Jewelry-Making DIY Basics – What is a Crimp?

By Paul Brandon

Crimps play an important part in jewelry design, but their roles in jewelry design are often ignored for the more visible parts.

What is a jewelry crimp?

A jewelry crimp is a device that can be pinched or pressed together with the purpose of holding findings onto a jewelry piece or fixing beads in place.  Jewelry crimps usually take one of four forms: crimp tubes, crimp beads, crimp-on eyes and crimp-on hooks.

Jewelry beads are spheres with the hole cut through.  When they are flattened, they usually form an hourglass shape.  Crimp tubes have a uniform diameter and flatten into rectangles.  Twisted crimp tubes have a spiral pattern cut into the tubes that might add patterns to the crimp, but they still flatten into rectangles.

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