by Jennifer Searle

Created on: September 13, 2007   Last Updated: April 13, 2011

To make a jump ring out of crafting wire you will need the following tools:

• Two pairs of flat-nosed jewelry pliers, without ridges.
• One Pair of wire cutters (smallest size)
• One metal nail file
• Wire in 20 gauge or 18 gauge
• A mandrel, this can be a knitting needle, a screwdriver, or a wooden dowel.

Before you get started, you have to decide what type of wire you are going to use. Simple craft wire from your local discount store is made of brass and coated with a silver or gold color, thus making it difficult to work with. Copper wire is much easier to hand and shape, but the color on the coated copper wires does come off very easily, so if you choose this kind be gentle with it around metal. Sterling silver, argentium silver, and fine silver are my favorite types of wire to work with, though they cost a little more, they bend and work very easily for jewelry making. Gold-filled wire is also available, mostly through online sources.

After choosing your wire, you will be ready to make your wire jump rings. This technique will produce about twenty jump rings at once. Use a mandrel of your choice, in a size a little bit bigger than what you desire for the end product. Take a piece of wire about a foot long and hold the mandrel and piece of wire in one hand. Then begin to twist the wire around the mandrel starting at the end you are holding.

Once you have finished wrapping the piece of wire, it will look like a long coil when you remove it from the mandrel. Next, pull the coil gently so that each coil is about 3 millimeters apart. Use the wire cutters to cut down the length of the coil. As you cut, each ring will fall off on to your work surface.

The one problem with wire cutters is that they leave a pinched look on your rings. To get rid of this problem, use the nail file to smooth each end of the ring flat. Be careful to not take too much wire off or the ring will not fit snugly together.

Once you have finished this the ring is pulled apart and ready to be used. Once ready to be closed, hold a pair of pliers in each hand and grip the ring on either side of the opening. Gently move the ends together until they are closed flush.

This might seem like a lot of work, but the ring that you will get from using this method will be consistently all the same size. If you want to skip the whole step of filing each ring, by a Jump-Ringer, it is a special tool just for cutting jump rings.

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