Adding a Bail So It Actually Hangs Right
Okay. So you've got a caged stone or a wrapped stone from the last couple lessons, and it's sitting there looking like a pendant, except it has no way to actually get on a chain. That's the bail. It sounds like an afterthought and I think that's why people rush it, but a bad bail is the thing that makes a nice piece look homemade in the bad way, and a good bail is almost invisible, which is honestly what you want. Nobody's supposed to look at the bail. They're supposed to look at the stone.
I feel like the bail is where people either grip too hard because they're nervous about the whole piece falling apart, or they don't grip at all and the loop ends up huge and floppy and the pendant flops sideways on the chain like it's tired. Neither one is a disaster. But let's get you closer to the middle.
What a bail actually needs to do
Two jobs. It needs to be small enough that the pendant doesn't flip around and show its back to everyone, and it needs to be big enough that your chain or cord actually fits through it without you fighting your jewelry every morning. That's it. Everything else is preference.
Setting up
You should still have wire coming off the top of your cage or wrap, the tail ends that were holding everything together. If you cut those flush already, you'll need to leave yourself a fresh piece of wire, about two and a half inches, same gauge as the rest of your wrap, twenty-two is usually right for this.
Before you do anything with the pliers, hold the pendant up the way you'd actually wear it. Not flat on the table. Up, like it's hanging from your hand. Some stones want to sit a certain way and you won't know that until gravity's involved. This takes ten seconds and saves you from building a bail on the wrong side of the piece, which I have done, more than once.
Making the loop
- Take your wire tail and bend it up and away from the stone at roughly a right angle, right where it comes off the cage.
- Grip the wire with your round-nose pliers about a quarter inch up from that bend. Not right at the bend. Give yourself a little neck of wire there or the loop sits too tight against the stone and your chain won't have room to move.
- Roll the pliers away from you, slow, same motion as the flat spiral, just one full loop instead of a whole coil. Don't try to close it into a perfect circle in one motion. Get it most of the way and adjust.
- Bring the tail back down and wrap it around the neck wire two or three times, snug, the same wrapped-loop motion from the fixing-a-loop lesson. If that lesson didn't stick for you yet, this is a good excuse to go back and redo it, because the bail is really just a wrapped loop with a stone hanging off the bottom instead of nothing.
- Trim the tail close and tuck the cut end down flat with your chain-nose pliers so it doesn't poke anybody's neck.
That poke thing isn't me being dramatic. A wire end left proud will catch on a sweater, or worse, catch on skin, and it's an easy fix, you just have to remember to check for it every single time, running your finger along the back before you call the piece done.
Sizing it to the chain
Hold your actual chain up to the loop before you close anything permanently. I've seen people build a gorgeous tight loop and then discover their chain won't fit through it, and now they're either buying a different chain or taking the loop apart. Test it early. A loop that a chain slides through easily, with a little room to spare, is what you want. Too tight and the pendant won't swing right. Too loose and it slides around and bunches up, which looks sloppy even when the wrap underneath is beautiful.
The teenager thing
I taught my sister-in-law's kid one afternoon a while back, just the basics, and when we got to the loop step she rolled a clean one on her first try. Faster than I did when I was three months into this. I remember standing there proud of her and a little annoyed, both at once, and I told her that, out loud, because I think it's funny and also true. Some people's hands just get it. If yours doesn't get it on the first try, or the fifth, that's the normal case, not the exception. She's the exception.
My opinion on this, since I have one
I don't love a perfectly symmetrical bail sitting dead center on a piece like it came off an assembly line. A bail that's slightly off, that follows the actual top edge of your stone instead of some imaginary center line, looks like a person made it, because a person did. I'm not going to talk you out of centering yours if that's what you want. I'm just telling you I stopped chasing perfectly centered a while ago and I like my pieces better for it.
Before next time
Bring the pendant you finished today, on whatever chain or cord you've got at home, even a shoelace works for testing. We're going to look at how it actually hangs on a body, not just on the table, and that changes things more than you'd expect.