Rob,
I labored for over an hour in writing that one paragraph which describes the pinning mechanism. I am normally good with words, but carving out this description was very difficult for me. By your question, I still didn't fully explain it.
First, being a 3-D object, I have no idea how I would scan it from its edge. I suck at all technology-related things, even cell phones. Hell, I can't even remember the link to my own blog (thanks for citing it properly, Dan). So I will use some words in reference to the two scans.
Let's start with the badge part. Have you ever bought a can of ground coffee? If so, to open it there was a little tab you pulled that went all around the circumference of the can, separating the lid from the can. That flat lid had about a 1/4" lip to it, useful in re-sealing the can. Now imagine you drilled a 1/8" hole in the middle of the 1/4" lip. If you are still with me, that round metal lid with one hole drilled in the lip (or technically speaking, the flange) is your Lynch badge.
Now look at the first scan that shows the front of the badge. At the upper most part of the scanned image is something that looks like the top part of a bobby pin. That "thing" is what I referred to as the illusion of two wires in parallel. In fact, it is all the same wire with a 180 degree bend at the top. You would take the holed badge and rotated it 180 degrees so now the hole is at the 6:00 position. Next, you turn the badge over so now you are looking at its reverse. Essentially you have reversed everything: the top becomes the bottom and the front becomes the back. Then you insert the tip of the "bobby pin" into the hole. Now the badge slides all the way down to the opposite end of the bobby pin, where there is small loop or notch in the wire. The loop or notch is ever so slightly wider than the space between the hole in the flange and the badge itself. It is at this point the badge "flips"----now the bottom becomes the top and the back becomes the front. You are then looking at the "finished product": the front side of the badge with a hole at the 12:00 position (that you cannot see because the hole was drilled in the flange).
I'm no engineer, but I thought the design was amazing. Lynch did to your everyday spring pin what Einstein did to Newton. While I do not expect to win the Pulitzer prize for this post, at the least I expect you to nominate me for it, Rob. And thanks for the compliment.
Paul
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