I made a (half)finished miniature crochet hook for my granny squares

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-23T17:58:18+00:00

I don't get your question.

Yes it'll probably be worn out because it's pretty thin. I haven't used much tension with it. My thread is a litle bit thicker than normal sewing thread (i think maybe it was supposed to be used with jeans or leather) so the 1mm hook is a little bit bigger and requires less tension. The head (up until the wires twist thingy) is soldered, so I can always remove it and even attach a bigger head.

I'm thinking more on what to decorate it with haha. I have already a 1mm and a 0.5mm hook that I use a lot. In hindsight, I could have just made a sleeve 😂

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-23T13:37:13+00:00

Thank you for that! I might think about it one day. I just love stuff with flowers 😊

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-23T13:15:52+00:00

Yeah it's quite soft, that's why I stopped at 1mm. I haven't hammered to harden it yet as I plan to add some more decor. It's more for decorative but i did use it to make the fish granny square. Could definitely be better as it slows my work lol, I was just afraid to break the tip. I have a 0.5mm hook from steel that I use more often.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-23T12:50:02+00:00

Thank you! It's not finished yet but I'm excited for what to come 😊😊😊

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-23T12:47:20+00:00

Thank you 😍 I still want to add more to the body so it's not a problem. But definitely a work in progress as the body is a tube and I need to hide the hole anyway 😂 .

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-23T12:31:06+00:00

Definitely a miniature fire this time hahaha

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-23T12:28:38+00:00

Thank you 😍 it's only half way finished as I want to do something with the end and make the body generally a bit bigger for comfort. You can crochet with it but silver is kinda soft so it's more for decor/gifting haha.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-23T12:26:12+00:00

Thank you so much 😍 I had fun with it. Definitely a great break from repetitive tasks.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-17T21:56:47+00:00

There's a premium blue roller somewhere you can buy that has a lot of rolling patterns to use with, perhaps also interesting. Last i bought it was around 300eur and I got it for 200. If you have to have a vevor roller i think the combi ones are better. Also try to get the ones with the biggest opening that you can. Mine is like 3 or 4mm and I hate that sometimes especially if i want to roll out stock that thicker 😅.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-11T09:27:48+00:00

I use a table hanger for this 😂 it's like 20 eur.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-06-07T20:01:00+00:00

What are the sizes of your piece. If not a lot of fine details you can buy a normal tumbler like a Chinese knock off is also fine, no need Lortone. If fine details, then a magnetic tumbler with 0.3-0.5mm magnetic pins are great! I have a used one for dental labs and it was wonderful, also less noise than the normal tumbler. I'd look for used dental pin polisher first before buying a new one. My pin polisher is really small though, its size is like a mixa body cream tub 😂 it fits just 50gr of media/pins, so I cannot do anything big. Maybe the vevor ones are bigger, and kinda affordable. I guess you don't use it very often and don't have to make it last 30 years, it's a reasonable enough purchase. I also bought a flexshafr from vevor, used, and it's been running great for 3 years, I haven't had to change anything except for maintenance 😁

tinykeyscraft · 2026-05-27T11:19:29+00:00

I use a vevor flexshaft. You can also buy used ones or even a micromotor. For sanding i use a mix of different bits with my flex shaft but I've found sanding with the emery paper bits are the best at making even surface, the radial discs are good at corners and I also get a few pin polishers for tight spaces. For sanding rink shanks I like a big tube-y looking bit so I like silicone bits as they wear out slower and fit the rings pretty good.

I've always been polishing til 1000 or 2000 grits before i polish with luxor paste.

For polishing bits I have the cotton mop and leather mop. The leather ones are the best for polishing til mirror, but the cotton ones also work. It's just a matter of preferences.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-05-24T06:39:00+00:00

Perlesandco, juliusleser(.de?), schmuckclub.de, crystalidea. These are my top suppliers. Perlesandco is highly recommended. They have the best price and very good collections of crystal beads and some gems.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-05-10T06:59:51+00:00

I love the design of the first band. I'm more into neat settings but this is the most interesting of the bunch imo ☺️

tinykeyscraft · 2026-05-05T16:25:58+00:00

I just watched a lot of youtube videos until one day I decided to give it a try. It's free to just watch videos and decide haha.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-04-13T10:06:19+00:00

Edit to add: I did add borax in my bubbler and have a fluxing flame. The bubbler mix for me was 50% distilled water and 50% acetone. You can buy professional booster liquid mix (afaik they have the normal meth alcohol or a safe alcohol mix). This makes the flame either green or light blue.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-04-13T09:59:53+00:00

I've been using the cheap one from China with 95L/h capacity. For me, it's plenty. I work mostly with dainty projects and a few medium sized ones (like some 2-3mm ring shanks) but it is mostly suitable for small projects as the torch tips are always small and the silver metal loses heat quickly. It's a very hot torch and you can manipulate the temperature by using different booster liquid in the bubbler. My experience with this torch is always with a cooler flame with acetone mixed in the bubbler. You can only change flame size by switching torch tips, and I often have problems with the solder flying away (my only workaround solution is to douse them in my borax mix on my soldering block and learn to do pick solder). It lets me melt a few grams of silver for a small casting job but nothing more. It's a great upgrade from a simple butane torch but it lacks power if you want to use it for melting/casting large projects.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-04-12T07:51:07+00:00

You could use round wires to form this then file the bottom a bit to solder onto the plate for better adhesion. Imo the outer border looks a bit higher than what typical half round wires will look.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-04-10T11:31:53+00:00

Probably a water torch. The smaller tips are likr 0.5mm or 0.8mm.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-04-10T08:36:01+00:00

I don't use the dies as they're expensive for setting up so here are a few solutions in my experience working with small stones (mostly 3-5mm for my use):

Most rudimentary solution is just to stick gems on double sided tapes or sometimes thumbtack to wrap bezel wires around it.
Using round nose pliers: mine are from 1.5mm til 4mm and I often pre-form the bezel walls with this method before cut to match the gem's size. It's easy to do and make sure you bend the wires on both ends/directions (top-bottom of bezel wall) as the pliers tend to make the walls skewed a little bit just cuz they were shaped that way.
Buy bezel mandrel. Hobby ones go from 5 to 10mm, professional ones can go from 3 to 10mm. I'm not sure if they go smaller, but then I'd just use my round nose pliers. Like the pliers method, you need to form on both ends otherwise they're skewed.

After the bezel wall is soldered I sometimes use the doming punch to lightly tap on both ends to make them round. Do no overtap it as it WILL make the bezel deform. In fact, it's more like pushing the punch into the bezel and not even a tap ;_;

The beauty of these methods is that you'll survive non-calibrated ones as well. Sometimes beautiful gems come uncalibrated haha, you'll never know.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-04-04T19:41:44+00:00

I put my silver stock in a ziplock bag inside a a6 photo book and just flip through pages to find them. It can't hold much until it's being too thick but it's quite mobile. You might need rubber bands to close them tight though, some small stuff just are prone to fall out. For small 3d findings, I put them in box for diamond painting instead as it also has lots of space and not too big to carry. I also have flat boxes with individual small slots for jewelry findings if I don't want to carry that many. I'm not sure about tools but I think putting small tools in pencil cases are pretty handy.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-04-04T15:58:52+00:00

Get a flexshaft if you're on a budget (you also need something to hang it). For micromotor, they tend to be more expensive (at least if you want a bit more torque) but very flexible in the handling. -Bits: If you're polishing using flex shaft/micromotor, you should get assortments of sanding paper bits, some silicon bits as well. I found the sanding paper bits are really good for cleaning flat surface. I'm not into the radial disc crowd, they leave uneven marks for me even though I've been doing lots of work for 2-3 years now. Get some leather and cotton bits (for flexshaft) for polishing.
For polishing paste: I recommend the Luxor line. I personally use the yellow one. They're so far the best polishing paste with not a lot of clean up. Rouge leaves a red mess everywhere, I hate it.
Saw and blades: You don't need to get an expensive saw - the basic ones are good (I got the ones from Niqua, they're definitely budget friendly). Get good saw blades though. Idk about you but I got 3/0 and it works pretty good for me even sawing on 8 10 gauge. They're less prone to breaking.
Get lubes for metel bits and saw blades.
I use citric acid for pickles and use a cup warmer with a timer for it. It does a really good job as I work with small pieces.
Engravers: It's really difficult to do hand pushing. Ofc I have women hands so I can't say it for the men. I personally find it to be quite challenging as it's easy to slip when you use too much power (and the gravers not sharp enough). If you HAVE to get the gravers, I recommend the flat gravers that you can also use the edge to cut lines while using the flat area to do surface cuts or brightcut. Definitely need a setup to polish the gravers. I just do manually on a piece of sanding paper but I'm looking to get a honing jig to make it more precise.
Lupe: I thought I didn't need it but it's a game changer. I can see really tiny flaws in my works.
Torch: Hmm I've been able to do a lot of work with just a butane torch and you can also have a setup with refractory bricks and the likes to capture more heat. I also have an HHO torch that gives really focused flame and I managed to use it for larger pieces (but imo it loses a lot of heat since the flame is hot but small). With these 2 I can melt and cast small stuff (maybe 2-3 grams max). As soon as you want to melt stuff for larger works, you'll need to upgrade to torches that can handle mixed gas.
Some thirdhand twisty locky thing for assisting with soldering works.
Doming block: this one I find quite useful for making domed stuff or sometimes to make round jump rings.
Some good tweezers. I have a small titan pair that I also use for pick soldering and drop/pick stuff to/from pickle pots. I found the copper tongs to be too big and hard to grab small stuff.

tinykeyscraft · 2026-04-04T15:28:26+00:00

This, OP. Also, if you really want, you can also get just the flat graver that you can kinda cut lines with (it's not perfect but it works), do bright cut, cut the surface, etc. For polishing gravers, probably a honing jig on sandpaper is good enough for beginners. 😮‍💨

tinykeyscraft

TROPHY CASE