Fabricating Hoop Earrings with Snap Closure

I’d like to make hoop earrings with the same kind of closure on my store-bought earrings. I think they are called a snap back closure. They have a hinge on the front and a prong, usually made with two vertical wires on the back, that the ear wire snaps into. They seem to be tempered and don’t lose their ability to hold the ear wire in place. I like this type of closure because it releases if the earring is pulled, avoiding a torn ear lobe (that happened to my mom). I’m wondering how to fabricate them so the back prong stays springy and doesn’t separate with use. I can’t find such a finding to solder to my earrings. Am I overthinking this? Haven’t tried a prototype yet. Thought I’d ask here for suggestions/guidance first

Thanks!

Nancy
Missoula

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Hi Inverdon 77,
Sorry you are having this problem I would humbly sujest the whole work is not being heated and the solder is only fixing to the bezel, possibly a larger torch and very gently heating the whole work piece. I only work in 925 and gold very occasionally so I hope I am not giving you a bum steer.

DONNIE Tain Highlands

Now you have detailed what your trying to make, there areat least 2 ways in production shops to put a wire along the edge of a strip.

  1. you use HALF round wire,and paste solder between the that and the base,
  2. you take a lesson from the jam jar lid makers technique, have a close look at one for heavens sake! See how its been done.
    you ROLL the edge of the strip using a chasing hammer in a tinmans stake using the half round grove of say 3mm, this is held in the 3rd hand and takes only some 10 mins a side. also this can produce rolled edges in curves like the jjar lid!!. Dont your teachers tell you anything really useful?
    Not only does this apply to silver, but you then can extend this process to any other metal you choose to work. I use it on S/Steel, titanium , bronze and sterling of course.
    Easy IF you know the right way, as ive mentioned before.
    then if you know what your doing you dome the center of the strip to increase the structural strength and also the appearance. you then can use .5mm silver instead of 1mm.
    But then im a wrought man , and do very little assembly/fabrication work.
    Ted.

Dear inverdon77
Like you I am only a beginner with 4 years experience total . Less with Aregentium , like others who have responded here, I love working with the stuff .
Yes I stuff up . Once I got a friend to anneal about $40 AUS woth of 1.2 mm round in his kiln that he was using for enameling . Well the rolll of wire was well annealed and it also came out black. Like it had been painted with Liver of ,sulpher. .
That being said I still perfer to work with argentium than sterling . My one big gripe is trying to get the Hallmark Punch without paying a small fortune.
So I use the sterling punch.
I belong to a lapidary club here in Australia and I am trying to get them to buy more Argentium for members to try .
I was excited to learn that it may be possible to enamel Argentuim as well . That to made me even more excited as I am currently trying to teach myself Tourch Fire Enameling. So if I can use it Argentuinm will be cheaper than Fine Silver.
The only other down side I have found is that if I want some patterned wire from Local refiner. I have to get a special order with a 50 to 60g minimum order. That can work out expensive . As well as being stuck with a whole lot of wire .Please persist .
Regards
Suzanne

Thanks for your advice, I will take it in eventually.

I really suppose the underlying problem is that all these problems have undermined my confidence completely.

There I was happily using what lessons I had learned with sterling silver, doing my own thing, and getting on, only needing the teachers advice occasionally. Feeling I could handle just about anything now, and then I hit this catastrophe…nothing works,uHaving to go over and over the same steps with limited success. It was a shock to the system…and reinforces the idea that I shouldn’t believe everything I see on YouTube!

From all this discussion, I now feel like I am back at the very beginning. But I am a stubborn person and I will persist. I have invested a fair amount in buying Argentium wire, sheet and solder, so I need to use it. Other people seem to have no problems at all, so in the end it must be me. Practice, practice, practice as the old saying goes. I will document my next piece very thoroughly, and perhaps find an answer to my problem.

Warm regards and thanks for all the advice,
Ursula

Thanks for your advice. But I wasn’t aiming for a rolled edge.

I was aiming to have the wires sitting proud in profile, so that was why I chose a round wire. I didn’t want them to wiggle all over the place,but follow a straight line about 3 mm in from the edge, a bit like train tracks. My ordinal intentions was to have a small design piece between the wires resting flat against the base. That fell apart when I tried the fusing method. I think now that I should have heated the whole piece like I would have with silver, and not tried doing it in sections, my inexperience let me try it the easy way and not treat the metal with more caution. Thinking about how I proceeded, I think my heating must have been uneven, it was a fairly long piece of metal…23 cms.

I buy a finding called a hoop wire and catch. I buy them in white gold even though they are going on a silver earring. They are not very expensive. The wire with the hinge already attached is $5.11 and the catch is $1.75 from Stuller. Silver is just too soft to make a good catch and the silver earring wire wire bends too easy. When I think about the time it takes to make that hinge and rivet the wire in place $5.11 seems cheap.

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Thanks. Saw them in the Stuller catalog and wondered.