How To Use A Wire Jig

Hi there. In this video, I'm going to show you how to use this tool. It's called a Wire Jig, and you'll be amazed at all the different things you can do with it.

So this is a wire jig. And this is a very simple, and basic, and inexpensive one. You'll find it at your local craft stores. This is just made out of plastic. And if you look closely, you could see that it's a board that is full of holes. And your wire jig will come with little plastic pegs that you can fit into the holes in any configuration you want.

And you use this as a tool to form wire pieces, like this wire piece was formed on this one with the holes arranged in a square. And you can see the loops were formed around each of the pegs. And what's wonderful about a wire jig is you can make many, many components, as many as you want, and know that they're all going to come out consistent. And of course, you got nice, smooth curves, and it goes much faster than trying to form them with your hands or with a hand tool.

Like I said, you can configure these any way you want. So over here, I have a different shape and I made this little corner component which could be used to make a pair of chandelier earrings. It could be used as a link in a piece of jewelry. This little square was made also with a square of pegs, but they were set on the diagonal which makes them sit a little bit more closely together. So you can see here that fit over that. And then this one was made also on a square of pegs, but instead of going around I went across. And, of course, you can change the look of this by adding beads to your wire before you start shaping, and then sliding them down as you go along.

So let me show you how to do this. I'm just using a little bit of inexpensive craft wire today to practice, and I'm going to start on a corner. Now notice when I made these, I repeated the loop wherever I began and ended. That way, I can hold those together with the finding as I'm making my piece of jewelry.

So I'm going to start here on the corner and just loop around a peg. And the important thing is to push the wire down so it's against the board. That will help keep it from popping off the pegs as you're wrapping and also help keep your loops consistent. So we just wrap around the pegs. And you can see I'm working right off the spool here. Now, I'm using 22-gauge wire which is pretty fine for a wire jig. You'll definitely want to harden your piece afterwards. If you want something more structurally sound, you may need to use slightly heavier wire.

And there are a lot of different wire jigs out there. This is, like I said, one of the most basic models just made out of plastic. But you can buy a metal ones. You can find some with big fat pegs that you can use to make earwires and such. Now, I'm back to where I started and I'm just going to, like I said, repeat that loop on the beginning and ending. And then when you're done, you can slide your component off. And then use wire cutters to trim it up. And so you could make lots and lots.

Now, what you want to do once you're finished is take your nylon jaw pliers and then go around the whole piece and squeeze. This flattens it so everything is on the same plane and it also helps harden it so it will hold its shape better. And so you can see, I have two of these that are identical.

Here's a necklace that I made using the wire jig. And it was a matter of placing three pegs, sliding on a bead, and then placing three pegs on the other end and repeating the pattern. It was a little tricky to do it with this great big bead but I did it. And I just have a repeating pattern. I also use the wire jig to make these little figure eight links that hold everything together.

So if you'll take a look online, you will find lots and lots of patterns for things that you can make with the wire jig. You can make angels, Christmas trees, flowers, connectors, toggles, clasps, all kinds of things that you can make with this tool. And then repeat it over and over again to get consistent results