Soldered Wire Bead Caps

To make the wire shapes straighten your wire by running it through nylon pliers and cut 4 pieces of wire the same length, about 30mm long. Bend the wire at the middle point into a 90°angle. Using round nose pliers make a loop at both ends of the wire and using chain nose pliers continue looping the wire around as you would for a spiral going around the original loop until you have about 1 1/3 loops so the end of the wire that started the loop sits at the top of the loop as you look at the wire shape with the bend at the bottom.

Make sure all 4 shapes are flat, you can use parallel pliers or a steel block and mallet. Sand the sides and the base of the wire shapes and arrange them so they are evenly spaced and so the 90° bends all fit together in the middle with a small hole right in the center. Cut 4 small solder pieces, I used wire solder as it fits perfectly in the groove between the 2 sides of the wire shapes. Flux the wire shapes and the solder. Heat the whole piece until the solder just begins to melt so the pieces are held together by the solder and then turn the piece over and continue to heat so the solder flows through from the front to the back. The solder is drawn to the heat of the torch. Normally I would solder on a titanium rack and heat from underneath the piece and the solder would flow down towards the heat of the torch, but for this project you need the even, flat surface of a soldering board to get the pieces fitting properly together.

To make the jump ring, wrap the wire around a mandrel or round nose pliers to make a ring that is slightly bigger than the hole in the middle of the piece. Flush cut each end and close the ring keeping it as round and even as possible. The side of the ring that will be soldered to the bead cap needs to be sanded so it has a flat profile as this will give you more contact and will result in a better solder join. Check the fit of the ring on the bead cap and make sure that the area that the ring will sit on is clean. Flux the ring and the area you are soldering it to. You want the ring to be in contact with the 8 wires that radiate out from it. Place the ring in position with the join over the largest solder blob, if you don't have any blobs you will need to add a small amount of solder inside the ring touching both sides of the join. You can solder the ring closed first but I found it worked well doing it all in one step. Once the ring is attached check with magnification that the solder has flowed between the ring and each piece of wire. If there are wires that aren't attached, re-flux and add a small piece of solder at each spot that isn't attached making sure the solder is in contact with both the wire and the ring. It is important to make sure all 8 wires are attached because when you bend the cap over the bead the jump ring will be at a different angle at the spots where it hasn't been attached to the wire and it won't look even.

You can form the cap directly over the bead but I found it was easier to slowly form the shape using dapping punches as the forming stake, going from a large punch that has a gentle slope and progressively going through smaller punches. You can use anything that has a small half sphere shape as a forming stake, a ball peen hammer will work well.