Oxidised Silver & A Jewellery Making How to - Wire wrap coils

Hi everyone,

A couple of things in this post to talk about. Oxidising a recent piece and a little guide to how I make the coil elements to my work. nearly didn't bother publishing this post as I thought the coil making guide may be a bit boring, fingers crossed that isn't the case!

---

Oxidised Pendant
I recently posted up one of my latest creations, a Moonstone and Sterling Silver pendant. Read the post here

Since posting I've had a delivery of liver of sulphur, the chemical used to oxidise metal. So I've oxidised the metal which has been a great improvement. It really brings out the detail in the wraps and gives the piece as a whole a lot more depth. It's made the light coloured moonstone really stand out too with the darker Silver. What do you think?

Larger GIF

---

Making wire coils

I'd like to show you how I make the intricate looking wire coil elements common in my wire wrapping pieces.
Up until recently I just made them by hand, for small ones it's quick and easy, however when I need longer pieces a tool of sorts is helpful.
Here's a really simple little jig I made, it aids in making wire wrap coils a lot faster and more uniform. It isn't perfect but it does the job for now and it was free. There are commercial products that do this but I was on a budget and love a bit of diy problem solving!

If you don't know what I'm talking about, these bits are what I'm making.

The spring bit along the bottom here

---

So first I made a basic wooden frame, drilled a hole in both pieces of wood and then made some simple wire mandrels, these would work better if they were made out of stiffer wire but they'll do for now. These two I made are 1mm and 0.8mm.

0.3mm wire I'm using for winding.

So the idea with this is to make a long coil, looks a bit like a spring of wire on the mandrel.

To use the tool I first take the thin winding wire (0.3mm) and secure it to the mandrel down at the handle end. It's difficult to see but i first fed the winding wire through the hole in the wood, you'll see why in the next few steps.

Here you can see the wire goes through the wood and is secure around the handle. Ready to begin winding.

I struggled to get good photos of this bit but hopefully, you can see, as you turn the handle the wire will wrap round the mandrel. I begin slow to get it all neat, as you get going you can get coils made pretty quickly.

Here's the finished winding. The jig has done its job and goes away for now.

Next, I slide the wire off the mandrel, I'm left with a weird spring.

Now to attach this to a base wire, the thicker this wire is the chunkier the finished coil will be. I picked .8mm for this one as I needed a narrow coil.

After securing the excess wire end to the base wire I begin twisting it round to form a coil. The spring will open up as it goes which gives the great intricate effect.
A tip here I learnt is to crimp the securing wire down with some flat nosed pliers to the base wire so that your coil doesn't spin round as you twist it.

When the coil is coming to an end just finish as it begun with several turns around the base wire and then a firm crimp with the pliers to lock the twist.

And there is the basic coil. I use it just like this sometimes, but there are variations on the design, sometimes I add a core wire through the spring before coiling it which will be shown as its twisted. Another thing I do regularly is add an extra piece of thinner gauge wire to the coil as shown below.

The best thing about wire wrapping is once you've learnt the main 5, maybe 6 techniques, you can then change different variables and experiment to come up with all sorts of patterns and designs. The wire gauge, the tension, the wire type or colour, will all give you different results.

---

Disclaimer: This may have been a rather dry post unless you're really into wire wrapping. If you got this far, congratulations, if you skipped to the end I understand!

---

---

Previous Post - Sterling Silver & Moonstone

Previous Post - Copper & Moonstone

---