Old hard drives are good sources of strong rare earth magnets.

I am in the process of making three sporrans. One dress (skunk without head) and two for everyday (plain leather, black and brown.) I have the leather, skins, leather dye, etc. I have gathered many ideas and even a couple of patterns from the discussion groups. I have looked at the ones I have, (serviceable but well used and cheaply made.) I’ve looked at pictures on-line, and looked at the sporrans offered at different highland games.

I like many, but dislike most of the closure systems and prices of course. I want something that is relatively secure, but also easy to get into and out of. At one of the games I saw a vender that had magnetic clasp closures. These looked neat! Seemed to work and were easy to open and close. So I went on line looking for magnetic closures, and sure enough, I found some.

But before I had time to order any, I remember someone using “rare earth” magnets to hold on a fancy home-made kilt pin. I also remember a computer article that said that rare earth magnets were particularly strong and were used in computer hard drives.

I have (had) two old, small (20 meg) hard drives that I no longer use, and hadn’t thrown away. I took them apart, and low and behold there are indeed strong rare earth magnets in these hard drives. A little prying with a screw driver, and I now have a magnet that securely grabs a steel washer through four layers of leather. Since I will need the magnet to grab through only two layers, it should work fine.

Just thought it worth passing along.