Ring - Making a Bead Ring

Hello again! - I have quite a few customers that have taken our ring class and come back in wanting me to help them remember how to do it, and I don't do notes, because I think it takes away from the artistic value of what you are learning. Jewelry making is free-form, and is only confined by meticulously breaking down every step with notes. That's just my personal opinion.

Anyway, here is the dissected steps to making a bead ring:

Supplies:
Ring Mandrel (with sizes)
Plastic or Rubber hammer
20g wire
a flat (M&M shaped) bead

Step 1: Measure and cut 20-25 inches of wire for small or medium sized bead, 30 inches for larger beads. String your bead, and move to approximately the center of the wire. (Just eyeball it...you perfectionists! lol) Next, you want to bend the wires down parallel to each other so that the bead will not slide. Then, bend the wires back straight out to make a Z on each side of the bead. This is a "notch" that will later hold the wire that you wrap around and underneath the bead.

Step 2: Hold the bead towards the top (smallest part) on the backside of the ring mandrel (furthest away from the numbers - in the groove). Wrap one wire around the mandrel (be careful not to let it cross over itself or another wire. Then, take the ring off the end of the mandrel, flip over and put it back on so that when you wrap the other wire around the mandrel, it will not get crossed with the other wires. When wrapping the second wire, you should be rotating your hand the same direction as you did with the first wire. (It's the opposite direction because you flipped the ring over.) What you have now should be two wire, parallel, pointing towards you and two wires, parallel, uncrossed, on the number side of the ring mandrel.

Step 3: SIZING. Before you move the ring down the mandrel, make sure that you are confident of the size that you want, because if you don't start with the correct number, the ring will not fit. I recommend that you take off a ring that you are currently wearing, or wear often, and put it onto the ring mandrel, because even if you know that you are a size 7, it may not necessarily be a 7 on the mandrel. Like, I usually wear a 9, but on the mandrel, it's more like an 8 3/4. Once, you have the size number you need, you can push your bead ring down with the bead on the number side, so that you can see the numbers. You want the wire that is going thru the bead, to rest on the notch that is one notch larger than the size you want (1/4 a size bigger than what you want).

Step 4: Keeping the bead on the number side, hold the fatter end of the mandrel between your knees, and rotate the two long end wire around the bead. DO NOT go around the mandrel, you want to stay above the mandrel, but underneath the bead. You are making a nest for the bead. (The motion you make is kinda like driving a car, your hands rotate the same direction at the same time.) NOTE: whatever you do to one wire, you must do the same exact thing, simultaneously. The first wrap around the bead should be very tight and the wires should fit into the "Z" that you made in Step 1. After that, you can wrap the wires more loosely, even to fill in gaps. Be creative, you are making a nest, do it like you think a bird's nest should look like. You want to end up with at least 3 inches of wire sticking out on each side of the ring.

Step 5: Take one wire on the side it is on, and wrap around the two wires that make the ring band, twice (two wraps). Repeat on the other side with the other wire. Now, the ring should be too tight. If it fits now, it is too big, so continue wrapping both sides, one wrap at a time, until you achieve tightness. Now, make your spirals, or cut the wire flush on the outside of the ring, so that it will not rub your skin. Lastly, put the ring back onto the mandrel, with the BEAD IN THE GROOVE, and push down to your size or slightly bigger is better, and hammer the two band wires and spirals, but be careful not to hammer your bead. This is very important, because it hardens the wire. Take it off, flip it over, and repeat.