Ask the Experts Stringing Q&A

I've been beading for about a year and my biggest issue is the excess wire at the end of my project. Is there a trick to threading it into the strand of beads?

- Maddock

One option is, after you have strung your final bead, the crimp tube and clasp, go back through the crimp tube and a few of the final beads. Pull the remaining slack from the piece--the wire will emerge from between the beads--and crimp the tube, then trim the excess wire from your project. The wire's tail will run through the holes of the last few beads you strung. If you crimp the tube before passing the beading wire back through the beads, it is very hard to thread it through them because you removed the necessary slack before crimping.

Another option is to trim the wire right at the crimped crimp bead. There is no reason to keep the excess as it offers no extra security. Once the crimp bead is crimped, the excess wire then becomes a nuisance--either when trying to string it into a few beads or later after it has come out from the few beads it was hiding in.

Add a crimp cover to the crimped crimp bead and any little bit of wire sticking out past the crimp will be held within the cavity of the crimp cover, never to be seen again.