Wood hourglass shape + rubber band = pretty awesome

August 20, 2011 7:46 PM

I somehow came into possession of this cable holder tie thing consisting of an hourglass-shaped piece of wood and a rubber band. It's pretty great. Where can I get more? What is this thing called?
posted by 0xFCAF to Shopping (10 answers total)

What you've got there are bongo ties. You can order them online from a number of places, look for sites specializing in either production or photography. Or just google until you find something like this
posted by felspar at 8:09 PM on August 20, 2011

Looks like you could pretty easily fabricate them with two golf tees, a small saw and some superglue.
posted by brentajones at 8:10 PM on August 20, 2011

A more general name would be "toggle tie". Buy some toggle buttons from the fabric store (not to be confused with, uh, the other kind of toggle button) and some rubber bands and make your own.
posted by anaelith at 8:11 PM on August 20, 2011

I got mine at Calumet, the photography store.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 8:33 PM on August 20, 2011

Here is bongo's dealer list.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 8:36 PM on August 20, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks for the tips!

Aside: those prices are kind of ridiculous. For $0.50 each (on what appears to be $0.03 of materials?) I could use a disposable zip tie 150 times instead. Unless there's a lower-cost dealer they're not listing I'll probably just have a friend with a Thing-o-Matic print up a batch and use the rubber bands I already have.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:58 PM on August 20, 2011

Honestly the hourglass-ness is probably not that much of a requirement. Why not try a length of dowel rod and some heavy duty rubber bands and see if you like it? However I think you're under-estimating material cost a bit - a plain dowel is probably going to cost you around 10c/inch for a suitable thickness. With the machining and, well, they gotta make SOME money I think 50c probably isn't TOO crazy.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:15 PM on August 20, 2011

Some googling indicates you can probably get 10 for around $3.50 also.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:17 PM on August 20, 2011

Looks like you could pretty easily fabricate them with two golf tees, a small saw and some superglue

Superglue or epoxy probably wouldn't hold up, over time with a heavy load -- but given a stash of golf tees, you could quite easily just lash two together (without any cutting) and get the same effect -- or as RustyBrooks points out, the shape's just a bonus, you might get by with a very short pencil.
posted by Rash at 9:06 AM on August 21, 2011

The hourglass shape isn't required. I've got a couple dozen similar things I got probably at CompUSA when they closed, and on them, the "peg" is about an inch long with rounded ends, rather like an elongated medicine capsule.
posted by chazlarson at 11:44 AM on August 21, 2011