Rings and Things

Well…not actually…but we learned the coolest thing the other day:

You can pick beads that extend the life of coated stringing cables (like Beadalon, Soft Touch, TigerTail and Soft Flex).  How’s that?

• Certain beads help the beading wire’s coating to “wear” more slowly.
• Other beads can wear the coating off faster, sometimes within a couple of weeks of making jewelry – even when the beads themselves look smooth and aren’t too heavy.

Of course, we all know to use the heaviest possible cable (thickest and as many strands as possible) for our projects, and not string too tightly. Why?  Using thin stringing cable and stringing it tightly can weaken and cut into the cable.

But what we just learned from an industry source is that sometimes a smooth-looking bead has chemical residue that can eat away at the coating!

The three types of beads mentioned to us as often being rough on stringing cable were these:

1. vermeil (the worst with chemical residue)
2. Bali beads (also responsible for cutting the cord with sharp edges)
3. brass beads (like certain trade beads)

These are still all great beads, of course!  But the takeaway is that you can choose the best possible combination of stringing material and beads when you make jewelry.

You learn something every day!

With this knowledge, you can plan for maximum long life in your jewelry…

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One of my coworkers passed along some information that clears up a fine distinction:

An eyelet, strictly speaking, is a single-piece metal ring, reinforcing a hole in material like fabric or paper.  You’ll often find these in office-supply stores…

A grommet is bigger than an eyelet, and is two pieces (a base and a washer).  It’s another way of reinforcing a hole in material with metal: the grommet base goes through a hole, the washer is placed over it and the two are affixed to each other.  A specialized kind of grommet is the bead core, used to make a silver lining in your bead, giving a “Pandora-style” effect.

Rivets look like eyelets from the back, but their tops are solid, with no hole, and are rounded.  Prior to use, a rivet is a smooth cylindrical shaft; one end has a head on it.

A decorivet is a jewelry finding made by Vintaj.  It’s a decorative metal object (butterfly, compass, blue-jeans style rivet, etc.) with a pointed rivet shaft that can be pressed through or folded around other surfaces.

And some off-subject trivia: the (usually plastic) tip at the end of a shoelace (or bolo cord) is an aglet.

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