Basic Wire Skills for Jewelry Making Part 2 Wire

In this post we're going to take talk about the wire itself.

Gauge
The thickness of wire is measured as gauges. The higher the number the thinner the wire. Some of the most popular gauges to work with are:

14-16 gauges are good gauges for bangles or bracelets.

18 gauge - this is a good firm thickness for jump rings and base components.

20 gauge - can be used to form base components and to make jump rings for lightweight items.

22 - 26 gauges are good for wrapping either a heavier gauges of wire or to wrap beads.

Shapes
Wire comes in different shapes too. The most popular include round, half-round, square, and twisted.

Hardness
You may have heard the terms dead soft, half-hard and hard but weren't sure what they meant.  Here's a breakdown.

Dead soft - This is the most pliable. Wire that is dead soft can be bent very easily. Most copper and brass comes in dead soft. This is my most preferred hardness. You can hammer a piece once you've finished working on it to make it harder. This is called work-hardening.

Half-Hard is a little bit stiffer than dead-soft but not fully hard. If you'd like to make earwires 20ga of half-hard wire will work beautifully.

Full Hard wire is so stiff it's very hard to work with. It's almost impossible to get smooth looking curves with wire that is this stiff.

MaterialsWire is made from different materials. The easiest metal to start with is copper followed by brass.

Copper wire is almost always dead soft and very pliable. It is the wire I recommend learning with.

Brass is good to work with before moving to Sterling Silver because they feel the same to work with. It's a little bit springier than copper. Here's an example of what I mean. When you wind a coil with copper, it almost stays the same size as the mandrel you're wrapping it around. When you wind it with brass or sterling it springs a little bit and it will be a little bit larger in diameter.

Fine Silver is made of pure silver. It is tarnish resistant and very pliable but sometimes too soft.

Sterling Silver is 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. The copper adds a little bit of strength to sterling but is also the reason why sterling silver tarnishes. Sterling silver is a very popular wire to work with but I would recommend practicing with copper first. Copper is more pliable than brass. 

Gold-filled, which is considered heirloom quality, is a heavy layer of 10k to 14k gold over base metal. The layer is much heavier than for gold-plated and is a way to incorporate gold into your pieces without "breaking the bank."

I hope you learned a little bit about wire that you didn't know before.

-Sue

Basic Wire Skills for Jewelry Making Part 1 Tools

I will be posting a series of tutorials on basic wire skills for jewelry making. Part one will cover the tools required to make wire jewelry. Enjoy!

Let’s start with a brief list of tools that I consider “must-haves.”

Round Nose Pliers
These pliers have rounded tips that taper to a point. You use them to make loops

Long Nose or Flat Nose Pliers
My preference for these are flat nose pliers. They are flat and rectangular but don't come to a tapered point like long nose. You will need two of these so you can get one pair of  flat and one pair of long to see which one you prefer. These will be used to open and close jump rings. You need to twist jump rings open and closed which requires a pair of pliers on each side of the jumpring. These are also used for grasping the wire and I also use them for straightening wire.

Nylon Jaw Pliers
These are not an absolute must but they are nice to have. They are used to straighten wire.

Flush Cutters
There are many types of cutters for cutting metal and wire. The flush cutters have always been my favorite. I like that they are small and can get into tight places.

Small Hammer
I use a very lightweight hammer that I purchased from the scrapbook section of my craft store. It was sold to set eyelets. It has a flat surface on one side and a rounded surface on the other.

Nylon Hammer
Nylon hammers are for straightening metal without marring the surface. When you hammer metal, it becomes hardenened. The more you work with the metal and the more hammering you do the harder the metal becomes. This is called work hardening. You can actually hammer the metal to a point that it because too brittle to work with and will break.

Bench Block
A bench block is a smooth block of steel that you do all your hammering on. A great size to get started is
2 1/2" x 2 1/2"

Jeweler’s Saw & Blades
A jeweler's saw and blades are not absolutely essential for making wire jewelry but having them will allow you to make custom sized jump rings, allow you to make rivets and cut sheet metal and tubing.

Needle Files
Needle files are used for deburring the ends of wire.

Ruler

Various Sized Mandrels
A mandrel is a rod that wire or metal is wrapped around. You can use it to form jump rings, or shape metal. It can be any shape or size. They don't necessarily need to be metal. Chopsticks, crochet hooks, pens and knitting needles make great mandrels for beginners. You will use these to create a coil that will be cut apart to create jump rings.

That's it for the tools. Look for my next posting which will the cover wire.

-Sue