I’ve been meaning to learn how to make jump rings for quite a while. The turquoise pendant I made sometime ago, is in need of a chain. Do you remember this one? What I’ve learnt this week is that there is much skill, patience and practice needed in the art of hand-making jump rings.
Getting Started
I finally got some time to make a start this week. Over the past couple of weeks, I had made quite a few false starts, which involved attempts with paper clips and wire that was just too thick. I settled in with some 0.8mm round wire and found a great tutorial by Tammy Powley: http://jewelrymaking.about.com/od/chainpatterns/ss/spanish-chain.htm. Incidentally, you can sign-up to Tammy’s regular newsletters, which are really interesting.
I started by wrapping the wire around a rectangular bezel mandrel about 15 times. Then I used wire cutters to cut off the coil.
Sawing
Then used a jeweller’s saw to saw through the middle of the coil. Safety tip – be really careful with your fingers! I learnt today that it’s better to make a smaller number of jump rings. It’s easier to hold the coil and control the direction of the saw. I found 5 is a relatively easy to manage number to control.
Once I had sawed through the coil, I ended up with a number of (unsoldered) jump rings:
Per the tutorial, I filed the ends of the wire until flat and smooth. Then I joined the ends together. Pliers are helpful here, particularly with the really small jump rings. Once the ends were flush, I soldered the ends together with hard solder.
Shaping
Then using round-nosed pliers, I shaped the jump rings, per Tammy’s tutorial.
Challenges
I found that the excess solder made the jump ring less flexible, which made it difficult to control the final shape of the link. Using a file or some sand paper to take the excess solder off would have helped a lot. Shaping the jump rings wasn’t too difficult. However, as I had made some very small links, I found it very difficult and fiddly to link them together (I just couldn’t get the links through the holes!). After a couple of hours of trying (and only managing to link two of the links together), I gave up and started again.
Trying Again
This time, I used the widest end of the rectangular bezel mandrel and made much bigger loops. I followed the same steps again, and with a little shaping, I found that I could get the links to join together. I’ve managed 5 links so far:
I’ve discovered that this needs a lot of practice and is much more difficult than I had first anticipated. It’s quite fiddly to link the chain together. The rule of thumb seems to be that there is a trade-off between the size of the link, the ease/difficulty with which to thread them together and the shape of the link. Smaller links are very fiddly and difficult to fit together (as the wire won’t go through the holes) and larger links tend to be misshapen. And at the end of all that, I think the links are too big for my pendant, so will need to start again in the middle of the bezel mandrel.
