The Simple Loop, Step by Step in Hand Order
Okay. This is the lesson I've been building toward since we picked up the pliers, and I want to tell you honestly, I feel like the loop is where everyone struggles. Everyone. Not just beginners either, I've watched people who've been doing this for years still fight with their loops. So if yours looks rough the first twenty times, you're not behind, you're just here.
Before I give you the steps, I want to explain something about how I'm going to give you the steps, because it matters and I don't think anyone tells you this part.
I write technical documentation for my day job, and one thing you learn fast is that people write instructions in the order they thought of the information, not the order your hands actually need to do it in. That's backwards. If I write "cut your wire, but first make sure you've measured it, and also don't forget to file the end," your hands don't know what to do with that. So everything below is in hand order. The order your fingers move. If a step seems too small to mention, that's on purpose, because those are usually the steps people skip and then wonder why the loop won't sit right.
What you'll need
Your copper wire (still copper, we're not touching silver yet, more on that below), your round-nose pliers, your flush cutters, and a stone or bead if you want to see the loop actually do its job at the end. If you don't have a stone yet, that's fine, just practice on bare wire.
The steps, in hand order
1. Cut a length of wire, about four to five inches for practice. Longer than you think you need. You can trim later, you can't add back.
2. File or smooth the cut end. A sharp cut wire end catches on things, including your fingers and your sweater, so knock the point down. Takes two seconds.
3. Grip the wire with your round-nose pliers about a half inch from the end. Not the very tip of the pliers, and not too far back either. This is the part people rush. Where you grip determines the size of your loop, so if you want a small loop, grip closer to the tip of the pliers. If you want it bigger, grip further down toward the fat part of the jaw.
4. Rotate your wrist, not just your fingers, to bring the wire around the pliers jaw. This is the one nobody tells you. You want to turn your whole wrist like you're turning a doorknob, not just curl your fingers, because curling your fingers gives you an oval instead of a circle, and ovals don't sit flat.
5. Bring the wire all the way around until the tail crosses back over itself. You're aiming for a full circle, tail meeting the main wire, not stopping short.
6. Reposition your pliers into the loop you just made, and use them to true it up. This is a small adjustment, just nudging it round if it went crooked, which it will, especially the first dozen times.
7. Trim the tail if there's excess, and tuck or wrap it as your pattern calls for. We'll get into wrapping the tail down in a later lesson. For now, just get the loop.
That's it. Seven steps, and steps three and four are where basically everything goes right or wrong.
About my first pendant
I want to tell you about my first pendant, because I think about it every single time I teach this lesson.
It took me four hours. Four hours, for one pendant. And when I finished it, it looked like a bird's nest that had given up halfway through. The loops were uneven, the wire was kinked in three places from where I'd unwound and rewound it trying to fix things, and there was a bump on one side that I still don't fully understand the cause of.
I wore it to a family dinner anyway. My brother-in-law Jeffery looked at it for a second and said "interesting," which, if you know Jeffery, you know that's not really a compliment, and I have never once let him forget he said it. That word has followed him around for years now.
But here's the thing. I wore the ugly bird's nest pendant. I didn't hide it in a drawer. And that's the opinion I want to leave you with today: finish the piece even when it's going badly, and then wear it or use it or put it somewhere you'll see it, because the learning happens in that last stretch when you want to quit, not in the part where everything's going smoothly. An abandoned good idea teaches you nothing. A finished ugly one teaches you everything you need for the next one.
A real caution here
Round-nose pliers can pinch if you're gripping wrong or if your fingers are too close together when you rotate. Nothing dramatic, just an honest pinch that'll make you say a word you didn't mean to say in front of the group. Keep your grip hand loose and your other fingers clear of the jaw while you rotate.
Also, copper work-hardens as you bend it, which means the same piece of wire gets stiffer the more you fuss with it. If you've reworked a loop four or five times and it's fighting you, that's not you doing it wrong, that's the wire telling you it's done. Cut it off and start with fresh wire. I promise that's faster than fighting a hardened loop for another twenty minutes, I've done both and I know which one wins.
Before next time
Practice this loop on scrap wire until you've made at least ten of them, even the bad ones, and bring your favorite one and your worst one to class. I want to see the worst one especially.