– It’s easy enough to buy square or half round wire in precious metals but it’s harder to find anything other than round wire in other metals.
The obvious solution to this problem is buying a rolling mill, or square drawing plates, but since they’re expensive, I was thinking of alternatives I could use. In the past, for smaller pieces, I’ve hammered the metal but it takes practice to get an even result.
I thought about my Sizzix but you’d have to keep opening and closing the sandwich and since the plates are plastic, I’m not sure it would work.
When I finally thought about the obvious solution I felt really stupid for not considering it before: I have a pasta machine!
In the picture you can see, from left to right, round 0,8 mm wire and next to it is the flattened version after going through the pasta machine on one of it’s thinnest settings (I think it was setting 8). Next to that is a 1 mm round aluminium wire and finally the flat version of the same on the thinnest setting. It makes a great flat wire for braiding or wrapping.
Annealing the copper wire may be necessary to make it soft enough.
I’m sure a lot of people have thought of this before since it seems so obvious but I decided to make a post just in case in can help anyone else.