This tutorial is presented for information purposes only.
Anodizing of Niobium uses electricty. The voltage present and available current can KILL.
Should you decide to proceed and anodize your own Niobium in your studio you accept full responsibility and liability for any hazzard or injury that may occur.
Make sure you fully understand the process and risks!
Making your own bead caps is really easy and a great way to accentuate the beads and jewelry you make. They can be constructed from many different materials (silver, copper, gold, niobium, titainium, etc...). In this tutorial I am going to demonstrate how to make them from Niobium! Niobium is a really fun material to work with since it can be electrically colored (Anodized) to gold, pink, purple, blue, teal or green colors fairly easily. However coloring this material comes with a caution. The voltages applied and the current available are potentially enough to KILL. If you don't understand the process and are not electrially savvy get some hands on training or don't do it. Never have untrained 'little hands' overlooking your shoulder as it only takes a single touch of the power supply used for anodizing to cause permanent irreversible injury or death. Keep in mind that making beads over an open flame is by itself a dangerous occupation and if you learned how to perform this task safely, you too can learn to anodize niobium safely.
If you would like this tutorial for viewing in your own DVD player at home without the limitations that online bandwith imposes, simply visit our DVD gallery. This tutorial is fully chaptered and recorded in full screen high resolution so that you can see the techniques in greater detail on the DVD. We have received execllent feedback from people all over the world that have viewed our DVD's.
Tools and Such
Creating the bead caps will require a little bit of shopping....
The process is actually quite simple and straightforward, but you will need to invest in a few tools to accomplish it. First you will need some noibium sheet material. If you are not anodizing the final product you can use silver, copper or other sheet metal's. I would suggest 22 gauge (that's the thickness) to start. You can use thinner or thicker as you see fit.
1) You need to be able to punch out a clean circle to make the bead cap. In the video I use a large comercial punch but you can use a disc cutter and it will work great! Here is a link to a disc cutter that use when I'm teaching because it's nice and portable --> (disc cutter link). To use the disc cutter, you open the two halves, put your sheet metal in between the halves, put the matching punch in the hole on the top, then using a heavy brass hammer, you give the punch on top a single hard strike to cut the disc out. Make sure you do this on a worktable, not your kitchen or dining room table! Also keep your fingers clear of the punch and make sure you use enough force to cut the disk in a single blow!
2) You will also need a transfer punch to mark the center of your disc's. Remove the punch from your disc cutter but leave the disc at the bottom of the hole. Here is a link to a transfer punch set --> transfer punch. Usign a transfer punch that matches the size of the disc you just cut out, insert the transfer punch so that the little sharp point on the end of the transfer punch contacts the disc you just cut out and 'gently' tap the end of the transfer punch. This marks the exact center of your disc.
3) Now you need to make your hole in the bead cap to be! Either drill the size hole you want in the disk or use a small punch to punch the very center hole for your wire or cord. My personal preference is to punch it out, because the punch will last for thousands of holes where a drill bit will get you at best a few dozen. I usually use a 1.1 mm punch which works great. After you punch your center hole, you are read to dome the disc for use with your beads.
4) To dome the disc's you will needa a dapping punch and a dapping block. Simply drop the disc into the hole in the dapping block you wish to use and using your brass hammer select a matching dapping punch and tap on top of the disc to dome it to the shape desired
5) If you used niobium to make your bead caps, you now need to anodize them. Anodizing supplies and instructions are available from Reactive Metals. Contact them for additional information, raw niobium metal and literature on anodizing.
About Flash Video
All the tutorials are in flash video format. Please note that if you just installed the free flash software you need to close all your browser windows and reopen them in order to play the movie. This video also requires version 8 of the flash player software. If you don't see the video window directly below you'll need to either install or update your free flash video player from Adobe's flash player web site.
