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Drawing and Making Wire

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Categories: Instruction and information; Jewelry

Word count/read time: 579 words; 2-1/2 minutes

No, it's not an instructional class with a spaghetti ball of jumbled wire that hopeful artists are trying to sketch. This is about making wire in a shop setting using non-mechanized equipment. There will be forging implements like a hammer or set of dies, power through electricity or beast, and heat from furnace or flame. Cooperative metals include gold, silver, copper, and their alloys.

Most metals work harden as they are being drawn or forged, making them more difficult to shape and manipulate. The crystal or grain structure gets homogenized and increases temper (essentially, hardness). Dead-soft is a world away from spring state, and 10k gold is nothing like 0.999 fine silver.

There are several steps that will be repeated endlessly until the proper size is reached. These steps are mundane and not terribly exciting so most people enjoy the convenience of pre-made wire or ready-to-use jump rings.

Barring hyper-modern technology, everything starts as an ingot that eventually becomes a square or round rod. Some people use sheet or plate cut into similar strips.

First, the metal will need to be annealed (heated) during the process...maybe once, maybe a dozen times. It becomes more malleable (able to be flattened into sheet) and ductile (drawn or extruded into wire). Each metal has a specific annealing temperature and method.

Next, it will be pulled through a drawplate (commercially they use dies or rollers). Drawplates have a series of holes with tiny increments between adjacent ones. There are round, square, triangular, and other wire profiles available. Precision carbide inserts are mandatory for jewelry since the other ones are basically junk. (Some rolling mills have round, square, and other profiles and generally do a better job.)

The tip of the wire is put into the appropriate hole and the remainder is pulled (drawn) through, reducing or changing its cross-section in the process. This continues in successively smaller holes until it's the proper size or shape.

It must enter and exit the drawplate perfectly straight, cleaned so debris doesn't damage it, and lubed to help it slide easily. It has to be pulled at a constant rate, too. Some metals/wires are particular about how much distance there is between the pliers and the drawplate; they will vibrate and chatter. Resonant frequency or something like it will ruin the wire.

Whereas I can make wire in increments of 0.1mm or smaller, commercial selection often jump two gauge sizes. For titanium and stainless steel, there is no choice for the home-brewed jewelry maker but to purchase them commercially. Going from 10ga to 12ga is 0.53mm difference! This pigeonholes certain families of weaves, notably the JPLs, Persians, and aspect ratio-specific patterns.

Drawbenches or drawtables make quick work of thick wire. Making a wire longer than the drawtable, which is usually 8ft or shorter, requires constantly repositioning the tongs. The wire will have tong marks wherever they grab. Those parts would have to be removed either before making the next product or cut out afterwards. That means a lot of follow-up work or a herd of short wires. Dealing with dozens of wirelings is a headache.

(To make 1700 jump rings with 0.5mm wire diameter and 1/2" inner diameter uses close to 250ft of wire. A four-foot drawtable would mean 60 separate pieces, each wireling making about 30 jump rings, or a coil less than 3/4" long. This is impractical. Sleuthing out the defective jump rings if left in one continuous wire is a lot of extra work.)

Posted by M: January 24, 2019

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