Jewelry Making Tools

Basic Tools:

The bare-bones, absolutely essential tools required for making jewelry are as follows:

• Round Nose Pliers
• Bent Chain Nose Pliers
• Flush Cutter
• Chain Nose Pliers

Flush Cutter: 

When making jewelry it is very important that there aren't any sharp ends to the jewelry that could cut or snag on the wearer's clothes.  For this reason, you need a special cutter for cutting your jewelry wire.   This special cutter is called a flush cutter and is very different from the wire cutter used by electricians.  A flush cutter is a wire cutter that is designed to cut wire and leave one side of the cut wire flush or flat. The cutting surface of the flush cutter is made so that one side is beveled or sharp and the other side is flat.  In the pictures at right you can view the beveled side above and the flat side below.

 The best flush cutters have one side that is perfectly flat.  Cheaper flush cutters have a small bevel on both sides of the cutter.  These cheaper cutters should be avoided because the resulting cut can be sharp and need to be filed.  The best flush cutters also use the hardest steel.  For this reason, they keep their edge better. 

Unfortunately, good cutters are expensive.  You can find an excellent cutter by selecting here for under $26.  You can find an acceptable cutter for under $5 by selecting here. 

Please note:  Do not use a jewelry wire cutter to cut steel or pot metal findings.  The cutters are not made for that and it may ruin the cutting surface. 

Recommended Tools: 

In the above paragraphs, we discussed the absolutely essential jewelry tools.  There is no point in starting to make jewelry if you don't have those tools.  In this section, we will discuss tools that are strongly recommended.  The tools in this category are nylon jaw pliers, a WigJig jewelry making jig, a ruler, and step jaw pliers.  We will discuss these recommended tools in the following paragraphs.

Nylon Jaw Pliers: 

Nylon jaw pliers are a type of chain nose pliers that have jaws made of nylon instead of steel.  Nylon jaw pliers are used to straighten wire and to flatten finished wire components.  There are many sizes of nylon jaw pliers.  In our experience, the best nylon jaw pliers have jaws that are 5/16" wide and 7/8" long and have replaceable jaws. 

You can find an excellent pair of nylon jaw pliers for less than $13 by selecting here. 

WigJig Jewelry Making Jig: 

Prior to 1995, if a jewelry artist wanted a pattern for making jewelry wire components, they would have had to make that tool from scratch.  Since 1995 there are several vendors who make jewerly making jigs, that allow the user to make a pattern for a jewelry wire component.  You can view one example of a jewelry making jig at right showing how pegs were placed in a matrix of holes to create the patterns used for creating wire components.  The important thing about a jig is that it allows the user to make jewelry components that are very consistent and repeatable -- every component will be the same while still being hand made. 

Of these vendors, one vendor makes products that are significantly better than their competition.  The WigJig brand jewelry making jigs have many significant advantages.  First, they are made out of aircraft quality, clear acrylic plastic.  The reason that this is important is that WigJig has templates for their jigs that can be printed and a pattern can be marked on the template. Because the jig is clear, you can lay it on the template and view where to place your pegs for the pattern.  A second reason that the WigJig brand jewelry making jigs are better is that the holes in their jigs do not extend all the way through their jigs.  Imagine picking up a jig with a pattern of pegs and all the pegs slide out the bottom of the jig and fall on the floor.  This actually happens with many of the competing jigs.  A third reason that the WigJig tools are better is the WigJig tools use metal pegs that won't break.  A fourth reason is that the metal pegs for the WigJig tools fit more securely in the holes of the jig and are more stable.  The WigJig tools are made with several different hole patterns.  Finally, WigJig make jigs with smaller pegs and 5 holes per inch, they make jigs with larger holes and 4 pegs per inch, they make jigs with a square pattern, they make jigs with a round pattern and they make one jig with both a square and a round peg pattern. 

You can find a You Tube video on jewelry making jigs by selecting here. 

You can find a selection of the WigJig jewelry making jigs by selecting here. 

Ruler:

It may seem obvious, but it is strongly recommended that you have a quality ruler to help with making jewelry components.  The ruler is used to measure the length of wire for your wire component.  When cutting inexpensive practice wire it really doesn't matter what length wire you use as long as the wire is long enough.  When cutting gold or silver wire, you can not afford to cut the wire to the wrong length.  We recommend a metal ruler that is about 12" long and has measurement in both inches and mm. 

You can find an excellent metal ruler for less than $10 by selecting here. 

Step Jaw Pliers: 

We talked above about round nose pliers and chain nose pliers.  Now we are going to talk about a tool that combines some of the benefits of both round nose and chain nose pliers along with some additional features into one pair of specialty pliers.  Step Jaw Pliers are used to make the initial loop in jewelry wire components.  There are two advantages to the step jaw pliers.  First, because the jaws are stepped instead of conical like the round nose pliers, the step jaw pliers will always make loops the same size.  You can make loops in one of three sizes.  Second, the flat jaw of the step jaw pliers will not mark the outside of the loop you make.  Round nose pliers mark both the inside and the outside of the loop made, but the flat jaw of the step jaw pliers won't mark the outside of the loop.   

There are a couple of features to look for in quality step jaw pliers.  First, the non-stepped jaw of the pliers needs to be flat like the one shown here.  Some vendors make a concave jaw instead of a flat jaw.  The vendor who sells those pliers has never used them.  Stay away from the step jaw pliers with the concave jaw.  They are worse than awful.  The second feature that you will want in step jaw pliers is to have the steps in the sizes you need.  For those of you who purchase a WigJig jewelry making jig, the sizes you will need are 1/16", 3/32" and a larger size like 9/64"  The reason that these sizes are important is that 1/16" is the size of the pegs for the WigJig Delphi, Cyclops and Centaur.  3/32" is the size of the pegs for the WigJig Olympus, Olympus-Lite and Electra.  Using the step jaw pliers you can be assured that you will make a loop that will fit perfectly on the peg in your jig. 

You can find an excellent step jaw pliers for less than $13 by selecting here.

Nice to Have Tools:

There are many nice to have tools for making jewelry.  There are four that we will highlight because they seem to be used more frequently.  The nice to have tools that we will cover here are a chasing hammer, a nylon hammer, an anvil or bench block, a cup bur and loop closing pliers. 

Cup Bur:

The cup bur, sometimes also called the bur cup, is a tool used to file the end of a piece of wire.  This tool is especially important if you are making ear wires because the end of the wire in an ear wire is by necessity exposed and must be rounded so that it won't injure the wearer.  The easiest way to round the end of a wire segment is to use the cup bur. 

The cup bur has a small cup on the end.  Inside the cup is an abrasive that effectively sands the edges off of the wire. 

You can find an excellent cup bur for less than $7 by selecting here. 

Chasing Hammer:

A chasing hammer is a metal hammer with a flat smooth face.  It is used to harden wire components.  Most often, the chasing hammer is used when making ear wires.  The rounded portion of an ear wire needs to be permanent.  The way to achieve this is by hammering the rounded portion with a hammer.  The metal chasing hammer will harden the wire and slightly flatten the wire.  With chasing hammer's the larger the head the better.  Look for a hammer with a 1 1/4" head. 

You can find a good chasing hammer for less than $15 by selecting here. 

Nylon Hammer:

A nylon hammer is used to harden a wire component witout changing the shape of the wire.  The nylon hammer won't harden the wire as much as a metal chasing hammer would, and it won't flatten the wire like a chasing hammer. 

You can find a good nylon hammer for less than $10 by selecting here.

Anvil or Bench Block: 

When using a hammer you need a hard smooth surface.  The surface can be a bench block or a small jewelry anvil.  What is mandatory is that the surface be flat and very smooth.  Many people find that a small jewelry anvil works best because of the shape.  

You can find a good, small jewelry anvil for less than $14 by selecting here.

Loop Closing Pliers:

The final nice to have tool that we will discuss is loop closing pliers.  These specialty pliers do just what the name says that they do. -- they close loops.  Frequently, when you make a loop it won't always be closed perfectly, there will be a small gap at the end of the wire.  These gaps are bad because they can snag on clothes and pull the jewelry wire component out of shape.  It is recommended that these small gaps be closed wherever they exist.  The best tool to do this is a specialty pair of chain nose pliers called loop closing pliers.  The loop closing pliers have grooves in the jaws to hold the wire without letting it slip.  In the picture at right you can see how the wire is held in those grooves. 

The best loop closing pliers are actually bent closing pliers.  As discussed previously, bent pliers and straight wrist are the better combination rather than straight pliers and bent wrist. 

You can find a good pair of bent closing pliers for less than $9 by selecting here. 

Summary: 

We have discussed four tools that are absolutely mandatory, four tools that are strongly recommended and five tools that are nice to have.  Some of the above tools were around in one form or another in Roman times and some of the tools above are new since 1995.  In the paragraphs above we provided a source for purchasing tools like the ones recommended at reasonable prices.  Hopefully, this information will help a newcomer to making jewelry to select the right tools. 

Please visit a You Tube video on jewelry making tools by selecting here.

Another source of information on jewelry tools for making jewelry by hand with wire and beads can be found by selecting here. 

Happy wire designing!