Jump rings can be easily bought. However, I found that it is important to master the skills of making your own jump rings as it allows you to create your preferred size, preferred color that matches your creations. In some designs, you may use single jump rings or multiple jump rings.
Materials Needed
Dead soft copper or silver wire.
Wire cutter
Mandrel - You can use skewers, chop sticks, knitting needles, dowels, or anything else that you can wrap the wire around and then slide off as a coil
Step By Step
1. Wrap 20" of 16-gauge, dead soft, copper wire around a dowel or tube of your preferred size. Keep a tail in your non-wrapping hand so that you have something to hang onto. Wrap away from your body and keep the coils as close to each other as possible.
2. When you reach the end of the wire, reverse the direction of the dowel and wrap the tail onto the dowel. Now, slide the coil off of the mandrel. This is really easy with a metal mandrel, but can be a bit harder if you used plastic or wood!
With your chain nose pliers, gently pull the coil apart so it will be easier for you to make your cuts. Using the wire cutter, cut off the tail of the coil.
3.Snip into the coil such that one wrap is cut, which will produce one ring. We need the extra length to trim off the slanted cut. Blunt-cut the end of the coil with your wire cutters where flat side of the cutter will be toward your body. This will result in a flat cut and not slanted cut.
4. The wire cutters make a flat cut on one side. To make the other end flat, use the wire cutter to trim off the wire slightly with the flat side of the cutter facing you.
5. Now you can close your jump ring by using 2 pliers by twisting the 2 ends into the middle.
