how to choose beading wire

Which wire to make jewelry?

What is jewelry wire?

Stranded wire is made up of several small strands of stainless steel, braided together and covered with a nylon sheath. It is the strongest material available for jewelry-making. It can support very heavy beads, depending on wire diameter and number of strands.
The higher the number of strands, the more flexible and resistant the cord. For example, 49-strand stranded wire is more flexible than 7-strand stranded wire. The finer it is, the more flexible it will appear.
On the other hand, the more strands there are in a corded wire, the more expensive it is for similar diameters and lengths. Since it's made of stainless steel, it won't rust.

How to choose your corded wire?

There are several factors to consider when choosing a jewelry wire. Some very specific jewelry pieces require rigid wires to create volume in the design. Most of the time, however, you'll need a strong, flexible wire. You should also note the hole diameter of the beads you'll be using and the strength required to hold your creation in place.

A. Wire diameter

Above is an example of how to finish a piece of wire jewelry. You don't knot the wire to finish your creation. Use crushable beads, crushable bead covers (optional), and wire protectors (optional). We invite you to see how it's done in this article: What are wire protectors?

Look at which bead has the smallest hole diameter. Your wire should not exceed this diameter. As with any attractive finish, you need to be able to pass the wired threads through the end beads a second time. The hole in the pearls near the end of the jewel must be twice as large as your wired thread.
Stranded wire comes in a wide variety of diameters, from 0.25 mm ideal for rocailles, to 0.91 mm more suited to glass beads. The most commonly used wire diameters range from 0.36 mm to 0.46 mm.

Of course, the thicker your wire, the more strands it will have and the more resistant it will be, provided the jewel is closed correctly. So sometimes you have to make concessions or change the beads near the clasp so that they have a larger hole.

B. Wire flexibility

You also need to think about how flexible you want your design to be. Unless your creation requires your wire to remain in the air, as in the case of wedding necklaces composed of several aerial wires, or the wire used is very fine (less than 0.38 mm), then there's little point in choosing 7-strand.
Choose 49-strand twisted wire when your creation requires great flexibility and strength. Choose 19-strand stranded wire when your creation requires good flexibility, and 7-strand stranded wire when your creation requires medium flexibility.

C. Wire strength

Finally, the strength of the setting will vary according to the weight of your creation, the frequency with which you intend to wear it, and the quality of the finish used to close the jewel.
Very often, when a piece of jewelry breaks, the break occurs at the clasp or at a point that has been weakened by a fold.

The strength of your creation will depend on a good crushing technique. Indeed, poor crushing can weaken the wire, which will tend to break at the level of the bead to be crushed. Flat pliers will crush the strands and weaken the wire. Many people still use this method rather than the one described below, as it's much easier to do.
But if your necklaces and bracelets break regularly and quickly, you may want to change the way you finish your jewelry first. We invite you to use pliers specifically designed to crush pearls. These pliers are available for different sizes of beads to be crushed. Follow the steps illustrated below or our technical sheet to learn how to make beautiful finishes with crushable pearls.

Choose crush beads with a hole slightly larger than the diameter of your wire x2 :

• If your wire is 0.38 mm. 0.38 x 2 = 0.76 mm. So choose a crush bead with a 1 mm hole.
• If your wire is 0.61 mm. 0.61 x 2 = 1.22 mm. Take a crush bead with a 1.5 mm hole.

D. Wired wire brands

There are various brands of cabled wire. The best-known are Beadalon wires. There's also the Griffin brand.
Lately, we've been introducing new Soft Flex wires. This brand is of very high quality, but above all, it has the advantage of designing its wires for a particular use, unlike Beadalon and Griffin, which make wires for a more generic use.
On each product page, you'll see for which use the wire is intended. For example, for rocailles and freshwater pearls, for heavy glass beads and for certain other specific techniques...

To summarize