Make a Scratchless Wire Wrapped Ring! Tutorial

All right, good morning. Let's go ahead and turn this little cute faceted pre-knight. It's about uh eight millimeter by six or seven and we'll turn it into a ring. I'm using 16 inches of 18 gauge round copper wire. You can use any wire you want and I'm going to find the approximate middle of it and I'm going to take my flat nose pliers and I'm going to grip the approximate middle of this wire. Put my thumb above and below and my finger above and just turn just turn this wire so that you get the shape of an S and keep it flat. You can use the pliers to help you keep turning and we'll make a little S around, I mean a little circle around this S. My gemstone's oval so I'm going to try to make it more oval than circle. So I've put you know one end a little bit longer here. Okay and when you're ready the wires should be opposite each other. You'll make sure that your cup is flat and then just raise these arms slightly just like that so that you have a little cup that you can sit your gemstone in. Now this is a little bit big so I'm going to snuggle the wire up down here a little closer to my gem and all I'm going to do is just use my finger to do that. It's a little squirrely, I'm not going to lie, and this is a bigger wire so if you need to and I might, you can use your plier, give the most gentle squeeze and just get the wire so that it edges your gemstone on both sides just like that and it should be sitting flat on that S curve. All right the arms are up slightly, hold everything real tight between your finger and your thumb and kind of jackknife you know this back and forth action. It's a big wire on a small gemstone so just work patiently. When you meet the other wire grab it and turn it moving inward and upward slightly on your gemstone and you have to go all the way up until you catch the upper shoulder of the gem. So one more time and I've got some little gaps there so I'm gonna just do like that and get a little closer. I'm keeping a lot of pressure in the gemstone flat. Okay almost there and I'm gonna stop right here on the side because I want my gem to sit this way for the ring. Okay once you get up above the shoulders of the gemstone you'll see it's pretty locked in. Okay and this wire's thick against that small thing so you won't you won't have to worry about it slipping out. So my wires are going opposite each other. I'm going to get to the approximate middle over here and over here. It doesn't have to be the exact middle. You can turn your wire out slightly but make sure you don't lose the top of that gem here over the shoulders. Get my plier on it. I'm going to make this bend. I'm going to hold everything right here. Bend it straight down the side of the cup 90 degree. Okay turn it over. Do the same thing. Just going to give a little outward bend so I can get it. Stick wire. Hold the edge of the and be just you know just off the cup because when I turn it's going to have some bulk and don't let anything shift. Just turn. Okay 90 degrees straight down. That's a nice hearty ring top. So I'll turn it over. There's a 90 degree bend and a 90 degree bend. So I'm going to bring these two wires. This one's a little bit not in the center. That's okay. I'm going to bring these two down right across the bottom of the cup and just inside those 90 degree bends. Okay so that they go to each side of those. Do you need to fiddle it with your fingers a little bit? You can. You should have just a whisper of a gap underneath that cup. Try not to have any lumps there. Just try to make it kind of nice and straight. Okay we're going to wrap that in a second. That's your capture and now you have quite a bit of wire on each side on 18 gauge round to make this ring. All right so I'm gonna get about six inches of 22 gauge half round wire. Get it straight with your fingers. Put the half round flat side of it looking at you so facing up. Slip underneath these two wires but not into the coil. Center your half round. Hold on to one side of it and then with the other one wrap these two wires a couple of good times. Use your pliers if you need to help you pull it tight just like that and then turn it to the other side. Make a couple of wraps. Try to get close to the edge of the cup. You can wrap all the way if you want to. I might do another one over here. Just make a whole thing banded and that's about good. So you have a piece of half round on each side of this ring. Just leave them there for a minute. Okay so now let's get our ring mandrel out. And you're going to go down here and find the size of your ring mandrel. You can barely of your ring you can barely see mine's six seven eight right here. And whatever works you could do this also with a big sharpie marker if you don't have a mandrel. You know the end of a screwdriver etc. So you'll just hold try to show you this best I can. Hold your gem on the size that you want. Bend these two wires back. Cross them onto the mandrel. And you can fiddle them to get a little closer to the size. When we hammer it it's going to grow a little bit so I'm going to hold it tight right there. And as even as you can around this mandrel. Just bring the wires up. If I were not under the camera this would be easier. The mandrel could be snuggled into your lap. Okay so you've got two pieces of half round here ready. Stand them up and then lay these wires. You know you might have to bend it out slightly to snuggle it underneath there. Get some more. I'm going to turn it upside down. Just get your half round up and snuggle under the gemstone with this with this wire. Okay so I'm letting it go because I can show you. Then I'll have to cinch it back up here again. So just look at your mandrel. Pull your ring tight. You can even slope these two wires down slightly to help you shape it. You know all the way up here on the size smaller because it's going to want to spring open. You want to have it a lot smaller so that you know down here is actually where I want to be and you won't fight so much with it. Okay so even though I wanted a size six I'm going to come up here to a size five and cause the spring tension. So that my shank when I grow it you know go right about there. Okay six and uh I mean uh five and three quarter or five and a half so that when I hammer it it'll become a six. If you feel like you need to tape it you can tape it or you can put a little sharpie marker so that you know how your size if your size changed or not while you're working. I like to just put a little piece of tape on it so once I get it there just go like this on the bottom of your shank just help a little bit. It might go out of shape and that's okay while we work because we're going to hammer it we're going to reshape it so just don't worry so much about it. Just help you keep it in place. All right so you want to make sure your gemstone's nice. These two wires you can get ready to work with. Obviously we're going to catch these last open coil links with this. You don't have to though the other thing you can do is bend it around the shank and back over. It's super thick wire so I kind of don't want to cause that bulk there so I'm going to do it with the existing half round that's here. I'm going to weave just one or two stitches through here with this half round. So you'll take the half round it's already going in a certain direction. The flat side's already on the frame so to weave it I'm going to first see I've got one on each side so I'm concerned with with these two on this side and those two using that one. Okay so first I'm going to get around both of them here with a loop. You don't have to you know pull it super tight. Then I'm going to get one more around. You have to pass through and then come back. Just don't let the half round turn over and use your pliers to help you. You can tie it right there just those two so I've grabbed them. Just leave your half round one in there for a second. So now you can turn to this side. Same thing I've got a half round already living here so I'm just going to grab these two with two wraps. Okay you can use your plier and help you tap all that if you need to. Make sure you got two nice tight loops. Don't let it slide up the ring. Just right there so we're still at the bottom of the cup with it just like that. And then you have these two nice wire extensions to do whatever you want with. You know I can go through and like weave this whole ring. I could go through I could have made these longer and and band you know banded all of that shank together. Okay but I'm not going to. So I've cut the wires here and here. I'll leave the half round on there and I've got design available to me if I want it. So I'm going to hold everything steady. It's thick wire so doing it with your finger might not be the best idea or if you want to do it with your hands I advise you go back onto the ring mandrel so that you know you don't change the size of it too much as you pull these. All right so you'll hold everything steady and you can make this one is coming from this this side of the ring so I'm going to make a 90 degree bend and go that way. Okay holding everything steady and as close and underneath to the ring as I can get I'm going to make a bend and just let your half round come from underneath it. Oh I might have gone the wrong way with my half round. Yeah just let your half round kind of be here above it. Make a clean turn right there. Okay flip over. Do the same thing just get your half round up here and out of the way. Hold your ring on its size. See I've grown already to seven. I'm gonna take this wire and just pull it tight again while the other one is you know stretched forward so I can get back to my size. The tape isn't so tight that it's gonna keep it from pulling so when you get it tight hold it with the bottom of your finger there and like I said take it right here and just you know not you can't be too close because then you won't be able to turn it but try to get a nice close turn right there at the edge of your ring. Just like that okay. Okay I'm gonna take this off so you can see what we've been doing. Okay you got this nice turn at the bottom of the cup. Now you can use these for design. Okay your your stone's in there the ring shank's locked at this size here so and there's no bulk underneath your finger. So now I can go do design with these if I want to. I'm gonna you know just fan it out a little bit. If I didn't want to do design I would cut it and I would bury the end right there in between the shank and the bottom of the cup. Okay and that locks all this ring together. So but if you want to do design you can you know turn a little spiral outward here like that. Switch over. Do the same on this side just hold the bottom and the top. Use the pad of your finger if you need to but this wire is pretty pretty big so it should turn gracefully. Make it to the other side. Now if I want to coil if I want to use these half rounds to make design I can do that. I should have probably just cut this off I'm probably just going to cut this off up here. You cut yours off if you're watching this ahead before you do this. Bury it in there. Same thing here I'll just cut it off but if if you wanted to do you know coiling I could use it. Actually I'll show you on just this one. The other one wasn't long enough but I got a little half round here so you know for some texture and also to help me just grab and land that coil if I land that frame wire there if I need it. Now just do some just work to keep your half round flat side against the frame. This could also be 28 gauge you know I could be tying bead balls onto this thing if I wanted to be doing that right now. Some ideas for you this isn't going to make it all the way around so I'll just nip it right here but you get the idea you could do some texture on that wire a little bit so you see it could have gone all the way if I want to. Anyway come back you know around to this side and make it as close or as far away as you want to give your ring some some depth and some design. If you wanted to you could flare it out a bit bring it to meet this one and then let's uh make something cute over here just like that. This other one in a little more I think. Just like that. And I have a landing pad here for some curl I could come around the shank okay so and I I can weave that a little bit if I want to you know you get the idea or I can just make it a clean you know open turn open design. So to end these over here um you know it's pretty tough and you don't really need to do a whole lot to lock it but if you feel like you need to you can you know terminate these wires. A lot of folks will come through the shank here make sure you hold everything steady at your curves. It's big wire so it's a little bit tough okay just come in get your plier on that inside one help you close it up right here at the ring at the shank. And then now go past this next one up and uh go ahead and you know while before we cut anything okay right right beside it hold everything steady make the turn this one is short so don't let your your nice curve disappear when you go in here. Now get you know underneath and to the right of the first wire so that they lay next to each other nicely see what I'm saying this could be done with 20 gauge also carefully you don't scratch the top of that wire so just like that every time you pass underneath the shank you're going to decrease the size of the ring slightly with this bulk and it's okay because we're going to hammer it out and that increases the size of the ring slightly so but you you just want to keep that in mind as you do these things. So I'm holding this so that I can bring my wire back around and not have my curls uh move too much and I'm going to bring them back around in the order that they pass through right so to eliminate bulk and keep them nicely side by side you can use your plier and help you tap it a little bit tap it a little bit getting tight and crunchy here okay so I'm not going to do too much more it's a nice cute design I can trim it and land a little loop right there which is what I'm going to do I'm just holding everything turn my curve snip it get my round nose on it a stubby round nose or a thick round nose but this is thick wire so you don't want your really super fine round nose on it won't bend the wire or you can get your bent nose on it I'm trying to turn it so you can see it and if you need to sacrifice the tip because you need to grip real hard do that and turn a tight little spiral try to dive that tip you know towards the inside there okay just like that if you munched that tip you can get your snips right in there and just take the very very tip of it out and now bring this one it's you know tight and crunchy so and hard wire bring it around up here just kind of echo you know the curve of that guy this time we're gonna make it come to the top of the cup here if you can and bring it out this other direction okay I'm just gonna land the slightest little curl right there trim away this super hard end okay and this time I'm gonna use um this time I'm gonna use my fine flat nose I could also be using my bent nose for this just grip the very tip okay hold on to all this pretty lift up slightly because you want some some leverage and turn that tip back onto itself I have to get above it and push it in before I push it in though I've got that munchy little bit because I grabbed it so I'm going to take my plier my uh cutter my very fine cutter put your thumb here so that shard doesn't get at you snip that very crunchy tip out and now finish this little spiral into a super tight closed loop okay now lay it back down elegantly get a little wider plier so you don't scratch or just be careful and turn that little cutie out make it lay on the edge of your ring okay so cute all right everybody breathe okay get your mandrel back out slide the ring back on come back down to your intended size might be a slightly bigger slightly smaller mine's probably going to be a little bit bigger than I intended and before you hammer anything do what I call leveling out the ring come up and look on top of it and push these coils and level it out okay so that it'll sit nicely against the finger push it all down okay great job it's ringing me and see I'm at five and three quarter just where I said I was going to be and then when I hammer it it's probably going to go to six or six and a quarter here okay so you don't want to hammer the gemstone elements certainly so I like to just get um let me get my if you have a rubber mallet you know a small rubber mallet it's best where's my little faithful I don't see her I'm just going to use a little hammer you can use you know your chasing hammer but I use the little one so that I can get into this edge right here and you're not looking to smash it you're looking just to you can even go to the side of it so I'm going to tap that edge I'm going to go over here and tap this edge I'm going to settle my ring okay and then I'm just gonna you know if you have a rubber mallet it's better you see the ring is already growing just because of those two edges I did and you know this is a tapered mandrel so this wire is going to be you know hammered on a shorter length than this side of the wire so you'll do a few taps on each side and then come to the middle I like to tap you know towards towards um the gemstone from the bottom center then you can turn it over lift it out turn the ring over come back down to the sides and again I'm not smashing it I'm just doing gentle tapping and now just give another hammer and we're doing this because um to level out the wires the mandrel my mandrel is slanted that hardens the shank up I didn't leave any marks on my wire um I can band that if I want to but I like a nice clean band and then that's a nice clean beautiful ring size six and one quarter for your finger I hope you enjoyed that it's a nice simple ring scratch this on the inside and we're going to call it the midway station ring ring design number one pre-night okay I'm going to give you another one in a little bit so I'm going to use some 26 gauge wire for some texture I'm going to add some things to this pre-night and I'll just anchor it right here at the base of this brain wire so I'm going to pass about five inches through I've got 12 inches of 26 gauge and I'm going to do something with this this half as wide maybe five inches and then right here along here I'll just anchor it by making a couple of coils 26 gauge is similar to 28 but it is a little bit thicker so it's fun for a different texture and it's great to tie bead balls on with so there's two all right so I'll just I slipped in you know a little copper bead these could be gemstone beads if you want I made three extra little wraps and grab another little bead down there the holes in these beads are a little bigger than I want them but that's okay I'm sure you'll yours will be great I'll just tie them in there like that drove it in there didn't fit okay let's send it out and get a different bead a little bit bigger these are different from each other but you get the idea about how you can embellish your ring well slipped in between the shank by accident so I'm just gonna slip back make a few wraps and tie this off to here probably going to slip another one another bead in there just because I've got a space for it on my ring and as you weave you know and attach embellishments back towards the shank if you feel like you need to grip it you can do that you know with the loop of this wire too so let me get another one a little bit smaller like the first one all of my copper beads are a different brand here so I just went smaller again because my space decreased I come through here land my bead you have to turn them so that you know you don't see the little ends sometimes as you're sewing them in here best that you can and then while I'm here I am actually going to catch the shank and tie this element down as I make a couple of laps I'm going to take two around to tie this all on and then on the third one I'm going to pass below the shank through the shank to catch it I'll just come back over here like nothing ever happened and continue slip my wire back underneath so I can't see that tie and then I have room for another little tiny one if you have a little tiny one of mine or not whatever you want to do I said this would be really pretty if those were gemstones gemstone beads too I got room for another one I put a one millimeter here just for fun and I'll make a couple of coils around this guy and just for texture I could keep going if I want to it's cute so I'll just keep going just for texture tie these two together all the way around coil this over here I'm just I'm still leaving here for a minute I could have you know tied some um one millimeters down there if I want to that's why that's there if you don't cut it off or maybe this this one was long enough that I could have made it over here and tied some more on if I want to after a few a little tap work yours the way you want it it's going to be so cute such a pretty room you can just do this to your liking probably gonna do a few till I get to the edge of this get tight to get in there now and I missed that last one probably just snip it out right there I messed up that last coil so I just snipped it out you know you don't want anything on the finger so when you cut this one you know it's almost better to try to leave it up here somewhere if you can cut it deep if you can't cut it deep come from underneath here and cut it so that it's long enough that the tip is going into that crevice and not onto the finger that it can't slide off this coil just like that and bury it to the inside way in there so it's not on the finger at all so you get the idea and then I have this you know leading one over here that I could you know continue if I wanted to do a few more in there or I could weave weave these two up or I could wrap some texture you know onto this one or I could cut it off or I could add b-balls down there you know all kinds of stuff for me for this one I think I'm probably just going to cut it off actually I might let's do two wraps around these two looped elements so I want to tie these two together so I'll just make sure there's no bubble in there I just want two discreet little wraps that just broke and if that happens that's okay let's see if I can get one out of it no it's probably going to be too short but you get the idea you could have wrapped one there if you needed it I'm probably now just going to end this wire in here since it broke and I don't try to get in there and cut it the best that you can don't cut any other wire off and then just try to tap that cut end down it's living between these spirals if I still feel like I need to tie them I can just get an independent piece of wire make a couple of wraps around both these coils around both these wires and then you can take you know make a couple wraps around this single one here to lock it and again this is optional these wires are 18 gauge so it's probably thick enough that it would actually stay without this tie but I show it to you in case if you're using 20 gauge that might not stay without a tie it's a little thinner wire I'll make three wraps and then I'll just end it tuck the cut underneath just like that same with this side do a couple of single wraps just to make it look nice design if you can get it and I'll just cut it right there and tuck that second coil okay beautiful little ring and again I probably would have chosen bead balls but the holes weren't so big but this is all I got you get the idea you just face the holes inward tap these right here don't break your wire but just tap them if you need to okay so there's that one so pretty still scratchless and completely clean on the inside