1. Thread a bead on a pin and press the wire of the pin over the bead forming a right angle and secur-

ing the bead.

3. Using the round nose pliers, grip the wire firmly about half way along it’s length. Turn the wire

forming a loop with the excess wire crossing over the beginning of the loop.

4. Remove the excess wire using the side angle wire cutters (you may have to re-open the loop

slightly to do this).

5. Close the loop and flatten it by pressing it shut with the pliers.

6. Now that you know how much excess wire there is, you can cut the remaining eye pins to size

before beading them and forming the loops.

7. Repeat until you have 59 beads with loops.

MAKING A ROSARY USING EYE PINS

8. To join the beads, open a loop at one end of a bead with your pliers. To do this you simply inset one

barrel of the pliers into the loop, grip and turn outwards slightly. Insert the loop of the next bead into

this opened bead..

9. Close the loop securely..

10. Continue to join beads together until you have 5 chains of 10 beads.

11. Cut 10 pieces of 4 links of chain. (Take care not to damage the adjacent links as you do this)

12. In the same way as you joined the loops of the beads together, attach a 4 link piece of chain to both

ends of your 5 decades of beads.

13. Join the Decades by attaching the chain to one of your remaining beads, doing this 4 times until you

have

chain—10 beads—chain—one bead--chain--10 beads—chain- one bead—chain--10 beads--

chain— one bead--chain--10 beads--chain—one bead--chain—10 beads--chain

This is the main “body” of the rosary

14. With the remaining 5 beads form a string of

chain—-bead—-chain—-3 beads—-chain—-bead—-chain

JOINING UP WITH THE 3 WAY CENTRE MEDAL AND CROSS

There are Four common methods of doing this. Only the method using jump rings is described

here in detail. Jump rings are essentially a loop of high gauge wire. The two parts you wish to join

are slipped in to the loop and the loop is closed. It is possible, but fiddly, to close the rings with

round nose pliers. Flat nose pliers tend to do a better job.

The benefit of using jump rings is that you don’t need to buy loose wire to make your own

connectors and much of the work is done for you. The down side is that unless they are soldered

closed, they can coming apart. This is less likely if care is taken when closing jump rings.

15. Hold the open jump ring with you pliers.

16. Insert the last loop of chain on the “body” of your rosary and an upper loop of the centre

medal.

17. Close the jump ring by pressing the ends together with your pliers.

(An alternative to jump rings is the use of split rings. You can buy these or make them yourself using a mandrel plier.

They are 1 1/2-2 loops of wire rather than the single loop of jump rings. They are more fiddly than jump rings, espe-

cially if you are using ones that you have purchased but they are very secure).

17. Attach the free end of the 5 decades to the opposite loop of the centre medal.

18. Attach the string of five beads to the lower centre loop.

19. Finally attach the crucifix.

You have made an object of physical and spiritual beauty. It may have been frustrating at times, when the

wire would not behave in the way you wanted. With each item you make, you will find that the making of

them becomes easier and you become more confident in the quality of your work.

There is one final stage before this can be called a rosary……... The prayer, which it has been created to

guide.

Congratulations and God Bless

� © rosary-making.com 2012