Wire Wrapped Jewelry

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We Have a Drawer Full of Side Cutters, That’s Expensive

We have been doing wire wrapping for many years and have ended up with a drawer full of side cutters. They range from under $7 to around $45 in price. There seems to be two themes, the $7-$10 range and the over $40 range. The cutters in the middle don’t offer much advantage, and for my money, $10 or less will get you what you need, read on.

When I reach for a cutter I head for only a couple pairs, depending what I am cutting. For wire wrap, I head to my Value Series Cutter or my 5″ Flush Diagonal Cutters.

If I am cutting something hard, I have some cheap cutters purchased in the 1970s. They cut memory wire and are used on projects around the house.

If you want a near-perfect cut, you are going to have to spend $45+ on a cutter, as I did. Did I mention I broke mine the first day I had them. They had a fine cutting edge that was no match for my smooth touch.

Now, I don’t worry about the tiny blip in the middle of the cut wire. If it is an issue I hit it with a file.

Where it is a big issue is with ear wires. We sell a lot of earrings and the ear wire is sometimes part of the design. (If it is not, we use ear wires from Rio Grande.)

You can not get away with simply cutting the end you poke through your ear, leaving it untreated. We used to carefully file it down to a rounded point. That was hit and miss. Then we discovered Cup Burs. They are a small bit that is used in a rotary tool. They are sized to match different wire gauges. We now keep a cup bur for each of the wire sizes we commonly use.

You cut your wire and stick the cut end into the cup and turn on the rotary tool, a perfect end every time.

Get a decent pair of side cutters and spend a few dollars on a selection of cup burs.

Steve

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Floating Swirls Pendant



Click  image to enlarge.
Floating Swirls. Swirls of pink and greens float over layers of green, silver, aqua and soft white clouds in this fused dichroic glass pendant wrapped in Sterling Silver wire. The main bundle of Sterling Silver wires are wrapped with Gold Filled wires as an accent. There is a Champaign colored, heart shaped CZ at the top of the piece. The bail will easily hold a wide Omega chain or an 8 mm bead necklace. Total length including bail is 2.5″ x 1.25″ at the widest. The glass length is 1.5″ on the longest side, 1.25″ opposite side and 1.125″ across the bottom.

Item #499, $78.00


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Copper Electroforming Anodes and Round Copper Wire

We have added two new products to our product line. We now sell Copper Electroforming Anodes and 18 gauge Round Copper Wire.

Our Electroformed beads and cabochons have been a big hit in Galleries. I got tired of paying $4.50 each so I bought a big enough quantity to enable us to offer them at $1.50 each. They are a bit thinner, but at a 66% discount, the slightly thinner anode is a good value.

We also started carrying round copper wire in 18 gauge. We offer this in 10 foot lengths for $2.95. This wire can be used for many wire jewelry projects and as hangers and baskets for Electroforming. It is also a great size for jump rings.

Copper Anode

Click Here for Copper Wire & Anodes

Steve

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Soaring Metal Prices and What it Costs to Wire Wrap

In the past week, two customers inquired about metals. One was concerned about the soaring price of Sterling Silver and the other curious about how much wire you get per Troy Ounce.

This is based upon a spot price of sterling at $14.52 a Troy Ounce.

Here is the length of of wire per Troy Ounce for various gauges:
21 Ga Square Sterling Silver has 20 feet per ounce, around $1.08 per foot
21 Ga Square 14kt Gold Filled has 22.2 feet per ounce, around $2.48 per foot

16 Ga Half Round Sterling Silver has 15.4 feet per ounce, around $1.39 per foot
16 Ga Half Round 12kt Gold Filled has 17.9 feet per ounce, around $2.73 per foot

22 Ga Half Round Sterling Silver has 55.6 feet per ounce, around $ .39 per foot
22 Ga Half Round 12kt Gold Filled has 69.9 feet per ounce, around $ .70 per foot

monsterslayer.com

Remember that Monsterslayer and Rio Grande repurchase any scrap metal. They pay 75% of the Spot price of the metal towards a metal purchase. The price you pay for Sterling and Gold filled is a combination of the Spot price plus the fabrication cost of the metal. This morning the spot price of sterling was $14.52 and 21 Square wire was $21.52, so there is a $7 fabrication cost.

A ring with 8 bundle wrap wires in Sterling Silver would cost around $7.50 to make. That would include two bundle wrap wires and the wire to cover the shank.

Say you get it finished and it is terrible, just cut out the cabochon and add it to your scrap container. When you get a bit in the container, send it back for trade to Monsterslayer:
Scrap

They give you 75% of the Spot price of the metal as trade for new wire. 75% of the spot price is $10.89 an ounce. It only takes about 1/3 ounce to make a ring, or about $7.50 worth of sterling. The trade in value of that .33 ounces is around $3.60. So for $7.50 you have a sterling ring, or you spent $3.90 practicing if you wreck it.

Steve

3 responses so far

Accepting Credit Cards, Safely

If you have an online business, I would recommend you do as we have done and start accepting credit cards via PayPal. We have done this for several reasons.

First, a merchants account where you accept credit cards, is expensive. They charge a monthly fee, plus transaction fees. The transaction fees are usually about what PayPal charges without the monthly fees.

Secondly, we did not want anything to do with dealing with handling customer’s credit cards. One of our favorite online retailers was hacked and hundreds of customers’ credit cards were compromised. It was a nightmare for them, and they still feel the aftermath of that horror story.

PayPal lets you easily print a shipping label and packing slip. We use two-up Avery Labels so addressing packages is painless. The shipping label includes postage, so no need for a trip to the Post Office. The postage is deducted from your PayPal balance as a separate transaction, so shipping costs are easily tracked for tax purposes. PayPal can be set up to notify the buyer of the shipment.

We use Mals eCommerce, a free shopping cart. They have an easy interface to PayPal.

We use USPS Priority Mail, so the boxes are provided for free by the USPS. PayPal also has a link so we can schedule a USPS carrier pickup.

Get your account and start today:

Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.

Steve

2 responses so far

Show Tents- What You Don’t Know May Blow You Away

We finally decided to join the show circuit (circa 1996) which required, among other things, a Show Tent. So we started going to shows to see what different vendors used. There seemed to be two general classes of tent, easy to put up and not so easy, so we figured there must be some trade-offs. This turned out to be the case, with several trade-offs to consider.

If it is easy to put up:
Pros:
Light weight
Usually can be erected by one person.
Inexpensive
Setup and tear-down can be done quickly

Cons:
Big wind can move them more easily.
If anchored against big wind, it can be more easily destroyed.

If harder to put up:
Pros:
Less likely to blow away in a big wind.
It will take big winds if anchored properly.

Cons:
Heavy
Expensive
Will likely require more than one person for at least part of the setup
Setup and tear-down a bigger effort

After talking with several vendors we decided to go with an Archtop. We got the side screens, top window and side flaps. Total cost around $1000. We used it for dozens of shows where we sold wire wrapped jewelry and my beads. We also, during our 5 years on the road in an RV, erected it in front of our bus to use as a studio for the summer. It worked great for that. When I was working on developing a signature bead, we rented a tank of liquid oxygen to run my torch. The tent was a great studio for the RV park. We used it every day for the months we were in Duluth. We anchored it down with ground augers, the kind you screw into your back lawn to keep Fido confined to an area.

I was listening to the radio one day and the weather bulletin advised of a rapidly moving front approaching with 80 MPH winds. Yikes, I called the RV park owner and went to my tent where I tied the 700 pound liquid oxygen tank to the tent structure for a little extra support. Good thing, the 80 MPH winds hit and our tent strained but stayed save and in place. The RV down wind was not confident that it would and moved. He had a $600,000 rig with a paint job that had to be $50k, so I was a bit relieved to see him move too.

Shows are a better test of what you need in a tent. Either way you go, it needs to be white. Some shows require white, but on a practical note, get white just because of problems from the color cast given off by blue tents. Inside of a blue tent you can not properly judge colors, and if customers try on an item and look in a mirror, the blue cast will suck the life out of their skin tone. Nobody like looking like Morticia from the Addams Family.

The side screens were wonderful for allowing air flow while controlling access to the space.  They also come with canvas covers that Velcro on the inside so you have a secure tent at night or to control the sun or wind.  Our front flap was divided in three pieces that zip and each could be rolled up to the top.  This allowed you to control traffic flow.  The one part we never used was the back awning.  This gives you extra covered backspace for processing and storage.

We were caught up in several situations where big winds hit our show. One danger of having a flimsy or unanchored tent is having it do damage to others property. If your tent rips through a booth stuffed with expensive art, you could run up quite a tab.

There are several ways to anchor tents, we have seen some clever systems. Most of the time you will not be able to use ground anchors, you will be in a street or parking lot. If you are on turf, use the Fido ground augers.

We used 4′ long pieces of 6″ PVC pipe filled with concrete with an Eye Bolt stuck in the top. These weighed a lot and served us well. One cleaver system involved water tanks that were filled on the show grounds and emptied as the show ended.

You are going to need to learn a knot or two. You will need to use a Tautline Hitch. Learn it and it will come in handy for the rest of your life. Google up ‘Tent Knots’

We have seen a few horror stories regarding show tents. You can push around a big sailboat with a 100 square foot sail. The wind gets under the tent and up it goes. I forget where we were, but I’ll never forget an unanchored tent getting about 200 feet in the air before disappearing into a body of water a few hundred yards away, not before doing thousands of dollars damage to other booths.

We got to where we could set up our Archtop in about 20 minutes, but that won’t happen the first time you try with any but the easiest tents.

We have quit doing shows and sell our wirewrapped jewelry through galleries and online. Shows are great fun and we met a lot of nice people, but they are a bit of work.

Susie and Steve
(Please leave comments and your thoughts below)

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Copper Practice Wire, or is it.

A customer asked the other day about our “Practice Wire.” I first started offering it so customers could practice on relatively inexpensive wire. When Silver got up to $17 an ounce, people started getting a little gun shy about wrecking an ounce or two as a beginner.

The truth is that it makes nice wire wrapped jewelry in it’s own right. Here is a photo of a piece Susie designed and Wrapped using copper wire. So if you are a jewelry designer and want to use copper, great. It also looks good with sterling bundle wraps.

Wire Wrapped Jasper

Steve

2 responses so far

One Opportunity Ends, Another Begins

Earlier today Susie picked up our inventory at the Gallery of Rockport. They will be closing their doors at the end of the year. It was a beautiful gallery with an emphasis on quality and high-end art. It was also good for a nice income every month. We will miss them, nice people with a true love of things of beauty.

Our agreement with them prevented online sales of our wirewrap jewelry, and the art glass jewelry that we make. That was gladly agreed to, to be included in this fine gallery.

I will spend the next few weeks updating our web site to include our jewelry.

Steve

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Site Builder

If you use a WYSIWYG style web page builder, or need one, here is Google’s Free version:
Click Here

Steve

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Interesting Lampwork Tutorials

Corina has several video tutorials at Google.

Click Here to start with a Frog tutorial.

Steve

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