G’day; Chrissy mentioned that she makes jump rings by winding
them on a pair of round nosed pliers. That’s fine if you only want
a very few. But tedious if you want to make chain and you need
dozens. The easy way is to put a piece of an old knitting needle
of the right size into the chuck of a hand-drill. Hold the drill in
a bench vice, bend the end of the annealed wire to secure it in the
chuck and wind away. Now that is where the David Koil Kutter comes
in - you use it to cut down the length of the coil and lo! heaps of
jump rings. But I live too far away, and am too mean to buy one, so
I ground away one side of my finest side-cutters so it fits into
the first couple of rings, and cut. OK, so you get a reasonable cut
on one end of the ring and an oblique cut on the other. I use an
El Cheepo (hardware store) ‘engraver’ with a sanding disc in it to
clean up the ring. Only takes a couple of seconds to get a
reasonably ‘square’ end. But I suspect that David’s Kutter is
better.
/\
/ / John Burgess, Nelson, New Zealand
/ /
/ //\ @John_Burgess2
/ / \ \
David La Plantz showed me a great way to cut jumprings.
Having wound them on your rod, mount one end of the rod in a vice
with the other end poking up in the air. Saw down through the rings
and the metal rod (eventually the rods get a sawn groove in the
end) doing half a dozen at a time. Withdraw THE SAW first then slip
the cut rings up off the rod.
Move the coil up to the end and do anothe 6 or so. David used to
do chain mail, and needed to make them quick. Brian –
Brian- Missed the begining of this thread. What does to rod have to
be made out of?
Many materials. Mild steel, knitting needle (beware if it’s alum
and you don’t want this all over your work), wood, etc. Something
you can saw as well as the coils. I recently didcovered Delryn for
my large j/rs (15mm dia).
Brian
B r i a n � A d a m J e w e l l e r y E y e w e a r � @Brian_Adam1 ph/fx +64 9 817 6816 NEW ZEALAND
