Basic Head Pin

Have you ever been working on a jewellery project only to find that you have run out of that particular head pin required for the job?  It's too late to head for the bead shop and online won't deliver for 3 business days.  What do you do?

By keeping a continuous roll of craft wire around the house a head pin is only a few twists of a plier away.

Materials required for this tutorial:

Round Nose Pliers
Wire Cutter
A length of soft wire to practice on

Step 1

Start with 3 inches (7.5 cm) of wire and the round nose pliers.

Put one end of the wire into the round nose pliers so that the end is flush with the top of the pliers.

Comments

[cairparavel]

Not to be a butt head or anything but these are not head pins... They are called EYE PINS because of the loop at the end. Granted they can serve the same purpose in jewlery making but they can be used for linking things together or for creating chain. You cannot do that with head pins because they are just wire with a metal "stopper" at the end.

[amandajewls]

If you look at a properly done eye pin, it is a complete full circle. What I am showing here stops the full circle half way completed and then pinches it closed. You would have to use a very thin gauge wire to hook onto this "nub" as I call it.

A properly done eye pin should not resemble what you have at the end of this tutorial! It should look like a lollipop on a stick - a beautiful full perfect circle.

But thanks for the comment! I wanted to show how to make a lot of metal stopping head pins from continuous wire.

[amandajewls]

Look at the photo I have attached, this is the perfect eye pin example.

[jaxofalltrades]

These eye pins are lovely!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Ball-Head-Pins-for-Jewelry-Photo-Instructabl/
How to make Ball head pins :)

[mcshawnboy]

How to you make the other type of headpins with the flattened end or ball end in materials other than silver that's easily granulated with a torch or hammered flat in jaws of pliers? Folks have told me cooper will ball with a craft torch, but it didn't work for me & flats want to bend, instead of spread. Thanks!

[amandajewls]

I don't think you could easily spread copper or silver with pliers alone. It takes a bit of brute force for this to happen!

I have hammered flat pins (looking like paddles for a boat) in copper and silver the same way successfully. You need to have the copper wire pinned between two flat metal surfaces such as an anvil (or back of metal vice) and a metal hammer.

I'll work on another instructable showing this soon.

Then need to file the sharp bits of the flat end into a nice shape.

As for balling with fire - I have not tried that at all with copper. I have done it a few times in Sterling silver and had much better results with fine silver. If it doesn't work well with your copper or your silver, it is possible your torch does not burn hot enough.

Honestly I tend to just make my head pins with the bent nub as in this instructable - much easier to do on the fly and less fiddly!

[happyjo]

These are really pretty!