Making your own beadcaps with your dapping block and hole punch pliers or drill

This is a quick tutorial which will demonstrate how you can make your own beadcaps with a dapping set and hole punch. The goal to this tutorial is to introduce the dapping set and share with you all the cool jewelry pieces you can create with this amazing tool! I begin with showing you how to make beadcaps.

There are so many variables that go into creating a piece of jewelry. The tools that you have on hand and what gauges of metal they can accommodate.  Also, there is always more than one way to “skin a cat”, please excuse the expression. So, basically, let’s go through this process as if we are using a hole punch plier and working with 22 gauge metal, a steel bench block, brass hammer, metal design stamps, center punch and dapping set and copper discs.

Step 1: Clean your metal. You can use steel wool or 400 grit sandpaper, such as the 3m wet/dry sandpaper. Use a black sharpie to mark/find the center of your disc.

Step 2: Place disc on steel bench block and mark the center of your disc by hitting your center punch with a hammer.   This step is to put an indentation in the metal which is necessary if you are going to drill or use as a guide so that you will know where to punch hole with your pliers.

Step 3: With your hole punch pliers, punch a hole where you marked the metal in the center.  Repeat these steps for other disc. After you punch your hole in each disc, use a file and gently smooth out burrs around holes.  I can’t stress enough how important it is to own a high quality file!
Step 4: Go a head and remove the black sharpie lines from the discs with steel wool.  Now we are going to add some design to the discs by using some metal design stamps. You can use design stamps, hammers for adding a textured design..the sky’s the limit. I used a circle design stamp and then my center punch to make little dot designs in the metal. Designing the discs is an optional step.

Step 5: Now place your disc in the dapping block with design facing down!! I placed the disc in the largest cavity and used the corresponding sized punch. Tap lightly then move to a smaller size cavity and use the corresponding size punch and tap tap tap. Learning how to use a dapping set and how to achieve nice looking domes takes practice. I wish it was just as easy as “put the disc in cavity and punch and verla!” It’s not that its difficult to achieve, it just takes some time and practice. Anyway, you continue this process of going to the next smaller size until you achieve desired height of dome. Ah! and I just remembered! Sometimes when you dap your discs, your holes will become distorted or close a little- enough where it would make it difficult insert wire. Just use your bead reamer and twist enough times to correct this.

Here are my finished beadcaps which have been oxidized with liver of sulfur but not yet tumbled. There is so much I have edited out of this tutorial, it got too wordy! There is so much more that I could share with you, but I need to end this somewhere. Any questions, please ask! Like I said, there are several ways you can go about making beadcaps.  Also, you can anneal your metal before dapping, but I didn’t want to bring fire into this. Sometimes too much information is just overload.