Pliers for Jewelry Making

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Alan with Expert Village. The single most expense that you are going to incur when you’re starting your projects is actually getting tools together. Sometimes you can go through the tool box of your father, your boyfriend or a neighbor and pick out some of these things, but there are a few tools that are specific to bead making that you actually need to purchase if you can't find them. A good source are catalogs. Beading catalogs or beading magazines have tons of references in their pages and ads for companies that sell bead tools and equipment and supplies specifically for jewelry making. So I really strongly urge you to go to your library, go to your book store, pick up a beading magazine and just leaf through it and you'll find many resources where you can buy your tools very inexpensively. Or simply go to your craft store. Take a look at what they have and look very closely at what you’re buying. If it is really, really cheap it's something that you may not want to buy. I always tell people when you are buying your tools it's the single most expensive thing that you're going to purchase. So buy something that's a decent quality and that's going to last you a long time. The first thing I want to talk about is your pliers. You need a good pair of needle nose pliers. They're round on the end; you can see that they're round. But these are your single most important pair of pliers that you need. And these are spring action so that you don't actually have to use your fingers to open and close them. You're just closing them with your hand. So you do want a pair that is spring action with the round nose that comes to a point in the end. Your second pair of pliers that you need are just straight pliers that have a small tip on the end. Sometimes, now these can be just regular pliers that you get, needle nose pliers from the hardware store. Sometimes I'll cut a groove in the side of it or down the center of it just to help guide the wire when I am doing the actual shaping of the wire jewelry. And I'll explain that a bit later. These nippers, actually, or pliers actually come with nippers actually already built in so you can clip the wire and just continue working without having to reach over and grab another pair. So I find that to be handy with this type of plier. Now if you don't have those, if you just have a straight pair of pliers and you need a pair of nippers, purchase a pair that are easy. I like them flat on one side so I can get a good close snip when I'm working on my jewelry. And I should demonstrate that later as well. Like I said you can use a regular pair of pliers like the needle nose pliers. You can shape them any way you want so you can get a very fine point on it. You can dull them. You can shorten them if you want to. Cut them with a saw blade or what I like to use is a dremel tool and using a sanding disc I can shape the end of them any way I want to so that I can hold my beads and hold my wires securely.

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