How to Make a Jewelry Jig
The purpose of a jewelry jig is to allow you to make wire elements for jewelry and other crafts. The wire jig is essentially a surface with holes that pegs can be inserted into, in order to create designs. Wire is wrapped around the pegs to create unique wire designs easily and uniformly. One simple way to create a jewelry jig is with a piece of wood, a hammer and some basic finishing nails.
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Instructions
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Make a Jewelry Jig
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Start by creating a jig template, which will tell you where to put your "pegs," which is the purpose that your nails will serve (see link in Resources).
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Lay your jig template on the wooden block so that you can see where your nails will be placed. The jig template should have a circle the size of the nail for each place where a nail will be hammered in.
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Hammer the nails to create the holes or the pegs for your jig. If you want the pegs to be permanent, hammer them securely. If you want the pegs to be removable so that you can create different designs on your jig, then you should hammer the nails in loosely so that they can be pulled back out. The more precise you are with the placement of the nails, the more uniform your designs will be.
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Tear the template away once the holes have been made or the pegs permanently placed in the jig. If you are using nails with larger heads, you can use wire cutters to remove them. Finishing nails are recommended because they have small heads.
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Try creating different designs on a single piece of wood using different nail configurations. To cut down on how many nails you use, you can use the removable peg method. This also makes storage of your jig significantly easier as well.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Creative Commons
