Old electrical wire is full of different gauges of copper wire once you get the plastic coating off the bundle. I use it whenever I find it, garage sales and flea markets are a good source too. It is a bit of work to sort it all out but you can’t beat the price.

As for the design. You can use whatever wire you have and let your imagination soar. Make sure your stone is wrapped securely in the design and there will be no need to glue it.

But, yes, you can cage with only round wire. It’s do-able. It’s possible. And personally, I think if you can cage with round, you’ll have no problem with the square and half-round once you can afford it.

And I do often use round wire for my cabs as well, but I do still use the half-round ($29.95/lb=~630 feet) as the binding wire for a cab wrap, as it gives a flatter, smoother profile, a tighter fit around the cab. Some cabs don’t require such a fit, and in fact are beautifully accented with all round wire wrapping. You just need to play with it, and see what you come up with.

I highly recommend NOT gluing that rock to ANYTHING at this point, until you have exhausted all other ideas/options, because unlike wire, glue is extremely hard to undo.

If you have a friend interested in learning to wire wrap, maybe you can do a joint order from Rio and split the cost?

Like you, when I was starting out I had very little money to spend on umpteen varieties, shapes and gauges of wire and had no idea what I should buy but, after making my life miserable and WASTING round wire by the yard trying to make it do something it does not want to do, I bought an ounce of silver half round wire. Where I buy it, it comes in 5 foot lengths or an ounce. But consider this — by the foot, you pay half the price, and by the ounce, you effectively get twice the wire in length because it’s only HALF round. Then I found some half round copper — which for some reason is more difficult to find at least where I live. Unfortunately, it’s the coated kind, so it looks kind of weird as the rest of the copper starts to tarnish, so I’m looking for uncoated.

Spend the five or ten bucks and make your life easier. I got some good advice from a blow-your-socks-off jeweller years ago when I was starting out that 24 gauge is the wire you will use most often, so buy lots of that. I can say with completely authority that half round is also your friend. Personally, I’m not so fond of the look of square wire, so I don’t even have any. But I can now wrap all kinds of wire together and I’m not tearing my hair out in frustration every time I try to do something. Instead, I spend my time tearing out my hair because the whole thing I’m making doesn’t look like the design I have in my head. Renaaaaaaaaaaaaa… help!

Barbara

Failing that, I’ll just have to do my best based on the various concepts that impress me most.
Funnily enough, you’re the second person today to mention mixing metals 🙂 I’ve tended to shy away from that, but perhaps I need to rethink 😉

In fact, I can actually envision certain effective combinations…
Thanks for the explanation of what the shapes are best suited for:) Uually, when I’ve seen them listed in a project, I’ve just moved on to something else lol.

Loved your video! 🙂 And I loved the follow up below it! You are certainly am extremely talented, and generous, lady 🙂

If I manage to get this little cab wrapped, I’ll definitely get pics and show you 😀

But don’t despair – you can use round wire to make cabochon settings. For example, here’s a YouTube video tutorial for a popular round-wire setting: youtu.be/zELoEEMrBw8 . (I don’t know the artist who made this video, but this setting is one I’ve often seen.)

And yes, you can “cheat” with wire shapes and use something other than what a tutorial recommends. But it’s usually harder to get the result you want. You’ll have to be open to having a slightly different look or outcome than the original project shows.

One reason square wires are popular for cabochon settings is because their flat sides make them lie together very neatly and easily when you make a bundle of them.

And half-round wire is popular because its flat side makes it a wonderfully easy, smooth wrapping wire for binding things together.

You might want to see if you can get some less expensive wire in square and half-round (such as copper, brass, or silver-plated). You can also mix metals (copper half-round wraps with silver round wire, for example) for an artistic effect.

Also, if you’re fairly new to wire jewelry making, you might want to see my 2-minute video on how to be a “wire whisperer” – it’s really just the state of mind that helps you flow with your wire.

I hope this helps, Steve! Best of luck with your project, and we’d love to see how it turns out!