Well, at least I didn't lose it forever
I broke my APO pledge pin. I'd been keeping it on the flap of my messenger bag, which was a dumb move -- I've lost/broken more than one snarky button that way, when they scrape against things and the attachment part tears loose or bends off or what have you. But I didn't notice the pin had fallen off until like an hour later, by which time I had no idea where it was. So I spent an hour retracing my steps and finally found it under my seat in one of the lecture halls. The front part had completely broken off the straight sharp part, and the back was nowhere to be found.
So yay that I still have the front part, which is the part that matters. Boo the pin not being in a wearable state, and boo losing the back. (Although I bet pin backs are not that hard to find/make...but this one was very well designed and stayed on quite tenaciously. I still can't figure out how it got detached from the straight sharp part.)
I'm not sure how to fix the pin, or even whether the pin is still fixable. I have a soldering iron (yay cruft), but I wouldn't trust a solder joint to have any functional value at all, even if I wore the pin very carefully (i.e. NOT on the flap of my bag!!). Don't think superglue would do it either. I'm rather tempted to buy a pair of tiny rare earth magnets and glue one onto the back of the pin, a la the Tech Squares badge, but I'm not sure how well that glue join would hold up either. (FWIW, the right angle where the straight sharp part joined up with the flat front of the pin was a huge stress point.)
Alternatively, I could embed just the pin front in something, and wear it as a pendant. A chainmaille wrapping might not hold it, but could be reinforced with epoxy, and would look nice. Polymer clay or wire wrapping are also possibilities.
Suggestions?
[Also, you can thank me for not starting another epic spam war! For non-MITheads, whenever someone loses something and then emails all the dorm mailing lists about it, a large annoying spam war ensues. Also, one of the seminal spam wars had to do with losing a sweatshirt with a pledge pin on it -- the original text of that email is a favorite text to spam with.]
So yay that I still have the front part, which is the part that matters. Boo the pin not being in a wearable state, and boo losing the back. (Although I bet pin backs are not that hard to find/make...but this one was very well designed and stayed on quite tenaciously. I still can't figure out how it got detached from the straight sharp part.)
I'm not sure how to fix the pin, or even whether the pin is still fixable. I have a soldering iron (yay cruft), but I wouldn't trust a solder joint to have any functional value at all, even if I wore the pin very carefully (i.e. NOT on the flap of my bag!!). Don't think superglue would do it either. I'm rather tempted to buy a pair of tiny rare earth magnets and glue one onto the back of the pin, a la the Tech Squares badge, but I'm not sure how well that glue join would hold up either. (FWIW, the right angle where the straight sharp part joined up with the flat front of the pin was a huge stress point.)
Alternatively, I could embed just the pin front in something, and wear it as a pendant. A chainmaille wrapping might not hold it, but could be reinforced with epoxy, and would look nice. Polymer clay or wire wrapping are also possibilities.
Suggestions?
[Also, you can thank me for not starting another epic spam war! For non-MITheads, whenever someone loses something and then emails all the dorm mailing lists about it, a large annoying spam war ensues. Also, one of the seminal spam wars had to do with losing a sweatshirt with a pledge pin on it -- the original text of that email is a favorite text to spam with.]