long as they remain straight, don’t wear out. They’ve been in my sewing room for 15 years. No telling how long they were in her’s.
Yesterday, I dropped a few on the floor. I got out my trusty very strong magnet to pick them up. About a dozen of them wouldn’t play. They seem to be non-ferrous.
They don’t look any different, except the heads are shaped a little different. They don’t bend any easier than the others. They’re shiny like the others.
So, why would they exist? Could they be from during WWII? What metal would they be made from?
Copper was in shorter supply than steel during WWII. Hence the 1943 zinc coated steel pennies. If they manufactured pins during WWII, they would probably have been steel rather than brass.