My new custom bails for pointy cabs (sort of a tutorial)

Ok, let's get it over with: My name is Susan, and I like Glue-on bails (Where's the "hiding under chair" smiley when you need it?)

I've wasted quite a few hours now, trying to make bezels, and it's just way too much effort for me. Or else I don't have the bezel gene. I can make other things from silver, but not those. Anyway, they are beautiful, but fabricating them makes me extremely unhappy, and this is supposed to be fun.

So I've found some glue on bails from online shops that I like, and I mostly use those. They work great, they're fast, they're inexpensive, they're attractive (even if not as nice as a bezel).

However, I make a lot of cabs with pointy tops. Really pointy tops. And no matter what kind you buy, there just aren't any glue on bails out there for purchase which look good on a pointy-topped cab. So after a bunch of rumination, I came up with a custom type bail that seems to work.

I based the design off bezels which have the bail on the back, like Lexi Erickson's question mark bail.

I took a sheet of silver (this is 28g fine silver, since it's what I had, but 26 would probably be better, less difficult to keep flat) and cut it and filed it to just less than the cab size.

Then I cut a short length of sterling square channel tubing of an appropriate length. It is this tubing: 4mm OD Tubing at Rio Grande
4mm OD, 3mm ID. Fits the chain I use most of the time, but wouldn't fit all chains.

Solder that on, and bingo, done. You don't even have to be good at soldering, as both surfaces are flat and pretty large area. So even *I* can do a pretty ok job of it!

Maybe a little liver of sulfur, depending on the cab. This one I didn't, just sanded it to a brushed finish.

The most annoying part is getting the cut at the end of the tubing square. Would love to hear any suggestions on that -- so far I've just been cutting it with a jeweler's saw (always ends up crooked) and sanding it flat, which is kind of annoying.

Then, just glue it on. I used E330 epoxy. You want some working time to get it oriented just right.

Depending on the cab, you might want to make the "pad" cover only part of the cab.  Since this one is fragile, I wanted to give it the most protection possible.   It doesn't need anywhere near that much surface area.

Here's how it came out:








I was worried it would hang funny because of the bail in back, as you can see here:



But it seems to work fine.  Might not work so well with small cabs.