There’s so many jewellery making techniques to learn out there. It’s impossible to do them all. A great place to start is with wirework, learning to use basic pliers to create the essential elements in your designs. Beads can also be incorporated into your designs to add a pop of colour and create a feature too.
If you want to progress in this area, there’s many advanced wire wrapping techniques where you can wrap cabochon gemstones. You can even start to add textures using hammers to wirework designs too!
Moving on from wirework, you can then explore metalwork, using sheet metal and other prefabricated shapes/tubes and wires too. This will require some additional tools, such as saws, hammers and mandrels, and if you intend to do some soldering there’ll be some more tools to invest in. It doesn’t have to be expensive, and if you buy good quality tools they should last you a lifetime too!
Here’s a list of some essential tools/equipment for each of these areas:
Wirework:
- Wire cutters: Essential for cutting wire to the desired length.
- Round-nose pliers: Used for making loops and curves in wire.
- Flat-nose pliers: Useful for gripping and bending wire.
- Wire gauge tool: Helps in determining the thickness or gauge of wire.
- Mandrels: Used for shaping wire into rings or other curved forms.
- Wire straighteners: Optional but helpful for straightening wire that may have become bent or kinked.
- Jeweller's saw: Used for cutting metal sheet and wire.
- Files: Essential for smoothing rough edges and shaping metal.
- Soldering torch: A small torch used to heat metal and melt solder.
- Flux: A substance applied to metal surfaces to prevent oxidation during soldering.
- Solder: Comes in various forms (e.g., wire, sheet) and melting temperatures for different applications.
- Pickle pot: Contains a solution (usually diluted sulfuric acid) used to remove oxidation and flux residues from metal after soldering.
I hope this guide has been useful to you!
Toolkits will be available to shop from 28th June!