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Hi this Megan with Beadaholique.com and today I'm going to show you
how to make a Hook and Bar Clasp
using craft wire
so this bracelet has a clasp on it. I'm gonna show you how to make.
You can see that
this side has the little bar
just connected with jump rings
and this side
has this wide hook
and you could use a similar process to make a narrow hook and eye. I'm just
gonna show you how to do it a little bit wider
for when you're doing a wider bracelet but if you just
made it narrow it would be almost the same process
exactly
and we do have another video on how to make
this bracelet link
and they'll be a
project on
the Beadaholique.com
free beading project
bracelet section
on how to do the whole
thing. If you are
wanting to learn how to do the bracelet
you could check there for that
okay so what we're gonna need
is some eighteen gauge craft wire
and then we'll need
a flush cutters
round nose pliers
I'm using a
Wubbers bail making pliers
and I have always wanna have nylon jaw pliers
for straightening out my wire
Go ahead and cut
some wire
the cut
one piece about sixty or seven inches long and one piece about four or five inches long
and
to straighten your wire you can use your round nose pliers to make a loop at the end
to hold onto or you can just
use a pair of
chain nose pliers to hold onto your wire
you want to use nylon jaw pliers to straighten out your wire
so in this clasp
go ahead end
start what the hook and
I'm going to use my longer piece of wire
and you can see that I have definite bends here at the corners but
they're not a hard
corner. I used round nose pliers to make that instead of using a chain nose plier
I'm gonna start just a little bit over from the center
and I'm going to put
my wire pretty close to the
tip of your round nose so that it is a pretty good solid corner
but it won't get a hard bend in it because using your round nose pliers
so go ahead
bring it in a little bit more
then at a right angle
it actually
come in
a little bit. I have it
do that shape so that it fits comfortably inside here that it won't slide out
just go ahead and take
your round nose pliers, put them into the corner
and pull it back a little bit
push in and push out. Kind of
a graduate increase right here so that it kind of goes
down and dips down at the end
and then decide how wide you want your bar to be
and just do the same thing on the other side there
and you can make this as
narrower or as wide as you want. What's going to
make the difference is making sure that you make both pieces to fit each other
the tip right there
now you're going to use your Wubbers and I have
the medium size here
I'm going to use the smaller side
what I've been doing is get this nice even
fold
in my hook
so take the hook
put it
about an eight of an inch
is sticking up above
and then I'm going to
fold it
around
the smaller side
of the Wubbers
you can kind of straight out after you get it
it will have a nice even bend here. You just need to straighten the ends
Now you can see it's almost done. All we need to do is
makes the little loops
that attach
your clasp
to your piece of jewelry
All I'm going to do
is
take your round nose pliers
and grab the clasp
just a bit past the bottom of the hook
and maybe about an quarter of an inch down
the plier
and then just
bend the excess wire all the way around
take your flush
cutters
turn trim that off
take your nylon jaw pliers
and just
squeeze so that it lays flat
just repeat
see the thing on the other side
If it opens up a little bit when you flatten it out just
squish it back close
so that's your hook
then we need to make the bar
and we want to make sure that it fits
with the hook
so you take
the other piece of wire that you already straightened
near to the center but just off to one side
you're gonna make
a nice right angle bend with you round nose pliers
your clasp will sit like this in here and
you'd think that you wanna bend it here
but you want to actually
make sure that it's going to be big enough to fit the wider part at the tip
you wanna make it just a tiny
bit bigger
than the wider part
it's okay if it's not
a lot bigger because you can put it in at an angle and that will keep it more
secure but just a little bit bigger so
just
take a measurement
bend it
try it this is kind of big so I'm actually going to
make it smaller
and that's fine. You can do trial and error. You can adjust it
and I'm going to use
nylon jaw pliers to
straighten that back out a little bit
that'll be a trial and error that will got a lot easier once you've
done it a few times
go ahead
say that that's a pretty good fit. You want to make sure if it's shallow
that it's going to be big enough
to get in there
you won't have a lot of room for
making it fit
work with it until it seems like it's a nice fit
I'm going to go and go with that
now all you're gonna do is make
the loops to connect
your bar
Again really easy
grab it with your round nose pliers
you wanna start
a little bit down from the end so that it's
not completely shallow, you want to give a little bit of room for the actual bar
and then just
wrap the wire
around your round nose pliers
trim it with your
flush cutters
flatten that out
and do the same thing on the other side
and then one thing that you can do
once you have
your pieces and you have them the exact shape that you want
make sure that they work of course that they fit together
that's what your clasp looks like
one way
to harden your wire a little bit and make this a little bit more secure just take your
nylon jaw pliers
and just
squish it over and over and over an over and the nylon jaws aren't going to
damage the wire they're not going to flatten this like if you hammered it
they're not really gonna change the look
but that compression on there is going to harden the wire a little bit
just to make it a little bit more durable
and it doesn't take that much
go ahead and do that
on the whole bar
and you can do it
on the parts of the hook that you can get it in. It's not
a really flimsy
wire so
it's not gonna
fall flat when you use it otherwise but
it does help a little bit
and that's how
you make a Hook and Bar Clasp
and you san do the same thing
with a narrow set to make a Hook and Bar Clasp
out of craft wire