I tried this a few days ago with 12 gauge wire, but yesterday we tried a thicker 8 gauge. And later in the day we drove to Lowe's and got another thickness from their electrical section.
Here are two 8 inch pieces cut from the 6 gauge wire we bought yesterday. First, the pieces were annealed, then marked ... one where I'll twist only in the middle, and the other where I'll twist three times.
The wire is in the rolling mill with the middle mark centered between the rollers. You simply rock the handle back and forth, tighten, rock back and forth, tighten, and so on. You can check your progress by pulling out the wire.
The wire was rolled until the marked part was half the thicken, shown in this photo. Of course, if you do not have a rolling mill, anneal the wire and get out your hammers!
Then the wire was annealed only in the rolled part. One end was secured in the vise, the other end held with locking pliers. All you have to do then is twist in one direction until you like the result. In case of wire you rolled in three places, if the end being held in the vise is not twisting the same as the end closest to you, reverse the ends in the vise and pliers and twist it more. Be careful .... as you can over-twist!!
A blurry photo, but you can see the twist.
Here is the wire with one twist and the other with three. They started out as 8 inch pieces. See how they have grown? Interesting!
Here are all my experiments so far. From the right, the first two wires are the 6 gauge, then the 8 gauge, and the thinnest 12 gauge. The thinnest wire isn't thick enough for bangles, but wouldn't it be perfect for hoop earrings? I'll work on these and show my finished projects in a future post. So are you inspired to try this?!! I'd love to hear from you!
I totally missed this post - lovely tutorial - now I see how you did it
ReplyDeleteI love making mistakes - takes you outside the box and get the feel for what you need to do and possible give you other ideas - just love the bangles