How to Choose and Use Crimp Beads

When you use jewelry wires to create necklaces or bracelets, one jewelry findings you must to use, or else you can’t finish your design. They are crimp beads or tubes. These small findings beads are produced by metal, such as brass, iron and so on.

Crimp beads are available in different colors and sizes. It is very important to choose the right size for your beading wire. Choose the size of beads based on the size of wire you are using. Keep in mind that you will often have to pass the wire through a crimp twice. These small metal beads are round and look like tiny seed beads. Crimp tubes are cylindrical. And don’t ignore that crimps have two diameters—internal diameter (ID) and outside diameter (OD). The internal diameter must be a little larger than the diameter of wire. And I also want to remind that different sizes of crimps require different sizes of crimping tools.

Brass Crimp Beads

How to attach a lobster clasp on wire with crimp bead? String a crimp bead on jewelry wire, then loop it through lobster clasp and back though the bead. Make sure that the wires are side by side but not crossed. There is a special crimping tool that you use to crimp these beads and tubes. The inner jaws make an indentation in the crimp bead or tube and the outer jaws fold the crimp bead or tube so that it is slightly rounded. The crimping tool makes crimp beads less noticeable in a design and gives you a more professional looking finish. Please notice that you can’t use other regular jewelry pliers to instead of crimping tool, because when you use regular ones, you can accidentally cut into the beading wire.

Crimp Beads

Sometimes, you just don’t get a perfect crimp bead. It either didn’t fold over nicely or the wire pulls loose. If this happens, cut the crimp bead off the end, and just start over again with a fresh new crimp beads. This is another good reason to leave yourself a little extra wire to play with on the end of your design.

Some people may forget how important the crimp beads are, as they are so little. They are small, but they play an important role in jewelry making. Many times, they hold an entire design together. So don’t ignore them again, especially their quality. You can easily find these small metal beads today’s jewelry market. But please make sure to find a supplier who can stand behind the quality of their crimp beads like PandaHall.com.