Most beaders and jewelry makers keep several pairs of tweezers in their toolboxes. In today’s Beading Lesson, we will show you a variety of tweezers and tell you some tips and tricks for using them.

The most basic type of tweezers has straight tips. They’re good for general use: picking up beads, holding a knot while you tie it or removing metal parts from a chemical solution. Some straight tweezers have a shovel on the other end, which makes them two tools in one. The shovel is a convenient tool for scooping beads out of their containers or for moving beads off of your workspace.

Notice the difference between the straight tips of these tweezers. One is a standard bent tip and one has a precision tip. A precision tip can be helpful when tying knots or doing other very fine work.

Bent tweezers are also good for general use. The bent tips have the added advantage of more visibility and control when picking up smaller beads and tying knots. To use tweezers when tying a knot, grasp the top part of the knot loop and slide it along the cord.

Fiber-tip tweezers are perfectly suited to working with pearls and other delicate beads. The fiber tips prevent marring the surface of the bead and there is a half-circle indentation in the tip that helps grip the bead. You can also use fiber-tip tweezers with delicate findings or other metal components whose surface might be marred by regular tweezers.

In the same way that tweezers can act like an extra hand while you’re beading, squeeze scissors allow you to make cuts without setting your beadwork down. You don’t have to place your fingers through the handle, so you can make cuts as you’re working. The tips are specially engineered to make a close cut. Choose straight tips or bent tips depending on your project.