Even though you can use Flat Nose Pliers to crimp your crimp beads, until you begin to useCrimping Pliers, you won’t really know how much more professional crimping pliers will make your finished art-piece. The Crimp Plierswill help curve your crimp beads so that the wearer of your jewelry piece will not feel any sharp & annoying edges; which lessens the value of your jewelry. If you have never used Crimping Pliers, it may take a bit of practice to get the hang of it but it will be worth every effort – to you and your customers/jewellery recipients.
How to use Crimping Pliers
Firstly take a close look at the Crimping Pliers when the jaws are closed. You will notice 2 holes – one an oval hole with a dip on one side, & secondly an oval hole.
- Take your crimp bead and thread it onto your stringing material – most often with crimp beads, this will be some coated wire such as Tigertail or soft-flex.
- Next, take the end of your wire and loop it back into your crimp bead while leaving a small length as a tail.
- Position the crimp bead in the second oval-with-the-dip of the pliers. Close the pliers around the bead. You should see the crimp bead curl.
Crimp bead – side view
- Then turn the crimp bead to its side, position it in the first smooth oval hole, and close the pliers around the crimp bead. Compress it into a rounded shape. It’s very important to make sure that the oval hole of the pliers are directly around the crimp.
crimp bead – compressed
- Once your crimp bead is secure, trim off excess thread. Now you have a good loop that can be used to hold your clasp
Tips
- To ensure that the tail end of your wire (which you can to cut off) does not scratch the wearer, make sure that you last one or two beads on the necklace, nearest to the crimp bead, is large enough so that a small amount of extra beading wire can be threaded back through them before cutting off excess. 4mm sized beads work very well for this.
- To ensure that the loop of your beading wire when you are done is large enough, insert one side of your round nose pliers into the loop when you are first threading the end of the wire back into the crimp bead.
- You can also hide a crimped crimp bead in a clam shell (Charlotte crimps) or within a large ending bead.
- Be a bit patient while first practising – ‘Practice makes Perfect’!
Recommended Crimping Pliers
I have tried a number of crimping pliers by now. And I can tell you that while the economy ones will do the trick (most of the time), there is nothing like a quality crimper. Personally I love my Xuron 4 in 1 Crimper. Perfect crimps easily! It has a very fine and strong needle nose plier at the end – which is So needed for finer work.
Xuron 4-in-1 Crimping pliers
xuron 4-in-1 crimp tool instructions
Watch a demonstration of this Xuron crimp plier
