How to make gold rings.

Before you start making wire-wrapped jewellry, you will need a few tools. Several sets of pliers including round-nose, chain-nose, and flat-nose are needed as well as a pair of side cutters. A pin vise is very handy for holding the wire while you are working with it.

The overall design of the gold will highly determine the price not to mention that the white gold fetches more price than the yellow one. Personal taste and craftsmanship determines ones taste in choosing jewelry. A really useful gadget to get for wire wrapping is a bending jig. This tool will help you make uniform bends and curves in your wire.

A pin vise is very handy for holding the wire while you are working with it. You will also need a ring mandrel for bending smooth curves and sizing rings, a rawhide mallet, a millimeter gauge, needle file, steel ruler, and steel scribe. A wire twister tool falls into this category. You can do small amounts of wire twisting without it, but if you decide that you really like using this technique in your creations, you will want to own one.

A very nice jig is called the Wigjig® and consists of an acrylic board with holes drilled in it. You insert metal pegs in the holes to create patterns around which the wire is wrapped. These are inexpensive and make it much easier to lay out your designs. Some are made to hold multi-strands of beads and some only one. All of them have little open compartments for holding your extra beads while designing.

There are many choices available for wire wrapping. Start out with 18 - 20 gauge wire. The best metal for the beginner to learn on is brass, also known as Jeweler's Bronze or Merlin's Gold. Brass wire is very inexpensive and is sold in 1-pound coils.
In addition to brass, there is copper, sterling silver, gold-filled, and niobium to choose from. Niobium comes in lots of interesting colors, including teal, purple, blue, and gold.

You should buy wire designated "half-hard" except for brass. Buy "full-soft" brass wire because brass is much harder than sterling silver, gold, or copper. You can do wire wrapping with "full-soft" silver but it will not be as durable and will bend out of shape easily. "Full-hard" will be very difficult to work with.

Make sure the beads you want to use all have holes large enough to slip easily onto the gauge wire you will be using. Lay out your beads in the bead board or on a towel. Fiddle them around until you have a pleasing arrangement, leaving space between each one to allow for the wire connections.

Estimate how much wire you will need for the large ring and smaller ring and cut off this length. Make the larger ring first and wrap the free end of wire around at the base of the loop, then make a smaller ring to attach to the next in the series. Cut pieces of wire the approximate size you think you will need.

Cut a piece of wire approximately the correct size and make a small loop like in the other beads. Bend the longer end of the wire in half and back onto itself to form a hook to fasten a closure. You can make it more interesting by adding more links of wire and using fewer beads. This is where the bending jig comes in handy, for making unusually shaped links and having them all come out the same.