Make Your Own Wire Head Pin Jewelry Finding

In the earrings shown left you can view two ways of taking a straight segment of wire and converting it into a head pin. The first approach to making a head pin is to make one or more loops in the wire in a pattern like the Queen of Clubs Earrings shown with the amethyst bead to the right. The second approach is to flatten one end of the wire using a chasing hammer and an anvil. You can view this approach in the earring at the top of the page.


Making the Queen of Clubs head pin is done with three pegs in a triangle pattern as shown here. The finished head pin is shown below. The instructions for making this head pin can be found by selecting either picture.



To make a head pin by flattening one end of a segment of wire requires the use of a chasing hammer and anvil. Start with a segment of 20 gauge wire about 2 1/2 inches long. Place this segment of wire on your anvil and hammer the last 5/8" of wire with the rounded side of your chasing hammer. You will need to do a lot of hammering. Each of the wire segments shown here were hammered for about 4-5 minutes. Note that the wire is not perfectly symmetrical after the hammering. When you have flattened the wire adequately, you will need to cut the end with your flush cutter. You can cut the end square, or you can cut the end into a point. This style of head pin is called "paddles" because they resemble a paddle for a canoe or boat.