I saw this picture before Christmas, it shows different stages of hooks and eyes being made and is dated to 15th to 16th century.

I have until now used modern black or silver hooks for my 16th century projects, lazy as I am. But Seeing the picture it hit me that it is to easy to make them on your own to not be using them. So I dug out my pliers and 1mm bronze thread and did some testing. And sure enough, they are really easy to make. I never you the eyes, I do thread bars for my hooks in stead so I will only show the hook making part.

I use bronze thread as bronze seems to be very common to use in pins and needles, so using it for hooks and eyes should be period correct.

I start out with a 4cm long piece.
Using round nosed pliers I form the loops at the end
Then fold it in half
Press the wire together to make a nice shape, I use my needle nose pliers to do this.
Then I hammer it on an anvil to harden the thread a bit
Then it is time to fold, this was the tricky part and it is hard to get it even and straight. But practice makes more perfect.

Now I need to exchange the modern ones I already have in place for these nice ones.