Page 20     Jewelry Making with Beads and Wire -- What a Beginner Needs to Know

The last jewelry making topic to discuss is hardening jewelry wire.  Just as during the manufacturing process wire can be made in one of several hardness's, when making jewelry a wire artist can change the hardness of a jewelry wire component.  Most of us have experience in breaking a wire coat hanger by bending it back and forth many times.  With the coat hanger, we were changing the hardness of the wire by "work hardening" it.  Each bend increased the hardness of the wire until we saw one of the drawbacks of very hard wire -- it became brittle and broke.  With our jewelry wire components we want to make them permanent, so we frequently want to increase the hardness of the wire.  This happens naturally as part of manipulating the wire into shape by work hardening.  We can use nylon jaw pliers to help with this manipulation and by squeezing the piece in the jaws of the pliers we can work harden the piece.  We can also significantly increase the hardness of the wire by hammering it with a chasing hammer or nylon hammer and anvil.  When making ear wires, using a chasing hammer will be an important step to set the round portion of the ear wire and make it permanent.  (Please note: do not hammer wire where one wire segment crosses over another piece of wire.  that can cause the wire to break.)