DIY - Wires container

A craftsman has various items to play with. In other words, a craftsman has to organize so many items. The better a craftsman organizes his work place, the more efficiency he has.

Materials:  Water bottles.
Tool: A sharp knife.

The usages and benefits of the DIY wires container:

1. Free: It costs almost nothing but a little time and effort to cut the water bottle. The cutting tip is to use a sharp knife to cut the bottle vertically. 
2. Transparent: It's transparent so that I can see if there are wires suitable for what I'm working on. This will save time and efforts.
3. Organizer: All I have to do is throwing pieces of wire into the container. Use several containers to store wires with different sizes , materials, lengths. 
4. Tips collector: Dealing with ends of wire is a must thing that should not be avoided. The most part is cutting the ends to make sure that the ends are flat. Thus, we keep producing little tips. When cutting the wire tips, hover hands over the container so that the wire tips will fall into the bottom of the container. All you have to do is pouring little tips out of the container every several months. 

By the way, put the container in a cabinet with doors to prevent collecting dust over time. This will save you from taking time to clean it.

The thick wire mandrel

Mandrels are playing an important role in wire-work making, such as loops making.
Mandrels help to make demanded shapes beautifully. An appropriate mandrel helps much.

There are also mandrel tools sold in the market.

In household, you can find many items to serve as a mandrel. The pen and the pencil are of the most popular items and I use them often.

Another good mandrel idea is using the thick wire.

Wires are produced by different gauges.

Thick ones can serve as mandrels as well.

Put it simply, the wire itself is not only one kind of materials but also is a good tool.

3 mm thick wire mandrel

In conclusion,Wires can be great mandrels.

Recycling glass cans for storing crafting materials

Recycling: Save money and save the earth.
Glass cans are pretty and easy to maintain.
We can have many glass cans from daily grocery purchase.
We recycle these glass cans for storing various kinds of crafting materials and other things.


Plus, due to the transparency, it's very easy to find the materials you want.


Tips: Put glass cans in water for hours and the paper labels will be easily peeled down.

Recycle glass can

Recycling

Recycle glass cans

How to measure the length of wire?

Usually, it is not necessary to know the exact length of the while making.

When you want to know the length so that you will make your wireworking easier or not to waste your materials, you had better measure its length.

Because the materials we work on are not straight, we need to count the length of curve.

The ways to measure the length of wires:

• Use a cloth measurer
• Use mathematical formula: Circumference = diameter *  π (3.14)

How to measure the length of wire

The mathematical circumference formula

The thumb rule:

A little bit "longer" is usually better than a little bit "shorter".

Wire head pin tutorials

The video below shows making 2 types of head pins

• The first type head pin: Just bend the wire at 90 degrees.
• The second type head pin: make a small U-shape or loop, and squeeze it with your flat nose pliers. Then bend the squeezed part at  90 degrees. You can also skip the squeezing step. After you make a small U-shape or loop, just bend it.

   

Density of Metal Wires

Density of Metal Wires (Density: weight per unit volume)

Water(for comparison)	1
Gold	19.3
Silver	10.5
Copper	8.9
Aluminum	2.7
Stainless Steel	7.7~7.98
Iron	7.86

Density: weight per unit volume

Wire basics: Gauge in MM

Danish Knot

I think Danish Knot is a beautiful design. You can see the Danish Knot tutorial.

While 4-coils Knot is loose and much easier to make, 5-coils Danish Knot looks more elegant.

Preparation of Danish Knot

This step is as easy as a pie.

Easy to make

Adding 3rd one is a little bit tricky.

Pull the wire open to be fixed.

How to make jump rings

Jumps rings are basic components for wirework.
As for making chain maille, all you need are jump rings, many jump rings.
You can purchase jump rings from suppliers, however, they are a little bit more expensive.

Jump rings making is a no-brainer.
Making jump rings for your custom purpose costs a lot of time, and this is the worst.
In my opinion, the best time to make jump rings is when watching TV, especially ads times.
After an episode or news program, you will get many jump rings. If you act this way every day, you will never waste time on this time-consuming work. Especially when you are making "mailles". A big maille piece needs thousands of jump rings.

How to make jump rings :

Step 1    Make a long coil as you like.  You need a rod to form the coil.

The rod I used to make the coil is a broken glass coffee stick bought from a craft store.

Step 2    Coil the coil.

The coil is open now.

Step 3    Stretch the coil till the rings as open as good for cutting and passing through. 

Stretch the coil several times with even tension. 

Step 4    Cut jump rings. Remember to flush cut the wire every time you cut a jump ring.

Wire Open Spiral

When designing a project, the look of final piece is always good.
Because the materials are pretty themselves, such as wires, beads, findings, gems, etc.
That's why people like beading and wire jewelry making.
Wireworking includes many basic components.
Basic components skills are where to differ pros from beginners.


Open spirals are tricky for many jewelers.
It needs some skills to make a beautiful open spirals.

The usual way to make an open spiral is
Step 1 Make a simple loop.
Step 2 Start to bend from the loop with  flat-nose pliers.
Step 3 Make as many circles as you want.

These are the techniques you can learn from basic books or online free sources.

Flat-nose pliers will mar the wire unless you use very hard ones, however, the harder the wire the harder to bend.
Using Nylon Jaw pliers with skill could help to prevent tool marks.
When you have obvious tool marks, you might want to hammer your open spiral to flat the wire.

I have my own  method to make open spirals in a faster way, without nylon jaws, yet with much much less tool marks.

Polish sterling silver jewelry

Sterling silver has its own beautiful silver white color and luster.
The biggest problem is sterling silver will tarnish.
To maintain the special sterling silver beauty, you can polish silver jewelry with a silver cloth or tooth paste. Yes, tooth paste works, I will show you below.

The pair of 925 sterling silver hooks were  tarnished as years going by.

They look black before polishing.

Use silver cloth to polish one of the hook. It is brilliant now.

Use tooth paste to polish another hook. It has the flavor of mint. Use dry cloth to clean again before wearing.

Both the hooks shine again.

 Silver cloth or  tooth paste can be your polishing tools. Do not forget to clean again with dry clean cloth after polishing. When not wearing, keep your silver objects in air-proof bags or boxes.

What to do with ugly wire?

When making wire craft, re-doing is quiet often.
Because of making mistakes, either because we get a better idea, the results is the wire become ugly.
What to do with them?
Do not just throw away.
It's ugly, yet it can still work for you.

1. You can take not that ugly ones for practice, doing experiments of your projects.
2. Ugly wire can be used to hold things, such as plants, electric wire, even craft wire.

Use ugly wire to support the plant.

My way to collect jump rings

No matter  we make or buy jump rings, we are having different dimension of jump rings. People who like making chain maille need kinds of jump rings. If you mix all, it will be hard to find the jump rings you need.
I have a lot of parfum solide (concrete perfume), after using out of the concrete perfume, these beautiful boxes are ideal for collecting jump rings or other small beads.
You don't need to buy additional boxes. I believe you must can find some small boxes for collecting jump rings or beads. Reusage is earth friendly.

These are famous France Fragonard parfum solide.

Gauge in MM

Every time, when it comes to gauge in mm, I get a little bit confused.

Since I am used to the measure of mm (millimeter), I cannot easily exchange mm into gauge number in my mind.

And I believe that some people like gauge number better than mm on the other hand.

The numbers of the table below is from internet.

For quick reference, I made a simple table of gauge in mm (millimeter). 

Gauge in mm table