What are crush beads? First of all, there are two types of crushable beads: Round beads and crush tubes. Both are made of soft metal that is easy to flatten and are used in the same way. The difference will be in the finish.
It is more common to use a crushable bead cover on round beads than on tubes which are often too long to be covered by a bead.
Crushable beads are available in brass with gold, silver, copper or bronze finish, gold filled, 925 silver and stainless steel.
Crush beads are mainly used to attach a clasp or a spacer to a wire. This wire can be a wired wire, nylon wire, silk wire or synthetic wire. More rarely they can be used on elastic wire, as a last resort, when surgical knots are not enough. They can also be used to hold pearls in place on a necklace or bracelet, by flattening a pearl to be crushed on each side of the pearls.
Not to be confused with crush pearls, crush pearl covers are used to cover crush pearls for a more attractive finish. In appearance, they are hollow pearls almost entirely cut in half. The pearl to be crushed is placed inside the crushable pearl cover, then closed with a special crushable pearl clamp. The closed crush pearl cover looks like any other metal pearl.
If many people use a simple flat pliers to flatten the pearls, it is rather recommended to use a special pliers adapted to the size of the pearls to be crushed.
The flat pliers will simply flatten the bead, while the crush bead pliers will in two steps, flatten and make a notch in the middle of the bead to separate the two wire ends, then bend in half and squeeze the two parts of the bead and the two wires against each other. Here's why it's best to use special crush pliers:
If the goal is to attach a clasp or a spacer, you must take a bead to crush with a hole in which the wire can pass twice.
For example, if you have a wire of 0.40 mm, you need a bead with a hole of 1 mm. It's best if the hole is a little larger than twice the size of the wire. Then, for the pearl cover, it is imperative that it is larger than the pearl to be crushed because it must completely cover it.
If you take a 2 mm pearl, you will need a 3 mm pearl cover. It is up to you to choose the material of the pearls to crush. You can very well take a pearl to crush in brass and a pearl cover in silver 925 for example.
Cut your wire at least 10 cm longer than necessary. Thread a bead to be crushed, pass the wire through the clasp and back into the bead.
Flatten the bead near the clasp with the second notch on the crush bead pliers to begin folding it in half.
Fold it completely in half with the second notch of the pliers.
Place the bead cover over the bead to be crushed and close it.
Here is the rendering.
Thread the beads and press the end of the thread through the beads. Finish by threading a new bead to be crushed.
Thread the wire through the clasp ring, then back through the crush bead and some beads. Squeeze to bring the bead closer to the clasp. Crush it and place a bead cover. Cut off the excess wire.
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