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Adventures In Copper Wire Jewelry Making

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Jewelry dating back over 2000 years from Ancient Rome show wire wrapped loops, an integral part of wire jewelry making.  In other places, examples of spiraling and wire and bead combinations have been found.  Copper was important for its beauty, strength, and the belief that it possesses healing properties.  Even today, there are arthritis sufferers who wear copper bracelets to relieve pain. 

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Wire is available is various shapes, such as round and square, and patterns, such as flat and pre-twisted. Copper is easy to shape and manipulate. Copper wire can be hammered quite thin. Wire is measured by diameter, which is indicated by gauge numbers. The lower the gauge, the thicker the wire. A 12 or 14-gauge wire is fairly heavy, but ideal for making bangles and chokers. 10-gauge wire is very thick and stiff, while 26-gauge wire is very fine, almost as thin as hair. This thin wire is well-suited for coiling embellishments. 16-gauge wire is good for making jump rings and links for necklaces and bracelets, and 18-gauge wire is good to use for adding embellishments and making finer links.

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• Memory Wire is a rigid, pre-coiled wire that makes it easy to create finger and toe rings, bracelets and necklaces.

• Beading Wire is a twisted stainless steel wire with a nylon coating. It is good to use with abrasive beads. A thicker weight wire should be used to accommodate larger, heavier bead strands.

• Super-thin Beading Wire is a 34-gauge wire that can used for forming shapes and weaving around findings. Because it is so fine, this wire will fit through almost any drill hole. It is to be used with lightweight beads only as it is very thin and doesn't have much tensile strength.

• Color-Coated Copper Wire (also known as Enameled Copper Wire) is copper based crafting wire that is soft, extremely malleable and retains shape moderately well.

• Precious Metal Wire - sterling silver, fine silver, and gold are the most common - is used for wire-wrapping, chain-making and other jewelry construction. It is available in four shapes, round, half-round, square and twisted.

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Metal Wire also comes in three levels of hardness, dead soft, half-hard and full hard.

• Dead Soft wire is extremely malleable and can be bent easily into a variety of shapes. It does not hold its shape well at stress points such as clasps.

• Half-Hard wire is malleable; however, it will maintain in intricate shape under moderate stress. It is useful for weight-bearing parts of wire-wrapped jewelry.

• Full Hard wire holds its shape for wire-wrapping jewelry. Its tempered nature holds intricate designs well, and is excellent for clasps.

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Currently, wire wrapping techniques are not frequently used for mass produced jewelry because of simple economics. Machines can cast jewelry components much faster and cheaper. Copper wire wrapping is an ancient art form for the true jewelry craftsman.

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Making Wire Jewelry: 60 Easy Projects in Silver, Copper & Brass

by Helen Clegg and Mary Larom, is an excellent book for the beginner or intermediate wire jewelry maker. It features beautful pictures of the finished piece and step by step instructions including "templates" to compare your wire pieces as you progress.

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Adventures In Copper Wire Jewelry Making

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Jewelry dating back over 2000 years from Ancient Rome show wire wrapped loops, an integral part of wire jewelry making.  In other places, examples of spiraling and wire and bead combinations have been found.  Copper was important for its beauty, strength, and the belief that it possesses healing properties.  Even today, there are arthritis sufferers who wear copper bracelets to relieve pain. 

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Wire is available is various shapes, such as round and square, and patterns, such as flat and pre-twisted. Copper is easy to shape and manipulate. Copper wire can be hammered quite thin. Wire is measured by diameter, which is indicated by gauge numbers. The lower the gauge, the thicker the wire. A 12 or 14-gauge wire is fairly heavy, but ideal for making bangles and chokers. 10-gauge wire is very thick and stiff, while 26-gauge wire is very fine, almost as thin as hair. This thin wire is well-suited for coiling embellishments. 16-gauge wire is good for making jump rings and links for necklaces and bracelets, and 18-gauge wire is good to use for adding embellishments and making finer links.

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• Memory Wire is a rigid, pre-coiled wire that makes it easy to create finger and toe rings, bracelets and necklaces.

• Beading Wire is a twisted stainless steel wire with a nylon coating. It is good to use with abrasive beads. A thicker weight wire should be used to accommodate larger, heavier bead strands.

• Super-thin Beading Wire is a 34-gauge wire that can used for forming shapes and weaving around findings. Because it is so fine, this wire will fit through almost any drill hole. It is to be used with lightweight beads only as it is very thin and doesn't have much tensile strength.

• Color-Coated Copper Wire (also known as Enameled Copper Wire) is copper based crafting wire that is soft, extremely malleable and retains shape moderately well.

• Precious Metal Wire - sterling silver, fine silver, and gold are the most common - is used for wire-wrapping, chain-making and other jewelry construction. It is available in four shapes, round, half-round, square and twisted.

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Metal Wire also comes in three levels of hardness, dead soft, half-hard and full hard.

• Dead Soft wire is extremely malleable and can be bent easily into a variety of shapes. It does not hold its shape well at stress points such as clasps.

• Half-Hard wire is malleable; however, it will maintain in intricate shape under moderate stress. It is useful for weight-bearing parts of wire-wrapped jewelry.

• Full Hard wire holds its shape for wire-wrapping jewelry. Its tempered nature holds intricate designs well, and is excellent for clasps.

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Currently, wire wrapping techniques are not frequently used for mass produced jewelry because of simple economics. Machines can cast jewelry components much faster and cheaper. Copper wire wrapping is an ancient art form for the true jewelry craftsman.

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Making Wire Jewelry: 60 Easy Projects in Silver, Copper & Brass

by Helen Clegg and Mary Larom, is an excellent book for the beginner or intermediate wire jewelry maker. It features beautful pictures of the finished piece and step by step instructions including "templates" to compare your wire pieces as you progress.

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My Bead Journal

July 25

The craft fair in Wichita seemed busier than previous years, though that did not seem to have a positive effect on sales as I had hoped.  I was able, however, to find several other jewelry artists to commiserate with, despite the many booths of mass produced stuff.  The main debate among us was whether craft shows held any promise of success for those of us whose work is so time and labor intensive, in such a competitive economy.  Sounds kind of dreary, but we also had lots of laughs and I fell in love with several pieces, as usual.  I made one great friend in particular, who I feel must be mentioned.  I hope to see her again next year. 

July 27

I am very happy to be a sponsor for Beads of Courage, a program begun by Jean Baruch, a nurse who wanted to help kids going through serious illnesses cope with emotional stress.  Creating the necklaces is fun and therapeutic ( as we all know) and also gives the kids tangible evidence of their bravery and accomplishments.  They receive colored beads to represent procedures and milestones they experience, some amassing to 20 or 30 feet of beads!  This program serves thousands of children in hospitals all over the country, and is funded entirely by private donations, so please check them out, as it is a cause near and dear to my heart. 

July 28

Katie Hacker, the new host of the PBS television show, "Beads, Baubles & Jewels", and whose project is on the cover of the BeadStyle July issue, has teamed with Beadalon to design a line of great new components called Katiedids.  I was honored to have received a preview of some of these pieces and I really recommend them, and visiting Katie's blog for video examples of how to use them.  She is pure beading greatness, and generously shares the techniques she's learned.

July 29

I truly enjoyed my guest teacher role while in Kansas City teaching lampworking.  It has long been my obsession, from the first oddly misshapen glass ball I ever created.  For those new to this art, lampwork is glasswork that involves melting rods and tubes of clear and colored glass with a gas fueled torch, and then manipulating the molten glass with tools or gravity.   It was wonderful to see some of the advanced students excel at this ancient art, and how creative their work is.  I'm including some pieces that make me smile, and hope you will send me some of your favorites as well.

July 25

The craft fair in Wichita seemed busier than previous years, though that did not seem to have a positive effect on sales as I had hoped.  I was able, however, to find several other jewelry artists to commiserate with, despite the many booths of mass produced stuff.  The main debate among us was whether craft shows held any promise of success for those of us whose work is so time and labor intensive, in such a competitive economy.  Sounds kind of dreary, but we also had lots of laughs and I fell in love with several pieces, as usual.  I made one great friend in particular, who I feel must be mentioned.  I hope to see her again next year.

July 27 

I am very happy to be a sponsor for Beads of Courage, a program begun by Jean Baruch, a nurse who wanted to help kids going through serious illnesses cope with emotional stress.  Creating the necklaces is fun and therapeutic ( as we all know) and also gives the kids tangible evidence of their bravery and accomplishments.  They receive colored beads to represent procedures and milestones they experience, some amassing to 20 or 30 feet of beads!  This program serves thousands of children in hospitals all over the country, and is funded entirely by private donations, so please check them out, as it is a cause near and dear to my heart.

July 28 

Katie Hacker, the new host of the PBS television show, \"Beads Baubles & Jewels\", and whose project is on the cover of the BeadStyle July issue, has teamed with Beadalon to design a line of great new components called Katiedids.  I was honored to have received a preview of some of these pieces and I really recommend them, and visiting Katie\'s blog for video examples of how to use them.  She is pure beading greatness, and generously shares the techniques she\'s learned.

July 29 

I truly enjoyed my guest teacher role while in Kansas City teaching lampworking.  It has long been my obsession, from the first oddly misshapen glass ball I ever created.  For those new to this art, lampwork is glasswork that involves melting rods and tubes of clear and colored glass with a gas fueled torch, and then manipulating the molten glass with tools or gravity.   It was wonderful to see some of the advanced students excel at this ancient art, and how creative their work is.  I\'m including some pieces that make me smile, and hope you will send me some of your favorites as well.

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The Danger of White Powder Residue On Beads

Q:  A fellow beader and coworker of mine stopped by to show me her newest creations today. She had made a great necklace using a gold beading wire with a large square dichroic bead as the focal piece. She just happened to have a top the same deep green, it was great!

The other piece she made to go along with the dichroic necklace was a bracelet using beads she recently found on sale at a home liquidation store. They are the kind of glass beads you get in a plastic box with lots of different pieces and parts.

She asked about some white dust coming out of the bracelet beads from the glass bead kit. I have bought kits like that over the years at the craft store and when I first began beading, back at our old Hancock Fabrics store.

I have windexed or cleaned jewelry I have made to remove a build up of perfumes or hair spray, but I never soaked glass beads to get rid of the white powder.  What is this white dust, and what is the proper way to remove it?

A:  The white powder residue inside those beads is what we call "bead release" - it's what we coat our metal rods with (you dip your rods in this liquid) so that when you melt glass on the rod to create a bead, the bead will "release" from the rod once it has cooled down.

Without that coating on the rod, the glass would be permanently fixed to the rod. We would not be able to remove it.

This said, however, this white powder is dangerous to inhale. You should not purchase beads that have not been cleaned thoroughly, and you should not be making jewelry with these beads without them being totally cleaned out of any residue.

Most beads that are sold with white residue inside are inexpensive mass produced beads. They don't take the time to clean them out and they ship them out like that.

I would suggest that you equip yourself with an electric bead reamer (if you have a lot of those beads, it will be faster), or a regular manual bead reamer, run the beads under hot water (you do not want to be breathing in those particles!) and use the reamer to clean them out properly.

Also, often, these mass-produced beads are not "annealed" properly (i.e. once you take the glass bead out of the flame, it has to go in a kiln for the glass to be properly annealed - a proper heating and cool down to avoid cracks, etc), but most of those commercial beads are not annealed.

What does it mean? It means that these beads will often break more easily.

If you purchase handmade artisan lampwork glass beads from serious glass artists, their beads should be totally free of this white residue/totally cleaned out.

A fun, contemporary way to show off your bead creations is with twisted wire cages.  This project uses a beautiful combination of glass and metal beads. 

Designer Mami Laher

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MATERIALS

*12 feet (10.8m) of 18-20 gauge round wire for cages

*5 or more 10x13 mm oval beads or 10mm round beads with openings large enough for 18 gauge wire to fit through

*3 feet *(2.7 m) of 18 gauge round wire for center pins and jump rings

*6 8 mm metal beads

*clasp

INSTRUCTIONS

1.  For each caged bead, cut a 9-inch (2.3 cm) length of 18 or 20 gauge round wire.  Make loops at both ends of the wire holding the wire one-third of the way into the mouth of the round nose pliers. 

2.  Using the flat-nose pliers, coil the wire half way from each end to form a symmetrical, S shaped scroll.  Hold the middle of the scroll with the pliers and bend the top half of the scroll onto the bottom half so that the two halves are stacked. 

3.  Grab the center of one of the coils with the flat-nose pliers and pull gently, stretching the coil out about 3/8 inch (1 cm).  Repeat with the other coil in the opposite direction.

4.  Pry the cage open slightly where the gap between the wires is the widest and insert an oval bead.  Close the gap by bending the wires back into place. 

5.  Repeat steps 1-4 to make the remaining cages.  Note:  This bracelet measures 8 inches (20 cm) and uses 5 caged beads.  For extra length, simply add an additional caged bead. 

6.  Cut a 1 3/4-inch (4.5 cm) length of 18-gauge wire for each cage and insert through the center of the caged bead.  Make loops at each end of the cage from the protruding wire by bending the wire at a 45-degree angle (or slightly more) and then grabbing the wire end with pliers and bending to complete the loop. 

7.  Thread each metal bead onto a 1 ¼-inch (3.2 cm) length of 18 gauge wire.  Make loops at one end of the bead from the protruding wire as you did in the end of step 6. 

8.  Connect the caged bead units to the metal accent beads and close the loops with pliers.  Attach clasp findings to finish.