I'm just starting out playing around with wire and until I get some experience I'm not using silver wire.

Today I was playing around with some BeadSmith 20 ga silver wire, which has a silver colored coating on copper.

First, what is the actual metal used for the silver coating? Whatever it is, its so thin, it wears off very easy at bends even when using nylon covered pliers.

If I spend the effort to make something with wire like this, how does it actually hold up in use. I'm concerned that copper is too soft and will easily pull out of shape. I'm makling a necklace with around 16 spiral loops each one about .75" that will be connected with jump  rings.

I've made some projects with it in the past and didn't have that problem with it unless I had to go back and rework it. That is not a good idea. It's a once through deal and won't take a lot of rework. I don't know what it is plated with but it does stay shiny for a long time and has worn well for me. Like most copper wire it does work harden rapidly so do what your going to do the first time through. If you are just playing around developing ideas just use plain copper wire,it's cheaper. It cannot be solder as the finish burns off.

Well that clarifies something and helps. A week ago I thought that copper got work hardened, but I was in a jewelry supply store and asking about soft wire and half-hard wire. They told me that only applies to silver wire because silver wire got work hardened and copper does not. So I was thinking that the wire would continue to stay soft even after I worked it.

 All metals will work-harden and anneal.  HOW hard or how soft varies.  The craft wire, as far as I know, is always dead soft, but not usually specified as such.

 Not all the "craft wires" are the same.  Some are enameled, some are anodized. Some have clear-coat over the color -- I've had pretty good luck with "Zebra wire" brand for a coated copper. OTOH I got something dark blue off a shelf at JoAnn's and it is AWFUL, it scratches if you look at it wrong.   If you don't hate the color of copper, plain old copper wire is a good "cheap" wire to work with. It's kind of popular right now, too.    Brass is also inexpensive, but the dead-soft brass I have seems harder than half-hard sterling.  It's considerably more difficult work with at 16ga.

Sterling actually isn't THAT expensive and you can collect your scrap bits and recycle them.  I send mine back to Rio and get a store credit for 75% of the silver market value.  It can be mixed sterling and fine silver including sintered MC.  So the mistakes aren't quite as expensive as all that...

I like copper, so I have a couple  of spools of  it and also one spool of brass to experiment with.

Right now I'm limited to what local suppliers have in stock. I'm in Canada and I'm finding that shipments from suppliers in the US are taking over 3 weeks to arrive, or that they only ship via UPS.

I used to get a lot of things shipped up here and the delivery used to be less than a week. I've been told that increased security  at the border slows things down.  UPS charges an exorbitant cross borderhandling fee on top of the actual delivery.

 

 

 Before you use copper wire, you can harden it.

To harden copper wire, clamp one end of the wire in a vice. Holde the other end with a flat nose pliers and stretch the wire so far as possible. You can stretch a 1 meter wire to about 1,20 m or more, before it breaks. Copper can not be hardened by heat treating.

Edmund

www.emailkunst.de

I forgot! If you heat up the wire to about 600 degree Celsius or more after the stretching, the wire gets soft again. 

 That's interesting - I do stained glass and the lead strips that are used to frame the glass are very soft and will bend under their own weight. Prior to use, I have a little clamp-on vice that I put one end of the lead in, and then use gripping pliers and using my whole body weight I pull out the lead adding several inches to the length.

It's quite remarkarkable, as the lead transforms instantly into a ridgid material  ready to be cut to size.

 At the risk of hijacking the thread -- apologies -- Edmund, what does it take to anneal brass and how soft will it get?  I have the feeling that just being wound on the spool it was delivered on hardens it, maybe it would be easier to work with if I heated it prior to shaping.

That's one of the problems I have found with the craft wire, it is somewhat hardened after being wound on the smaller spools. It doesn't appear to affect the smaller gauges as much as the larger gauges of wire. Then add the stress added by manipulating the wire and all to quickly you have over work wire that is really stiff.

That person at the craft store sure didn't know much about what they were selling if they told you copper didn't work harden.

 That's a good point Bentiron, and I don't think you can safely anneal coated coppers!

 You can soften brass by annealing on a limited scale. It is on the brass alloy dependent. Heat up the wire to about 600-650 degree Celsius. Then quench it in cold water. Because the brass by heating cindering you must pickle it. A save pickle is 10% Alum salt + 90% water. Working temperature about 50 degree Celsius.
All metalls which we use in our art, you can harden by distortion. After annealing it gets soft again.

You can only anneal coated wire if it is silver plated very well  . Do not heat up the wire to more than about 600-650 degree Celsius