Repairing Bent and Broken Knitting Needles

Dear users, dear authors,
What do you do with bent and broken knitting needles? Can they be salvaged, or are they beyond repair?

Oh, Josefa, I’m sure everyone here knows this. You can’t repair broken knitting needles, and bent ones are tricky too. If you’re lucky, they’re bent in a way that still feels comfortable in your hand. Then you can keep using them.

Whether they break or bend depends mainly on the material the needles are made of. Especially when you’re using a very fine needle size, it’s important that the needles are of good quality. That’s why I’ve bought sets of carbon fiber double-pointed needles. They hold their shape and are very sturdy.

My sets of bamboo double-pointed needles, on the other hand, are all a bit crooked—shaped by hand through use. I only use the bamboo needles for thicker yarns, since the bamboo is thicker for those as well.

Best regards, Ina

Yeah, I have a few slightly bent bamboo needles too—they still work, but I don’t want any more to end up like that. You can’t really repair them, and it’s not even worth the effort since they weren’t very expensive. I’ll just use them for crafts or something like that, and that’s that.
Carbon needles… I’ll look into those—they sound great!

I also have bent knitting needles—but they’re actually very old ones I inherited from my grandma. Very thin needles, and I didn’t take very good care of them when I was younger. 

Broken needles—not really, only when I’ve accidentally sat on them again 😱

I only use bamboo knitting needles—except for size 1.5. Unfortunately, those aren’t available in bamboo.
But as for repairing them—I don’t think they’d hold up. They’re too thin for that.

I don’t think you can straighten out bent metal needles either.