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Making Jump Rings

The Professional Deluxe Gizmo Kit comes with eight sizes of jump ring rods (metal rods that have a slit in them). The slits allow the blade of a jeweler's saw to cut through a coil spring. Jump ring sizes are:
3 mm, 4 mm, 5 mm, 6.5 mm, 8 mm, 10 mm, 11.5 mm, and 13 mm

Step One-
Set up the Professional Deluxe Gizmo as you see in Figure 1.
Step Two-

Insert a jump ring rod of the desired diameter and tighten the chuck. Push a wire into the chuck in a gap between the jaws of the chuck.

Step Three-

Begin to coil as you see in Figure 3.

Make a coil spring as you see in Figure 4.

Step Four-
Pull the spring off the jump ring rod. Set up the Gizmo as you see in Figure 5. Make the brake rod slip into one of the holes in the spool. Notice that the slit in the jump ring rod is facing forward. (It takes a little practice to get it to do this. It must be facing forward so that you can saw the coil with a jeweler's saw.)



Step Five-Preparing the jeweler's saw.
The teeth in the saw blade must point down toward the handle. The blade cuts when you pull down. I like to use a very fine blade when sawing coils for jump rings. Feel the blade to find out what direction the teeth are going as you see in Figure 6.

The thumb screw indicated by "C" in the picture allows the bottom of the frame to slide up or down. Adjust the throat size so that it is just a little larger than the blade.

Insert the blade into the top part of the saw where you see the thumb screw at "A" in Figure 6. Tighten the screw as you see in Figure 7. Check again to make sure that the teeth are down and pointing straight forward.

Brace the handle so that you can use both hands; I like to place the handle against my stomach as you see in Figure 8. Pull the top of the saw toward your body. Slip the bottom of the blade into the slot at the bottom of the saw and then screw it tight.



Step Six-Cutting the coils for jump rings

Take the coil spring that you made and slip it onto the jump ring rod as you see in Figure 9. You might choose to make many coils first before you saw the coils. That way there will only be two setups for clamping the Gizmo.

Saw through the coil spring as you see in Figure 10. You will have to keep sliding the spring up as you cut into it. Note that the blades for the saw break very easily with any kind of bending. You have to run the saw very evenly -- straight along the slit -- so that it will not break. Although the blades fortunately are not too expensive, it does take time to change the blades. A little wax on the blade for lubrication will help.

The two smallest jump ring rods will probably compress when you coil a wire around them; this makes it hard to get the spring off of the rod. You have two options to avoid this problem:
  • Look at Figure 3 again. See how there is a long tail before the coils were started. When you remove the jump ring rod from the chuck, you can unwind both ends of the wire a little and the spring should slip off as the tension is relieved.
  • Or, you can make your coil spring on another rod. There are two sizes of knitting needles that work for the two smallest rods; one is a number 5 and the other is a number 7. After you've made a spring on the other rod, slip it on your jump ring rod and cut as noted above.
MAKING OVAL JUMP RINGS WITH A LOOP CLOSING PLIERS.

Chains made with oval jump rings are the strongest chains around. You have to design them so that the cut of the ring is on the side of the jump ring. For this you need Loop Closing Pliers.

Hold the jump ring with chain making pliers as you see shown in Figure 11.

Take the Loop Closing Pliers and place it over the jump ring as you see in Figure 12 and squeeze gently.

Figure 13 shows the oval jump ring that you just made. You can also use the Loop Closing Pliers to close jump rings after the two ends have been lined up.

WORK-HARDENING YOUR JUMP RINGS
You may wonder what "work-hardening" is all about. Ordinarily, if you take a piece of wire and keep bending it over and over, it will finally break. The more bends you make, the more likely you are to risk breakage. The best jump rings will need to be work-hardened. There are two ways to work-harden jump rings.

  • Tumble them in a rock tumbler that has steel shot in it. Add water and burnishing soap. In a couple of hours your pieces will be work-hardened.
  • Look at Figure 14. Place your jump rings on a piece of metal. Then take another piece of metal and give the jump rings a whack. This also work hardens the jump ring and will make them very strong.




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