Stainless Steel Spiders from Stolen Scissors

In the past year, the Transportation Security Administration has confiscated over 8 million items, including guns, knives, narcotics, cuticle scissors, mousse, pudding, and bottled water.  I have obtained some of the TSA-confiscated scissors, and they inspired me.

 The TSA officially allows scissors with blades less than four inches.  But the individual officers have the authority to disallow anything they think poses a potential threat.  These scissors all belong in that grey area between what should  be allowed on the plane, and what wasn’t  allowed.

I’ve cut the scissors up, bent them, and welded them back together into spiders. 

The rest of this page documents the process of creating the spider, with visual aids.

This is how I receive the scissors. In bulk, used, and mostly unsorted.

I sort them based on shape and size, and take out all the ones that are cheap filler metal. My welder doesn’t like those. This picture shows some that I’ve set aside because I like the shapes of the handles.

These 8 barber scissors will make a mighty fine spider.

First, I have to break them apart. Sometimes I can just twist them until they come loose. Other times, I have to grind off part of the screw/rivet that holds them together. Then I clamp part in the vice and twist them apart with pliers.

I use a torch to heat the handles up. This way, when I bend them, they don’t break.

A pair of legs, all bent up and nowhere to go.

Here’s 4 pairs of legs assembled and ready for the body.

You can see the other half of the 8 pairs of scissors, waiting to be bent and welded together.

After the body has been attatched. Top view.

This is the same spider, as seen from the side. It might get a little wire brush treatment to shine it up, but this is pretty much what it will look like. This is the 4th in the series.

The following spiders are the first two in the series.

The first one is actually made from cuticle scissors.

Alternate view.

The second one. Made from barber scissors (like the one shown in the step-by-step)

Alternate view.

The first two together, showing the difference in size between the cuticle scissor spider and the barber scissor spider.

Thanks for looking. For more (related and unrelated) work, or if you would like to purchase a spider, please point your browser to http://heartlessmachine.com