Clothes-pin
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Image:Clothespin.jpg A clothes-pin (also C47, clothes peg, or just peg) is a fastener used to hang up, and dry clothes, usually on a clothes line. Pegs often come in many different designs.
Today, many pegs are manufactured very cheaply by creating two interlocking plastic or wooden prongs, which in between is often wedged a small spring. By a lever action, when the two prongs are pinched at the top of the peg, the prongs open up, and when released, the spring draws the two prongs shut, creating the action necessary for gripping.
Image:Clothpin.jpg Older designs do not use springs, but often are fashioned in one piece, with the two prongs part of the peg chassis with only a small distance between them - this form of peg creates the gripping action due to the two prongs being wedged apart and thus squeezing together in that the prongs want to return to their initial, resting state. This form of peg is often fashioned from plastic, or originally, wood.
Other uses
A clothes-pin can be used for closing a bag, allowing opening easier than with a knot in the (plastic) bag, a piece of rope with a knot, etc.
Clothes-pins are used in BDSM to induce minor amounts of pain, canonically as impromptu makeshift nipple clamps, but are also applied to other parts of the body.
Clothes-pins with springs used to fascinate young children and served as raw material for various contraptions: fire-throwing catapults, mousetraps, pistols, detonators, not to mention various Rube Goldberg machines.
In the film industry, on movie sets in particular, a spring-type clothes-pin is called a "C47" or "C74". It is incredibly useful on the set- it is used as a small gripping tool or a quick fastener, especially when dealing with lighting. The name "C47" may have come from an attempt to make it sound less mundane than a clothes-pin, or it may have come from the label on the bin used to store them in an early studio. More commonly believed is that the name "C47" came to be the designation that the clothes-pins were given when printed on studio budgets to trick budget managers into approving the request for them. A C74 is a spring-type clothes-pin that has been taken apart and put back together reversed, so the small end comes together. This gives a tweezer-like tool.
External links
el:Μανταλάκι ja:洗濯ばさみ nl:Wasknijper fi:Pyykkipoika sv:Klädnypa