Page 2      Beaded Necklaces for Men Jewelry Making Project

While necklaces made for women can be in lengths of 16" for a choker, 18", 24" or even 30" long, necklaces for men should always be made in the choker style.  When making a necklace for a man we recommend making the necklace about 1/2 inch longer than the circumference of his neck.  In general, you can use the collar size plus 1/2 inch.  I also recommend choosing darker colors and considering semi-precious stones instead of glass beads.  Instructions for making this necklace begin below.

Step 1:  Cut a length of stringing material about 3" longer than the finished length of the necklace.  We used Soft Touch bead stringing wire for this necklace in the .019 size.  Our thinking is that if we will be spending our time to make the necklace, we want to make it out of the strongest, most supple material.  We don't want it to break during wearing.  Especially when making a necklace for a man, we want the finished product to be strong.  When cutting Soft Touch or other stainless steel bead stringing wire be certain to use a cutter that is designed to cut stainless steel wire.  A normal jewelry wire cutter will not work well and will be destroyed by cutting stainless steel. 

Step 2:  Starting from the middle, string your beads symmetrically onto this wire.  Develop your color pattern and string symmetrically away from the center.  The necklaces shown here used mostly 6mm beads.  Clamp the end of the necklace that you aren't working with using a hemostat or plastic hemostat.  This will prevent the beads from inadvertently slipping off that end while you add new beads to the opposite end.  Continue stringing until you have strung about 1 1/2" of beads less than the desired finished length of the necklace.  At that point, clamp both ends with your hemostat as we prepare to add the clasp. 

Step 3:  I wanted to make a clasp for this necklace that is as strong as I could make it.  I also wanted to cover the connections to this clasp so that it would look as professional as possible.  To meet these objectives I elected to make a clasp using end caps or end cones as shown at right, above.  Begin your connection to the clasp with a segment of wire 4 inches long.  Make a wrapped loop as described here.  Leave about 2 3/4" of straight wire.