Conversations in Wire with James Browning: Simple Cabochon Stone Wrap Using Soft Flex Craft Wire

[Music] hi everybody thanks for joining me for another installment of conversations in wire I'm your host James browning I'm a sales representative here for the softflex company we are a jewelry wire manufacturer based out of Sonoma California we do have a gallery that's open every Wednesday and Thursday and we'd love for you to stop by if you're in our area today we are going to be working on a simple cabochon stone wrap this is an example it's just basically taking your wire and capturing the bead it can be a drilled bead if you want but this works really well for non drilled as well so let's go ahead and get started all right well so let's start with supplies that we're going to need for this project we are going to need your base wire and then we're going to need a wrapping wire for my project I'm going to use 20 gauge silver and then we're going to use a half round a half rounds are cool this is 18 gauge silver plated pewter so it's a little darker then silver kind of looks like antique silver so it's going to give it an interesting look there is bright silver this is the only one that I had available at the moment so 1/2 round works really well when you're doing this style of wrap because it is flat on one side and so you end up creating really good connection points so there's the round and then I don't see this very good kind of but it's basically a half circle so literal a half round and you want to wrap with the flat side against your work because that'll give you the most contact points and make a really secure wrap I'm using a agate cabochon today cabochons are rounded on one side and flat on the other this style of wrap is designed for that type of stone there are other wraps that are better for round stones or for like random shaped stones like crystals or something like that so here's some more examples this is my favorite one that I've done so far this is using square wire this is something that softflex may carry in the future if I get enough requests for it I found this at the Tucson show and this is a shell that's how I incorporated swirls in it to match the actual stone itself or shell in this manner Oh what this style of rap does is it gives you it takes wires that you put together so it gives you a side of a basic bezel and then you take those wires and you capture it on the back and then on the front there are multiple different ways of capturing but you basically want to cage the bead so that it doesn't pop out this is one of the ways this is the one that basically we're going to do today or our style and then you can get crazy with your wraps this is the same basic style with the wires wrapped together as the side of the bezel and then taken in the back but then on the front I did a couple extra things with the wires that I had available and to design it's a little scarab and this is it was bare copper and I used liver of sulfur to patina it so it's no longer that bright silver look all right so let's get down and start working so my stone is a fairly general size generally I'm going to take my 20 gauge wire and I'm going to basically wrap it sort of gently around my stone just to kind of give me an eyeball of how much wire I'm going to need see that's a bit much I'm going to take it down just a little bit I think that's good because this the base wires are not going to change very much so that's my character all right so I'm going to cut here and this is going to be my guide wire to cut four more actually for this stone because it's rather thin I think we only need a total of four wires what you want to do is when you are designing your piece you kind of stack up the wires of the gauge that you're using and find out how many is going to be able to capture that stone successfully you're going to need at least I would say two for the side of the bail and then two more so that you can do your front and back wrap so that is a minimum of four cut wires now you can play with that number just don't go under four but the more wires should do the thicker your bail is going or not your bail but your bezel is going to be so it may swallow your stone a little bit but it also gives you more whiners to play with when you're making your design so as always feel free to experiment experiment the day my mouth is just not working today one more all right so we've got our four wires my tools that I'm using today wire cutter as always and my indispensable nylon jaw tool I have two sets of pliers here I have a bent nose and a round nose all of these tools come in our kit our beginner wire wrapping kit on our website WWF Lex company calm it's a great set because it comes with 22 gauge wire as well as these tools and basically if you don't have any of these tools to start with it's kind of discounted it gives you a great reason to get started so I'm going to straight my wires out and this project you kind of really do want them straight because you want them all to lay flat next to each other when you're doing this make sure that you turn the wire so that you get both directions make sure that all of your little bumps are gone all right so what I like to do is kind of just play with my wires and get them all nice and flat at least on one end I want to be honest your ends do not have to be perfect because we're going to be messing with those ends leader it's the main body of your wires that you want to stack next to each other really nice and tight and at this point if you have painters tape which is the blue kind you can get those out and basically just tape up the end so that your wires are going to kind of stay put next to each other I do not have tape right now but I do have my clamp and a good strong clamp is indispensable in your wire wrapping tool kit so I suggest to get one of these if you don't like to use clamps there is a jeweler's tool called a ring clamp it's basically a wooden tool that has a little wedge that goes in and creates the clamp I don't think that it grips as strong and so you can pull out your work a little easier when you're trying to get stuff done if you're adding too much tension this clamp that's really good I really enjoy it all right so now we are going to grab some half-round and we don't need very much so I'd say probably about fine it just to start that's a little bit more than that so let's go all right now I always recommend double check the end because remember I said we need to do the flat side against the wire so we looked carefully at the top and we can see that the round part is on top so basically it is like that all right now this is really simple we're going to try and find the middle part of this and we're just going to rip you know what let me show you a trick real quick then I squish this flat again if you have a set of flat nose pliers this works a little better but if you take your pliers and you just bend it around they'll have a nice sharp little bend there that you can catch your wires like that and that makes it easier to start this wrap okay so now I'm going to take my pliers and I'm just gonna give it a squish because I want them to be tight up against those lawyers and I'm going to wrap it around again I'm not gonna pull basically I'm just kind of directing the wire because you don't want to pull too hard or you can scrunch up your wires I want to keep this flat and I'm just going to bring it back down again right next to the first one and I'm gonna squeeze you can adjust as you go we're gonna do this about three to four wraps that's what we want and make sure you're checking that you're not overlapping your wires you okay I'm just going to take my tool here and kind of squish these together so that wrap is nice and neat now if you notice this first wrap is kind of taller than the other ones and that's okay we're going to do is unwrap that and just pull it back down and it will correct itself give it another good squish and I'm going to pull this around and flip it over for you guys to see so this would be the back of your work now to make sure that this doesn't come back it gets snagged and come back you want to cut these a little less than half of the width of your stacked wire I'm gonna hold on to this they go fly okay our first map is done let's try and get back to flap again here did I do you know what I was a good teaching moment because I wasn't paying attention my clamp twisted on me and so my flatness turned horizontal so I need to actually rewrite this it's going to take this hard work and this is one of the very nice things about while you're rapping I said if you mess up you can undo it as I crochet whereas if you are soldering your silver pieces together that is not as fun to take part I'm just going to flatten these out again and get that Bend out that twisted on me I think I can use this piece right here strain it out a little check for the top there it is give it a little bend all right so start straight again I know it's a little fiddly especially when you're working with teeny tiny pieces of wire so tape is always an option but my preferences were over you can always use tape the weight of this clamp is giving me problems today remember what we're doing is we're just laying them next to each other we're trying not to pull too hard and we said four reps let's just go five just to make sure squish them together nice and a good squish from the top just fiddle with them until you like them and then you can retake this one and wrap it back around give it a tighter look now when you're working with the wires you want to make sure that you're not bending them very much because these things are hard to take out want them to be as flat and a square with each other as they can be because this is going to be with the base of wrapping around your stone and we want that to be nice and secure alright let's clip this off now your raps can't slide I mean that's part of putting metal on metals not going to grab each other very well but while we're using these wraps for is to hold these wires in a flat line with each other trying to keep them together okay it looks to be about half so now I'm going to take my stone find the top of your stone wherever you decide it is and on the bottom I'm gonna try and find the middle and then we're going to gently and if you have like a mandrel or something that will help you make a nice gentle Bend use that because it's hard to make this bend around your stone at once so just work the wire where you needed to go and keep measuring it against your stone this is a teardrop shape so I'm just going to make it kind of start going that direction actually it's not a teardrop shape is it it's an oval but getting into here drop shape will help with that oval now that it's kind of where we want it to be it's easier to shape around it's not jumping out everywhere the other thing if your your stone is oddly shaped or if you're just having a hard time getting the shape right you can take the first wire instead of trying to do a bunch of them at the same time and you can fold that top wire out fold gently manipulate to match the kind of shape that you want and then you can use that as a guide to get the rest of the wires where you want them to go okay so we've gotten the basic shape now we're going to do two more reps basically in the middle here to help hold the stone in and keep our wires flat around that stone so that's good some more wire cut find our top looks like that's edge you know just make a quick end okay and this is a little tougher because you're working through your piece so just take your time and don't try and rush it 203 perhaps now what I like to do is try and remember how many reps I did on the center up and it looks like I did five years so I do fine here all kinds war and the last one now the thing that you want to be aware of which I was not when I was creating the shape of my wire is that if you notice the cuts here on the outside you really want them to be on the inside so they're hidden by the stone so that was a mess on my side but it's on the bottom so it's not like people are going to be staring at the bottom your stone very much so it should be okay so something's off I did not cut down one visitor a little bit more okay there that's good and we're just going to cinch everything together so it's nice and neat these wraps are basically part of our design so we want to keep them neat and secure all right I think I may have enough here to wrap the other side let's go straighten it out I'm the top quick end and the square nose our flat nose pliers give a better Bend so it doesn't bump up as far so every tool is different and it has different uses keep that in mind when you were playing with your wire three [Music] or and I just barely made that but that's good because no waste of wire especially when you are using like precious metal wire you really want to be cautious and conscious about how much you're wasting cool thing about wire though if you're using precious metal and it's pure you can always melt that down and I think Rio Grande still buys scrap metal and we check that out okay so now it is time for readjusting that's when you are playing with these wires because they're dead soft they're moving on rounder review they are moving around on you a lot there so what I like to do at this point is kind of weave these ends together sort of is gonna place them in between each other because that will basically allow them to shift back and forth and not get tangled there we go there there see another threaded between each other this allows them to just pass between each other nobody's getting tangled everything's staying flat okay so the next step now that we have our bezel basically set up is that we're going to start the back that's a little finicky but got two choices you can use your finger and grab it or you can use a tool but you want to take that last wire and hold onto as good as you can that we're basically trying to get this one wire to bend in like so and you can play with this shape as part of your design but this is the basic so when you drop your tab in it has some place to sit now and this is a good time to cinch up your corners now that the stone is going to stay in place for you a little and you can take a moment here and do the top as well I think getting this stone in is probably the hardest part of the process now in my designs I try not to overwhelm the stone on the front so I make these curves gentle just enough to grab it okay now we're going to finish up the back we're going to take the bottom two wires we're going to create the rest of the bed here and this is design this is your choice on how you want to do this I really enjoy spirals so I like I do just a gentle spiral here so basically we've got the stone captured it's not coming out the block back now I'm going to cut these wires down I'm going to take my round nose and I'm actually going to give them a trigger curl you know let's do this one a little differently let's go opposite now another thing you can do as part of your design is you can take pieces of wire that you shape and you can tie them with 28 gauge or whatever gauge you want to use and just basically tie them on and that will create a more sturdy back for you this place where you here would be a good place to wrap it down if you would like in your designs you want to make sure that wire is secure so that if you're wearing it it doesn't catch on a piece of clothing and ripped your design apart or damaged the clothing that you are wearing I am not happy with this barrel I'm actually even taking out some and tighten it up that way I like that better all right so we have the back the stone is still kind of trying to get out so that means we have to finish the front so we take the front - and we capture it somehow we can do the same sort of spirals or you can make a different design I'd say but this is a really linear stone it's got lots of straight lines so which is why we should find something that maybe that goes that let's try bending the wire down like this you my camera's sorry I was really into this so if you've seen any of my other videos you may know what I'm about to do try and make a little rose here you I'm going to curl these back okay I like that now I'm going to give these just a little twist that's gonna Snug up the piece and my stone is going nowhere all right which leaves these pieces here now technically you only need two wires to make a bail so we need to figure out how to get rid of the rest of these I'm going to do actually I'm going to get out so I'm a 28 gauge real quick and we're going to do some security so I'm going to get this one really quick because I want to make sure that that's not going anywhere okay so I've got this wrapped up I want to do at least three wraps because that will secure it Harden if you hear play employers or my fellow employees behind me they are a little loud today and I apologize I'm going to do just one more wrap it's going to make things a little easier here all right I'm just gonna go in and try and tuck any pokey out of it's behind me work so that nothing is sticking out and trapping people so now I'm pretty happy with the security of the back let's get these together so what I'm trying to do here is get the wires wrapped around here so that they're snug against the stone and that they're meeting up at the top and what I'm going to do when I get these to learn it want them because I'm going to wrap them together with that 28 28 gauge wire so that's going to secure them together and then I can start to play with the wire itself all right that's anything why are now even though this is a small section that could be hidden you still want to take your time and not really overlap your wire like nice gentle twists but always to at least four or more because that will secure your wire from unraveling you alright let's trim these off here and talk everything and burnish it down if I can feel it with your fingers see if anything's poking out making you feel uncomfortable alright it's a little bit more of a finicky project that we normally do so I apologize if it's frustrating but just keep going we're gonna get this one alright so I'm gonna go ahead and take one of these down on both the front and the back bring this one around so they kind of swooped together like this I'm going to bring it up and no I'm going to cut this even this part of the tutorial is going to be all about what you want to do no not to copy this at all uh you can even just cut those wires off if you wanted to like this now we've got a cool little and going on there in the front and you can take like a second beat or something and just put it through the hole there let me do that I just don't have any right now all right so now we have two wires side by side that are left I'm going to clip them even just so I have them even to start with and the easiest way to make this bail is to have a dowel so I'm going to show you the easiest way and you just take your dough and you bend your wires around that dowel and so now you have the start of a bail what I like to do is bring them up to project could I assume I'm gonna take some of the leftover 28-gauge and I'm going to wrap this in so it is secured and the size of your lashing wire doesn't have to be small you could use like the half round again if you wanted to continue the motif of the wraps around so it looks like a fourth wrap or you can use it just this was a 20 gauge base wire so you could use like a 22 gauge and just have it be slightly smaller and I like the 28 it's just because it's really unassuming all right let's clip that off and they're in furnishing panel okay all right now the finishing touch for me is to spread these out and the little V all right so now we have these things to deal with so I'm going to cut them short about there and guess what I'm gonna do I'm gonna curl them up I just love Curly's just so fun all right I just rub your finger over those curls and make sure that the ends are not going to catch on anything and you have a wrapped of stone all right let me clear up my space here so it can look at these a little better all right so basics don't capture I really simple just a little time-consuming but we've got a capture on the back and the front we've got a side bezel and now we've got the decorative touching and our bangle those are the basic design elements that you want to work with you can change your bail up can change what you're doing for your swirls and everything I can change the shape of the stone and by changing the shape of the wire you get a totally different look all right well I hope that was not too painful I know I enjoy hanging out with you guys so thanks for hanging out with me and as always hit that subscribe button give me a like if you have any questions ever feel free to leave something in the comments and I'll get back to you soon as I can thanks a lot you have a great day [Music] [Music]

Channel: Soft Flex Company

Views: 13,468

Rating: 4.811563 out of 5

Keywords: soft flex, soft flex wire, flex wire, craft wire, beading, jewelry making, jewelry making supplies, diy jewelry, soft flex company, james browning, cabochon stone, stone wire wrap, wire wrapping, wire work

Id: SCcyD0nY3Wk

Length: 56min 39sec (3399 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2019