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Daily Wire Tip Dec. 13: Removing Nicks and Scratches

By on December 13, 2009
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Daily Wire Jewelry Making Tip
December 13, 2009

Question:

How do I remove the nicks & scratches from 16/18 ga wire? I’ve used needle nose pliers to wrap 24 ga around it in several places and a loop on the top?

Answer:

If the nicks are coming from using the needle-nose chains to hold the large wire while you coil a smaller around it, try using a pair of flat-nose pliers to hold your work instead. You can also temporarily cover the area of wire you are holding with tape.

Answer contributed by Dale “Cougar” Armstrong

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8 Comments

  1. avatar

    Shirley

    December 13, 2009 at 10:23 am

    Those are great preventative tips, but once you’ve got the scratches there are things you can do. You can tumble your piece for about an hour. That will remove lots of small scratches. So will using very fine steel wool. Or, if you have a dremel, you can use one of the soft tips to polish it.

  2. avatar

    Ken

    December 13, 2009 at 2:12 pm

    You mention using needle nose pliers to do your projects. If these are the pliers used by electricians, they have teeth cut into the jaws. Not Good for wire wrapping.

    If your pliers are smooth you may find it helpful to lightly file, sand or use an India stone to soften the sharp edges of the jaws of all your pliers.

    To remove the light scratches you can use jewelers rouge with a Dremel or Foredom. The nicks may be more troublesome. Some light filing or sanding may be needed before using rouge.

    Ken

  3. avatar

    stan

    December 13, 2009 at 8:05 pm

    Dale:
    your answer was good on how to prevent getting scratches and nicks on the wire as you wrap it. but you did not answer the question. the question was how do you REMOVE scratches and nicks from the wire?

    normaly you have good to great answers but some times you miss the mark and not answer the question at all.
    stan

    • avatar

      dalecgr

      December 14, 2009 at 1:19 pm

      Ok everyone – after rereading this, I admit I did not directly answer this question and I do apologize. I had presumed that folks would have read previous posts to similar questions and I had decided to suggest how to avoid nicks to begin with. Yes, you can remove them in a variety of ways (some posted here by readers) including steel wool, diamond files, etc. I will try to be more diligent in the future. Thanks!

  4. avatar

    Dorothy Ridenour

    December 13, 2009 at 10:55 pm

    A burnishing tool would help.

  5. avatar

    Jessie Adams

    December 16, 2009 at 1:02 pm

    Wow that’s a loaded question. If your talking precious metal wire (sterling,argentium,fine silver or gold) burnishing will work. Gold filled is a little trickier because it is a double layer material with gold on the outside and base metal (or silver in the case of vermeil) on the inside. If its GF or vermeil you may be kind of stuck,
    One of the things that I have done in the past with precious metal wire is to pattern the wire using my rosary or round pliers to incorporate some kind of camoflaging texture to the wire. I usually do this sometime about a third of the way through the fabrication process. For example when I am making a hook clasp and have the wire loops formed and the hook already to be formed. That way you have access to all the wire to pattern without running the risk of distorting your completed piece.

    I hope everyone is saving their scrap. While it doesn’t seem like very much with Gold now at $1141 and silver at $17.65 as of this morning,it adds up quite a bit.

    For example…
    (this is a true story.)
    A young woman had worked in her families jewelry store for several years as a bench(fabrication and repair) jeweler. When she got engaged her father offered her and her fiance any diamond engagement ring of there choice in the store. The young woman thanked her father but asked if she could have the old barrel next to her bench instead. A little surpised her father agree. The barrel contained all the scrap bits,sweepings, and expired polishing buffs that had been used . Off it went to gold reclamation, and back came a check for $10,000.00 (mind you I heard this back in the 80’s when gold was running closer to $100.)

    Hope everyone has a safe and Happy Holiday Season.

    May Gold prices be low and your sales be high
    Jessie

  6. avatar

    Beverly Cole

    December 18, 2009 at 1:29 am

    When I nick and scratch my wire I just run the finished piece in my rock polisher with steel shot for about 3-4 hours and that seems to work

    • avatar

      dalecgr

      December 18, 2009 at 10:56 am

      For those who would like to use a tumbler, many of you do not know that we have rewritten a lot of the information in our updated Resource Center (left side of home page, bottom) including a new article on how to tumble your wire jewelry.
      http://wire-sculpture.com/wire-jewelry-artists/269/tumbling-your-jewelry/
      Although there are still a few pages ‘in-progress’, take a few minutes to browse through our new pages and let us know what you think!
      Dale/Cgr