Jewelry Making Wire

If you are keen on using wire for creating jewelry designs, you require oodles of patience and practice. If you are a beginner, you will do well by selecting a cheap and cost effective wire like 18 gauge copper wire.

Online jewelry supplies stores, hardware stores and local crafts stores are the best places to search for this type of wire. Before you move on to other varieties of harder wires, you should practice and get a command over the fundamentals of wiring techniques with this comparatively easy and soft wire.

The kind of wire you use will depend on the type of jewelry piece you will design, the variety of metal like gold or sterling silver or platinum or copper or brass or titanium; the hardness or softness of the metal, color, carat(10-24), cut, clarity of the metal , size of ornament to be created and other such things. Even the shape of the wire will depend on these factors.

The size of the wire will be determined by the diameter of the jewelry.

The size of the wire is measured in terms of gauge in USA. When the gauge number is higher, the wire becomes thinner and vice versa.

Jump rings are created out of thick wires. Earring wires are made of wires which are comparatively thinner. The toughest of the wires are gold wires. Compared to that pure silver wire is very ductile, malleable and soft.

That is why sterling silver wire is more in demand because of its hardness and durability. Of all the jewelry wires that are commonly used by jewelers, the softest and the most ductile is fixed gauge copper wire.

Whether the wires are for making clasps or jump rings or connectors will decide their hardness. 3 degrees of hardness are commonly seen – half hard, full hard and dead soft. A gold filled wire will be much more hard and tough than its silver counterpart.

If you use a full hard wire, you won’t feel the need to solder the pieces together.

Dead soft wires are too ductile and malleable and pliable and belong to the first category of hardness.

Half hard wires can be easily molded into various patterns in spite of being comparatively tougher and most necklaces, earrings and bracelets are made of this particular variety of wire.

Nylon coated wires are your other options.

Round, half round and square are the different shapes of wires available in the market.