Making Jump Rings (1) - Coiling Wire

I love to make wire jewelry. Therefore I often need to coil the wire, either to make jump rings, or to decorate the jewelry. Whatever the purpose, coiling wire is one of the most important tasks in my jewelry making process.

I like to have 'a ready stock' of jump rings that I can use any time I need. Usually I bought some packages of jump rings in different sizes. But many times, I want the jump rings really matching the rest of the wire that I use to make a jewelry. In this case, I prefer to make jump rings by my own from the same materials.

There are a lot of ways to coil the wire. All need 'mandrel' to create a consistent size. Here I shared some of the tools that I have tried:

1. Round nose plier

This is the very first tool I used. It works well for a short coil.

2. Stepped mandrel

I regret to buy this tool. It's so hard to coil in such tiny tool, and even more difficult to make long coil. I only tried a few times, and then gave up. Never use this tool anymore.

3. Jump ring maker by Beadalon

I used this tool quite often before I found another tool which is much better and easier. There are 4 sizes of mandrel available.

4. 4-piece mandrel set

Though the round mandrel can be used to coil wire for jump rings, I prefer other tools to do that. I use these mandrel set for other purpose, to create variety of shapes for wire jewlelry.

5. Wire wrapping plier

Love this plier. So easy to coil the wire. I can even make coil longer than the plier by coiling toward myself. It's easy to grab the wire, turn it to coil it, so fast.

5. Coiling Gizmo by Artistic Wire

The winner is Coiling Gizmo. I use this a lot, not only to make coil for jump rings, but also for tiny coil to wrap other wire, creating a coiled jewelry. So fast , so easy, and so consistent. Really happy to have this tool.

I know there are some other tools out there. I saw some people use a kind of non-electric drill with manual crank. That also looks so easy and efficient.

Anyway, so far I am happy with wire wrapping plier and coiling gizmo.