12 Basic Tools For Jewellery Making Beginners

Jewellery Pliers & Side Cutters

If you're starting out in jewellery making, buying a set of basic pliers is a great place to start. Our pack of pliers contains all the essentials including snipe nose pliers, round nose pliers plus side cutters for cutting wire.

For more information on what certain pliers are used for, read our advice page.

Anvil & Bench Peg

An anvil and bench peg is an essential part of setting up your workspace for jewellery making. It simply screws onto the edge of your workbench or table to provide a flat, steel surface for hammering on and supporting your designs when sawing, drilling, cutting, filing, stone setting and more.

Jewellers Saw Frame & Blades

A jewellers saw is the best tool you can use for cutting metal tubing, thick wire and for cutting metal sheet into shapes.

Don't forget that jewellers frames are usually sold separately to saw blades.

Jewellers Cutters

Jewellers cutters are another basic tool that's great to have in the workshop. These are used for cutting sheet metal and are useful for cutting 'pallions' which are small squares from solder strip. Jewellers cutters are also a great alternative to a saw when cutting straight lines and cutting thinner sheet.

Soldering Block

It's important that your workspace is safe and that you have an efficient surface for soldering and using heat. A soldering block is the best option, providing a surface which is fire-proof, keeping the heat exactly where you want it.

Gas Torch

You will need a suitable gas torch for soldering your jewellery pieces. This small jewellers gas torch is a great place to start, especially if you're not used to handling torches. It has a small flame and is suitable for soldering small pieces.

Other soldering supplies you will need is flux for applying to solder joints before soldering and safety pickle for cleaning your piece.

Tweezers

Tweezers are essential for your jewellery tool kit. Not only do you need them for handling your designs when hot, but they can also be used to support items while being soldered too. These particular tweezers have wooden, insulated handles preventing you from burning yourself.

Don't forget that steel will contaminate pickle solution causing pieces to be copper plated so you will also need plastic tweezers for pickling.

Triblet

When getting started in jewellery making, it's likely that you will start with making simple rings. A triblet, also known as a ring mandrel is used for forming, shaping and reshaping rings.

Rawhide Mallet

When using the triblet, it's so important that you use a rawhide mallet as it can be used to shape and form metal without leaving any hammer marks. 

Files & Sanding Sheets

Once your design has been soldered and come out of the pickle clean, it's time to file any excess material from your piece.

This pack contains a set of 6 files - all the files you need to get started. They are ideal for controlled and accurate filing and small enough to fit into hard to reach places. You can also work your way through the grades of sanding sheets, which will remove any unwanted scratches, achieving a fine surface ready for polishing.

Polishing Papers

When starting out, it's unlikely you will begin with a power tool (such as the Dremel Multi Tool) to polish your pieces. We advise getting started with polishing papers to bring your design up to a high shine.

Our polishing papers are 3M micron-graded abrasives, simply work through the coloured grades - we also offer a sample pack.

Metal Ruler Or Caliper Gauge

When designing jewellery, you will need a metal ruler to ensure accurate measurements.

Alternatively, you could use a caliper gauge to easily and quickly make accurate internal, external and depth measurements in inches and centimetres. It is great for measuring stone diameters and depths, setting sizes, wire diameters, metal sheet, rivets, hinges and other items where accurate sizing is essential.