Forging sturdy toggle clasps

I've had trouble recently with storebought clasps breaking, especially on my bicycle chain bracelets. The standard lobster clasps are difficult to operate at best, but they are also too brittle and easily snapped. Toggle clasps (rod-and-loop) are easier to use but aren't any stronger. So I decided to try making my own.

I don't have an actual coal forge, and my anvil is tiny, but the torch is up to the heating job and I don't need much of an anvil table for this work. I get a finish nail up to workable temperature, just red-hot, and then hammer the centre section flat.

In the photo above you can see an unmolested finish nail at right. The rest have been heated, hammered, and quenched in a little tub of cold water.

After grinding and filing the ends smooth and dull, I drill out the centre to take a small lead of cord.

The loops of the toggle clasps are made of heavy wire. I use standard jeweler's wire-bending tools to create one large loop.

Then, a smaller tool to make a smaller loop in a figure 8. It takes some oomph to bend the heavy wire in a tight radius like this.

Then I use a hacksaw to cut the loops free of the wire bale. Side cutters or snips would deform the circles too much.

The free ends are on opposite sides of the loop.

For these, I heat them closer to the melting point. After red, the metal turns orange and then bright yellow, which is where I want it for forge-welding the free ends closed. When it's hot enough, I lay it on the anvil and hammer the overlaps into each other so that the whole loop lies flat.

This is what the finished clasp looks like on a choker. More fun than shopping for findings, much stronger than commercial clasps, and appropriately grungy and rough in appearance. And easy to close and remove.