The weather has been absolutely beautiful! Spring is in the air indeed.

I had a few old HDD laying around, I let my son take them apart. As he was doing this, I was picking up the pieces (of course)...
I made this wind chime using only parts from a HDD (aside from some machinist or picture hanger wire and solder and string)... Oh yeah and some shrink tube (not really necessary though).

It actually looks pretty cool, and I'm curious to see what the sun and weather does to it...

Step 1: Gather Your Material

I used 3 (old junkie) HDDs
Machinist wire (picture hanging wire would work i think)
Solder and soldering iron
wire cutters
twine
Drill and small drill bit

Take apart your HDD's and remove and set aside the platters and rings.
cut about 4 or 5 ft length of wire off the spool as well as a 3 ft section

Step 2: Time to Make Some Rings.

I used two different sized rings but you could do it how you want to do it.. the sizes are up to you... the process is the same...
I used a dowel rod to wrap the wire around. I first drilled a hole in the end large enough to slide the wire in and begin wrapping..
after you wrap the wire around release it. it should flex larger and large enough to slide off the dowel.
what you are left with is a spring.
Carefully contract the spring all the way until you can hold all wraps with your fingers and snip all the way through.
what you are left with is a bunch of open rings all the same size and shape.

Step 3: Drill the Holes in the Platters

I did this step sloppy and didn't think it through. I had 5 platters to work with. You should have at least this many but you should also try to use an odd number of platters... mine has two strings of platters and two strings of the small platter seperating rings, and one platter to connect them all and attach a hanger.

If I had thought it through I would have done it this way.
Make 8 holes in one of the platter as evenly and consistently spaced as possible.
The other platters should have two holes each except the last one on each string of platters (those require only one).

Step 4: Time to Do Some Soldering...

Lay things out as symmetrical as possible.
I put a ring in 4 of the spots of the main platter with one hole in between each ring.

Take a ring and form it as close to each-other as possible an extra set of hands is very useful in this step.
After attaching the rings to the proper platters and or rings solder the open rings closed. keep doing this until you get all the rings and platters attached to the main platter in proper order

This step can prove to be tedious as the wire rings do not want to hold the solder to well..
but keep at it because its almost done at this point.

Step 5: Attach the Hanger

I used a wax coated string.
Take and cut 4 equal lengths of rope about 18" long.
put the strings through the remaining holes on the main platter and pull the ends straight and even run them through the small (platter retaining ring) that was on top of the HDD spindle. run each string through opposite holes.

Hold all the strings in one hand and hold it up and straighten the wind chime. after its all straight and even tie a single knot in all the strings at one time to lock it in nice and level.
I used a piece of heat tube on the end of the rope after the knot to keep all the strings together and then made another knot after the shrink tube. This gave me a hanger loop that should last a long time in the elements.
But that's it... What you have is a very nice sounding wind chime that looks cool!

Thanks for looking.