Here at Pepetools, a question we get asked a lot is how to make wire. So here we will show you the different tools and techniques to make your own wire from silver and gold.
Drawplates
The secret to making wire, or reducing down thicker wire, is the drawplate. This is a hardened steel plate with a series of holes that reduce in size. The holes are tapered at the back, allowing you to push the end of a piece of wire through. Using tongs, the wire is pulled through increasingly smaller holes to make it round, reducing its size, or even changing its shape. Round holes are the most common, but you can also get drawplates in square, D shape, and even triangular.
Pepetools offer a range of superb quality draw plates in a variety of shapes and sizes. Crafted for us in Italy, from specially hardened steel,
They provide precise, uniform shapes and offer great value.
Using a drawplate is very simple. Let’s imagine you have some heavy-gauge round wire, and you want to make it into thinner round wire. Begin by filing the end of the wire to form a sharp point, at least an inch. Try the wire in various holes until you find the smallest one that it will pass through easily. The next smallest hole is where we will start. Poke the point of the wire through the plate from the back (the tapered side) and ensure that there is enough of the point poking through the front to get a firm hold on, with the tongs. Secure the drawplate in something solid like a bench vice and pull the wire through the hole. There should be a little resistance. Adding a drop of oil or grease to the wire and the back of the hole will help greatly. Important tip: ideally, you should try to pull the entire length through in one smooth, continuous pull. Stopping and starting, regripping the wire, can often cause kinks.
Once the wire has been completely pulled through the hole, move on to the next smaller hole, again poking the point through the drawplate from the back, and pulling from the front. Re-sharpen the point of the wire as necessary to allow you to poke it through the smaller holes, again allowing enough at the front to get a firm hold of it.
As the wire is pulled through successively smaller holes, it gets thinner and longer
Check your dimensions
Some drawplates will have the precise diameter of the hole engraved on the front of the plate; others are sequentially numbered, which makes it easy to follow where you are, but the numbers do not necessarily correspond to dimensions. So, if the size is important, then check the wire with precise callipers after each pass.
Annealing.
As you draw the wire repeatedly through the plate, it will get narrower and longer. Remember, you aren’t removing any metal, it will always be the same weight, just longer and thinner. But drawing can quickly work to harden the wire. If the wire is difficult to pull through and doesn’t bend easily, then it will need annealing. .
Tip:- Use Pepetools steel binding winding wire
to keep your silver coiled if it's springy, whilst annealing
Coil the wire and, using a large soft flame, heat the wire gently until it glows with a deep cherry red. You must anneal in the dark to avoid overheating the wire. Hold the cherry red for a few seconds by just waving the tip of the flame around the wire to maintain an even cherry red (do not overheat to bright red / orange/yellow). Remove the torch and allow the wire to air cool for a few seconds to “black heat”, this is where the wire is no longer glowing (in the dark) but remains very hot. Now quench in water. Check how the wire feels; it should be softer and easier to bend. Dry the wire thoroughly before drawing again (your drawplate is steel and will rust).
Get a grip.
It’s important that you get a firm hold of the wire and maintain that grip as you pull the wire through. Jewelry pliers with smooth jaws won’t work for this. Many people like the adjustable locking grips used by engineers and plumbers, also known as MOLE grips. These lock onto the wire, making it easier to maintain a grip. Alternatively, you can buy speciality pliers called “draw tongs”; these have serrated jaws for added grip and usually feature curved hooked handles, which allow for maximum pulling power. The hooked handles also allow the tongs to be used with a draw bench…
Drawtongs help to pull the wire through the plate.
Note the hooked handles and the large metal ring.
Drawbench.
A drawbench is a large tool that can make drawing wire faster and easier. In its simplest form, it’s a long piece of metal or wood, with a clamp at one end to hold the drawplate, and at the other end a small winch. The winch is attached to a large metal ring which slips over the hooked handles of the draw tongs. As the cable is winched, the ring pulls the handles together and helps to pull the wire. The small winches typically contain a couple of gears and a long handle, which gives a mechanical advantage, making it easy to pull thick and heavy gauge wire through the drawplate. Although commercially made drawbenches make pulling wire very simple, they have two main drawbacks. The first is the length; the maximum length of wire you can draw in one pull is limited by the length of the drawbench. You can detach the tongs and re-grip the wire again to keep pulling longer lengths through, but this can sometimes kink the wire and is also time-consuming. The other important factor with commercial drawbenches is their cost, which can be quite expensive even for short bench top versions.
Typical design of a drawbench. Note how the metal ring hooks over the tongs to attach them to the winch. The drawplate is held in place by clamps or brackets.
Dave’s top tip: -Make your own drawbench!
Making your own drawbench is incredibly simple and can be made in minutes. I made my own with only three components.
A Boat winch, a Plank of wood, and a cheap vice. (I already had the draw tongs and various draw plates). I purchased a very cheap small boat winch from Amazon (literally just a few dollars) and also used a “very” cheap machinist’s vice. The final component was simply a long plank of wood. This can be anything, as long as it’s fairly thick and strong. The longer the plank, the more wire you can pull in one go. Mine is about 6’ long. The winch is simply bolted to one end, and the vice is bolted to the other. Simple as that, it took seconds. The winch hook clips onto my draw tongs, and the drawplate is clamped into the vice. Using this, I can draw yards and yards of wire very quickly and easily, on my own. Some people simply use a couple of shelf brackets to hold the drawplate, so you don’t even need a vice. Just a plank of wood and a winch. Simple and super cheap - but very effective.
Changing shape.
If you want to change the shape of the wire, it’s important to begin with thicker stock than your final dimensions. For example, if you begin with square wire from a rolling mill, and you want to make it round, you need the square wire to be wider than your desired round diameter. If the square wire is already smaller, then all you will do is round off the corners, leaving flat sides. And the final wire will not be round. Ensure that your starting wire is larger in diameter than the final size you want.
Starting with a square wire which is too small may result in the final round wire having clipped corners and not being fully round.
Using a Pepetools Mill
If you want to make your own wire from the start, by recycling scrap, then you are going to need a rolling mill and a method to melt and cast your scrap into ingots. Begin by melting down your scrap either using a torch or an electric furnace. Pepetools have several ingot moulds, specially created for making cast ingots from your scrap metal. However, it would be impossible to pull a large ingot through a drawplate, so it must first be reduced down into a thinner, uniform bar. A combination rolling mill is perfectly designed for doing this. Using V-shaped (square) rollers, you can reduce the cast ingot down into a uniform square bar or reduce it even further to thinner square wire. Note the comment above to stop when the square dimension is a little larger than the round diameter wire you want. After annealing, the square wire can then be pulled through the drawplate to reduce the diameter and make it perfectly round.
Pepetools 130mm Combo Mill. (Other sizes are also available.)
Note the grooved rollers for making square wire from ingots.
Specialist rolling mills.
Pepetools also make Rolling Mills with specialist 'All Wire Rollers', which have square, round, and oval grooves. These specialist mills can quickly help turn cast ingots into usable rods and wire. The Pepe 4:1 gearbox fitted to the mills provides a great mechanical advantage, helping to reduce heavy stock quickly and easily, with minimal effort. You can then quickly fine-tune the dimensions by drawing the wire through a drawplate as required.
Pepetools "All Wire" 130mm ULTRA Mill.
Note the rollers have assorted grooves for round, oval, Square and D shape wire.
Not just for wire
A drawplate isn’t just for making wire; it can (sometimes) also be used to change the shape of chains. If you’ve ever seen perfectly round or square Byzantine chains, these have been created by pulling through drawplates. A round belcher chain can be pulled through a drawplate to make the links oval (and the chain longer). Likewise, woven wire chain designs such as “French knitting’ can be reduced and compacted by using a draw plate. It can also be used to make tubing!. A drawplate is more useful than you might think.
For drawplates, pliers, and a vast selection of rolling mills, check out Pepetools for all your needs. ( Plus...We also sell wire !)
