Bracelets

How We Make Our Jewelry

Beading Cable: We use a cable specially designed for jewelry applications. This stringing material is made of 49 tiny strands of steel. Pic to left shows 7 x 7 cross section of cable. The cable has a plastic coating to minimize any chance of fraying. The combination of flexibility and strength make it, in our opinion, the best choice.
A decade or so ago, the best stringing cable available was called 'tiger tail'. It was made of 7 or so strands of steel. Although tiger tail is strong, it is also brittle and prone to kinking. Tiger tail is still used by many, because of it's cheaper cost.



Crimping: When jewelry breaks, it almost always breaks at the end near the clasp. We have a special 'torture chamber' set up in our shop to intentionally destroy our work. This way we can find the find the most durable clasping procedures.
We have found the strongest cable-to-clasp attachment to be either two silver coated brass crimp beads on each end, (See section of gemstone anklet below), or a doubled-over sterling crimp bead which is then flattened depending on the size of the bead cable. We always use sterling silver for the clasp and end-ring.

Update: Our torture chamber has proven that different weights of beads and beading cable behave differently under stress. We now use several different variations of cable, crimp and clasp connections for different types of bracelets.