How to make holes on Metals for Jewelry Making

To make holes on metals for Cold Connections, Rivets, Links or for Piercing or Sawing Techniques

The techniques which are used to make holes in Jewelry Making are Drilling or by Punch with Cutting Dies.

There are diverse types of tools to use according to the size of the hole that you want to make in your sheet metal piece.

If you need holes with a diameter less than 1.5mm or large sizes you have to use a variety of tools as follows:

A metal ruler or a plastic one. I found one ruler in particular in a fellow blog about scrapping that caught my eye because you can mark precise and even equidistant holes around a disc shape. This is a time saving tool for jewelry making that will help with your designs.

Piercing Ruler

Bench Block and Chasing Hammers

You need a Scriber to scratch the surface of the metal or a Sharpy marker pen with a fine point to mark the position where we want the hole over the sheet metal.

A Chasing hammer to be able to strike over
the marking punch with the hammer to make a small dent on the sheet metal so the HSS Drill bits don't slip over the metal stock surface.

A Bench block or an anvil as a hard surface to receive the strike of the punch over the metal without deforming the back of the sheet metal surface.

Or an Automatic Marking Metal Punch. These ones come with a spring mechanism which regulates the strike on the punch to make light or hard indentations on the metal surface.

HSS (Stands for High Speed Steel) Twisted Drill Bits and a wax lubricant to smooth and cool the drill bits during the drilling process.

Then we could use a Flex Shaft Rotating Tool or a Jewelers Manual Drill Eggbeater style to attach the drill bit whichever size of choice and start drilling the piece of sheet metal over a wood surface.

Jewelers Hand Drill Eggbeater Style

HSS Drill Bits 1.0mm ~ 2mm Set

Parallel Punch Metal Hole Pliers

If you need standard 1.5mm holes that fit almost all wire sizes, another easy way to do it is using Parallel Metal Hole Punch Pliers.These parallel pliers cut clean holes over the sheet metal up to gauge 20 or 0.80mm thickness and have replaceable cutting pins which last a long time and are quite easy to change.


To make holes of 3mm to 16mm of diameter you can use a Jewelers Disc Cutter Punch Set. This tool is very practical since is equipped with 14 different punch sizes to allow you to cut precise holes and disc metal blanks to use for jewelry making, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, pendants or chains.

Jewelry Hardened Carbon Steel Disc Cutter Metal Set of 14 Pieces 3mm - 16mm.