Silver wire on bead technique
 

What is your preferred way to use 30g silver wire on a bead? Do you heat the glass hot and wrap the wire? Do you keep the surface of the galss stiff and wrap the wire and then melt the wire? Do you press or roll the silver into the glass?
Or something completely different?

I like silver on my beads, but finding the silver coming off under normal wear. Am I doing it wrong?

I find adding wire to be a bit of a dance with the flame. Mostly what works for me is heating the end a little and sinking it just a little bit into a hot spot on the bead to anchor it as I wind. If the glass is too soft, the wire cuts right in and will deform the bead. It won't rise to the surface as well, either and you lose a lot of it inside the bead. If the bead is too cool the wire doesn't adhere as you wind it and it pops off or can break up when you try to heat it. Go back and tap the area with heat, and avoid direct flame on the wire. A soft flame, and just under or outside the flame seems to be a good working spot.

Fair to say that I dislike wire, but I have always found that marvering a little and pressing those silver balls in will help keep it all intact.

I never cut my wire to length. I find that fire cutting works much better for me and I don't wind up wasting anything. I give the bead some good solid heat after I have the silver trailed on.

I think there will be as many techniques as there are beadmakers. :)

I like to shape the bead to it's final shape first.
Then spot heat a small section and tack the wire to it.
Wrap around as many times as I want, just leaving it on the surface of the hard bead.
Then I heat, to bead up the silver and gently tap it into the slightly softened glass.

I do it pretty much the same as Nicole. But at the end I don't tap it on, I have been making quite a few beads with silver wire that have been shaped with a bead roller & I have found rolling it lightly in the beadroller after melting it onto the bead helps it 'stick" better. I'm also like Barbara, I never cut my wire, I just use it straight from the coil & flame cut it off after I have wrapped it around my (solid) bead.

Okay, so it seems I may need to tap it or bead roll it. Going to give that a try. Thanks!

I tried working with silver wire for the first time this week. My client wanted silver bubbles inside the beads. I tried heatin just the tip of the wire and putting little dots, then covering with another layer of clear. I use VS clear. I then added some dots on the outside of the glass. Here are the problems encountered. If anyone could help with advice I would be very grateful. The dots inside the bead went caramel in colour. The dots outside the bead looked as though they had burnt - dark with a little rim around them. Any tips please?

Hi Barbara, silly question but are you sure that is fine silver wire and not sterling?

Good question! I purchased it in South Africa from the shop where I took lessons. I will have to email them and check with them. Could you kindly explain the difference? And also why you would use the one and not the other. Thanks so much for responding to my post. Much appreciated.

sterling has less silver and more other metals that wil give the problems

Yes, that ^^^ the other metals will oxidise and do all sorts of things in the flame instead of a clean silver look. Fine silver should always look like silver, doesn't darken or anything along the way. HTH