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How
To Make a Head Pin With a Bud End
2Aug00
by
Jan Olsen
To
turn a large and intricate handmade lampworked bead into a pendant, you
must begin with a sturdy head pin. Commercially available sterling silver
head pins are often of too narrow a gauge to be useful. The alternative is
to make your own head pin from sterling silver wire. A bud end is a clean
and practical finish for the bottom of the head pin. It think it looks
best with 16 or 14 gauge wire, but you can use whatever size is
appropriate to the scale of your bead. And the bud end is a more
professional looking alternative to the wire spiral.
Other than your standard lampworking tools, the materials needed for this
project are generally what you have lying around if you've started to fiddle with rudimentary metal work:
Sterling silver
wire, 14 or 16 gauge
Soldering
flux
(optional)
Jeweler's
pickle
in pickle pot (optional)
Hammer
Little anvil (or other hard smooth metal surface that'll withstand the
pounding)
Jeweler's
files
Flexible
shaft (or Dremel) machine with felt polishing wheels and/or points
Polishing
rouge
Polishing
cloth
Protective
glasses
To
finish the head pin: round-nosed jeweler's pliers and chain-nosed
jeweler's pliers
 Cut a length of wire, at least
twice the total length of the main bead, plus any accent beads that you plan on
adding top and bottom. Straighten the wire out as best you can. If you have some flux, dip the end of the wire into it now. Flux
provides an oxygen barrier to the silver wire. And flux will make the silver flow a little more easily and will cut down on the
discoloration caused by oxidation in the flame.
Make sure your
studio ventilation system is cranked up to the maximum. Turn on your
torch and adjust it so the flame is a bit on the reduction side (less
oxygen).
Using tweezers, hold the wire vertically, with the bottom end of
the wire in the flame of the torch. Carefully let the flame melt a little ball onto the end of the wire.
This takes a delicate touch. It happens very quickly, so be
prepared to have little loose balls of silver rolling around on your work
surface before you get the hang of it. When you get a nice ball, quench it in water. The ball end will be blackened
if you didn't use flux, and there is usually a little pucker in one side of the ball. (Don't
worry about the pucker. It'll disappear when you flatten it.) If you have
some pickle, let the cooled pins soak in it for a couple of minutes.
Pickle will help remove the flux residue and discoloration caused by the
flame, but it's not necessary.
Put on your protective glasses and take the cooled pins to the anvil.
Carefully flatten the ball a bit with the hammer on the anvil. It will look like a little
bud: see the picture below. Don't make the bud too thin, or it'll crack
around the edges. And try not to flatten the wire that's just above the
bud, or
the accent bead won't slide all the
way down to the top of the bud. Remove any sharp edges and deep scratches with
your jeweler's files.
 Finish by wet-polishing the bud using a felt polishing point mounted on the
flexible shaft machine, moistened with the polishing rouge. When all the scratches have
been polished off, wash it with soap and water, dry it, then buff it with
the polishing cloth. Voila!
My buds aren't perfect little flawless gems, but that's okay because neither
are my beads. Finish the loop at the
top of the bead the way Kate Drew-Wilkinson suggests on pages 62 through 64 in her
book Basic Wire
Work for Bead Jewelry. (For this part of the
operation, you will need two kinds of jeweler's pliers, round-nosed, and
chain-nosed.)
Acknowledgements
Thank
you to Kate Fowle for proofreading this piece and suggesting important
improvements and corrections.
Safety
Reminder
Remember:
YOUR safety is YOUR responsibility.
Our
Disclaimer. SGB/MA and Jan Olsen specifically disclaim any responsibility or liability
for damages or injuries as a result of any accuracy, design, construction,
fitness, use, manufacture, safety or safe use, or other activities
undertaken as a result of the use or application of information,
technique, tool use, etc., contained on, or referred to anywhere on, this
web site. The use of any information is solely at the reader's own
risk.
Resources
Rio
Grande - For all of the tools, the polishing rouge, the polishing
cloth, and the silver wire. (http://www.riogrande.com/)
Kate
Drew-Wilkinson's personal web site - Order
her book Basic Wire Work for Bead
Jewelry, and the accompanying video here.
(http://personal.riverusers.com/~beads/newsite/default.htm)
How to Make a Wrapped Loop on a Headpin
from About.com
(http://beadwork.about.com/hobbies/beadwork/library/howto/htwrlp.htm)
Making
Headpins?
http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1907978#post1907978
Flexible
shaft machines, from Foredom and Dremel,
both available from Rio Grande
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