Jewellery Making Essentials: The Must-Have Tools

Hey everyone, it's Carol here. If you haven't been to my channel before, welcome. Today we're going to talk about the tools that you need to make jewelry. Now in front of me I have eight sets of pliers and you don't need all eight sets of pliers but I thought I'd talk about these because they're commonly used. By the way if you like this video and you would like to see more of my content then please subscribe to my channel and ring the bell so that you'll be notified every time I put up a new video. So let's start by talking about the round nose pliers. So the round nose pliers are basically a plier with a round nose. So you can see here the nose or the jaws of the plier are quite long and they're quite pointy on one end and quite a lot fatter on the other. So these ones are quite small, they fit nicely in my hand which is really important when you're selecting pliers. You'll be using these a lot so make sure you find some that are comfortable. They're not expensive to buy, it's just really important that they're comfy. You'll notice also the obviously the jaws of the pliers are round. The reason they're different sizes at the end is that if you want to make a smaller loop you can use this end and if you wanted to make a larger loop you can use this end. If you want to know how to make a loop using the round nose pliers then check out my how to make a simple loop video. I'll leave the link in the description down below. The next thing you're going to need is some cutters. So these are flush cutters. The reason they're called flush cutters is that they are flush on one side. When you cut with this side it makes a nice flat cut. On the other side if we take a look you can see there's a divot between the two jaws of the pliers and if you cut using this side you will get a more pointy cut. Most of the time we use the flush side of our flush cutters. These ones have a nice pointy end on them which is really good for getting into really tight spaces which you often need to when you're cutting wire and jewelry making. Once again these ones have rubber handles and are nice and soft and easy to use. Here I have two pairs of pliers. Now these are chain nose pliers and you'll notice with the chain nose pliers something really really important when it comes to jewelry making is that the inside of the jaw here, oops, the inside of the jaw is nice and flat so we don't want the pliers that you would buy at the hardware store that have ridges inside for extra grip because they can mark the wire. So what we're looking for here is these chain nose pliers with a nice smooth interior. You'll notice that these ones have a nice point on the end so it helps you get into those tight spaces. These ones here are exactly the same except they have a bent nose. So these ones are quite optional. I really like to use bent nose pliers because they allow you to get into places where you can't get sometimes with your chain nose pliers and I use these all the time. It's really really good to have at least two pairs of pliers in your arsenal anyway so I always have my bent nose ones and my chain nose pliers. Now we're on to the optional tools. These are memory wire cutters. You'll notice that they are quite different from the flush cutters that we were playing with before. They're quite a different shape. The reason you need memory wire cutters is that if you are using memory wire it's very hard to cut. It's much much harder than the standard wire that we use so a special pair of cutters is, it's not vital but it is a good idea. Now if you are using ordinary cutters you need to have a pair that you use specifically for memory wire. I can't tell you how many pairs of flush cutters I have ruined using them on memory wire because I forgot and thought oh well I'll just use my ordinary pliers and it basically it what it does is it cuts big chunks out of your out of your blade and actually you can see I'm not sure if you can see it but this blade has a little bit of a chunk out of it because I have probably used them with my memory wire. It's a Nylon jawed pliers are used for straightening wire. Often when you purchase an eye pin it will look like this. It will be bent because they kind of get mixed up with each other when they're being shipped and they do get bent. So to straighten an eye pin using your nylon jawed pliers what you do is you take the wire in the jaws of the pliers and you just pull it and you do it on all sides so it just gets rid of all of those kinks out of your wire and you have a nice straight eye pin. Super easy. Once again they are an optional purchase but well worth it and the jaws are replaceable so once they wear out you can actually replace them. The next thing I've got on my list of optional tools is a split ring opener. Now personally I don't use a lot of split rings just because of the sort of jewelry that I make but you can use these if you do it. I do use split rings a lot to open the split rings. Let me show you how they work. You put the long jaw of your pliers through the loop of the ring and the short one goes quite close to the end of the split ring and when you squeeze the split ring will open. So then you can feed on what you need to feed on. Last but not least is the one-step looper. Personally I find I can't live without the one-step looper. It is the best invention ever in my opinion. So what this does is it does a loop and cuts your wire all in one go. I'll quickly show you how it works. So you just pop it in through the hole there and squeeze and then you have a nice loop and mine's not quite closed but that's okay I can close it myself in a minute. So that's the one-step looper. If you would like to see more about how to use the one-step looper I've created a video on how to use it and what the options are so I will leave a link in the description below so you can take a look at that as well. So there you go there's a description of the tools we use in jewellery making. I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you have please subscribe and check out my other techniques videos and also some of the projects that I have been uploading. It was great to have you along. Thanks for watching. See you again soon.