[Music]
hello fellow crafters this is going to
be a quick instructional video just
going over terminology for different
types of wire so let's start out with
thickness of wire and what that is
referred to so thickness of wire is
called gauge and the key to know that
here is that the smaller the gauge
number the thicker the wire so they come
in all different ranges this is a 12
gauge aluminum wire you can see it's
quite hefty all the way up to say had
one here here we go a twenty six gauge
which you can see is considerably
thinner so again smaller gauge number
thicker wire then you also have
different shapes of wire this is round
as is this which just means of course
that you took a cross section it would
be a circle very simple most common type
of wire you can also get half round
which just means that you've got a flat
side and a rounded side you can also get
square wire here's an example of some of
that these non-standard types are just
fun for adding extra texture dimension
to your designs for example I have here
a piece that I just finished this is in
my tree of life line of jewelry
available for sale at my website I'll
put the link below you can see here I
just took the square wire and twisted it
and then i used round wire on the tree
portion so it adds a lot of extra
dimension to your work alright now
you'll also be hearing terminology such
as half hard dead soft this refers to
how the wire feels how malleable it is
how strong it is so most of your wire is
going to be dead soft that you're
working with this is a dead soft
silver-plated copper wire so you can see
it's very malleable I'm just bending it
with my fingers you can do loops and
kinks it's extremely easy to handle now
the downside of this is that if you're
making anything out of this that needs
to bear weight you may run into problems
with warping for instance if your child
grabs a necklace around your neck maybe
not a dead soft wire it might deform
somewhat but it is easy to work with now
the alternative to that is half-hard
you can also get quarter hard which is
more rare here is a half hard 21 gauge
wire and just for comparison I have the
same gauge and dead soft so here's the
dead soft and you can see very malleable
very easy to work with versus the half
hard there's a little bit more
resistance it's it's a little bit harder
to bend if you are using a tool on this
it might be more likely to leave a kink
or a sharp bend mark that's a little bit
harder to even out now this is very nice
for say making ear wires out of it'll
hold its shape nicely especially if you
flatten it out with a little bit of
hammering on a bench block as I show in
my previous video on essential tools for
beginning jewelers and I like this 21
gauge it works well for making ear wires
it seems to be just the right thickness
to go in and out of your ear comfortably
so that is dead soft versus half hard
now as far as types of wire you have a
huge variety basically anything you can
think of for the beginner I like to
recommend something more economical easy
to work with I picked up this artistic
wire when I was first starting out it's
available in most craft stores you can
also buy it on Amazon online and they
are not paying me to say this I just
find it is a good economical starting
wire this is going to be copper which is
plated with silver they also carry
pretty much any color you might want I
have here a brass colored version which
is nice for making imitation gold
fashion jewelry and these are all going
to be dead soft very easy to work with
for wire wrapping and an interesting
thing about this artistic wire is that
it is coated with enamel kind of a clear
you can't even see it really but it
gives it a tarnish resistant coating
they say non tarnish in reality if it
gets nicked at all it will tarnish
eventually but it's much much slower
than say sterling the downside is you
can clean sterling when it tarnishes you
can't clean this if you try the enamel
cleaning will flake off it'll look
really nasty but this is this is a very
good beginners wire you just have to
take care when handling it with your
tools that you don't use undue force
nicking it or gouging it as this will
wear off the enamel coating you may also
want to consider silver filled wire this
is a great alternative to sterling
silver and yet it is much it's a much
higher value than the artistic wire I
was just describing silver filled
basically when they take sterling silver
wire and they replace the core of it
with a base metal such as brass so
basically it has
ten times more sterling in it than
silver-plated it looks lasts Queens just
like silver but it's a much better price
for your pocketbook all right I hope
this video was helpful I will be doing
more how-to videos for beginner jewelers
on wire wrapping and please do check out
my Etsy shop the link will be below
these free instructional videos are made
possible by sales from my store so if
you could just check it out add my
Facebook page to your favorites that
would be wonderful and stay tuned for
more videos