How to Open a Jump Ring the Right Way

You need two, and they need smooth jaws. Chain nose and bent chain nose is the classic pairing, but two chain nose pairs work fine, and so does one of each. What you cannot use is anything with teeth. Serrated hardware pliers chew grooves into the metal and every scratch shows on a finished piece.

Bent chain nose is worth the small extra cost if you are buying anyway. The angled tip lets your wrist sit flat while the jaws stay square on the ring, which matters when you are doing forty of these in a row.

Pick the ring up with your first pliers and turn it so the split sits at twelve o'clock. You want to see exactly where the two ends meet before you touch anything, because that seam is the only part of the ring that moves.

Take a decent bite with the jaws. Holding the ring by a sliver right at the tip lets it pivot as soon as you apply force, and a ring that rolls in the jaws is how you end up with a kinked one.

Bring the second pair in on the opposite side of the split so the two jaws sit close together with the seam between them. Both pairs should be holding a good portion of the ring, not just clipping the tips.

Check that the ring is flat between both sets of jaws before you move. If it is cocked at an angle in one pair, that angle is what the twist will exaggerate.

Here is the whole technique. Push one pair away from you while you pull the other toward you. The ring opens like a tiny gate, with the two ends passing each other sideways rather than stretching apart.

Never pull outward. Pulling turns a circle into an oval and stretches the metal at the seam, and no amount of squeezing afterward gets it back. Open the ring only as far as you need to slip your component through, which is usually a millimetre or two.

Watching it from the side makes the movement obvious. The plane of the ring never changes. One end travels forward, the other travels back, and the round shape is untouched the whole way through.

Practise on a handful of cheap plated rings before you go near anything sterling. Ten minutes of muscle memory and your hands stop thinking about it.

With the ring held open, feed on whatever you are attaching: a cord end, a charm, a link of chain, an earring hook. Push it all the way past the gap so it sits at the bottom of the ring and cannot slide back out while your hands are busy.

If you are joining two things, load them both now. Reopening a ring a second time is exactly the sort of extra handling that leaves a visible mark.

Bring the clasp onto the same open ring. A lobster clasp has a fixed loop on the back, and that loop is what your jump ring passes through, not the moving trigger.

Sit the clasp so its opening faces away from the wearer's neck. It sounds fussy, but a clasp mounted the wrong way around is fiddly to work every single time somebody puts the necklace on.

Reverse the motion. The hand that went forward comes back, the hand that came back goes forward. Bring the ends past each other slightly and then let them spring together, which is how you get a joint with no daylight in it.

Wiggle the two ends past one another a few times before you settle them. That tiny rubbing action lets the metal find its own resting position, and you can feel it click into place.

Hold the piece up and look at the ring. It should still be a true circle, with the two ends touching and no step between them. That is a ring that will hold a charm for years.

Whatever you do, do not squeeze it shut with the pliers. Squeezing crushes the circle out of round and forces the ends past each other, which leaves a bump on one side and a gap on the other. The twist does the job on its own.