Solving the Beading Wire Selection Puzzle.
You should use the heaviest wire for your beading project that gives you the right flexibility and strength and only goes through your bead hole one time. This is a very complicated sentence with many implications and deserves your attention. If your beads vary in hole sizes, you must use the thickest wire that will go through the smallest hole bead in the project.
First, some teachers instruct beaders to go back twice through the end beads of a project after finishing the wire through the crimp bead. What they may not say is that those end beads need to be selected to accommodate the doubling of the larger wire used for the bulk of the beads in your project which should only be able to go through the bead hole one time. (See opening sentence.) If you do not get large hole beads for the doubling at the end beads, then the rest of your piece suffers from having used too small a wire. That is if you choose the wire diameter solely to be able to double through your end beads, then you compromise the strength of the project. I personally think it is not necessary to ever do this step. A proper cutting tool snips close enough to the crimp to provide a smooth finish. We recommend the Beadalon Nipper. Also, beading wire cutting tools should be used only for cutting beading wire.
Next, the flexibility of the wire when tested without beads is not going to be the flex with beads. As you string your beads, the weight of those beads will give you more flexibility as the project gets heavier. Now you can choose between 7, 19 or 49 strand wire.
We highly recommend Beadalon not only for its wire selection ranges, but for its quality within those ranges.
The higher the strandage level, the greater the strength and flexibilty.
7-strand is the Craft series,
19-strand the Superior quality and
49-strand the Professional quality.
Selecting the diameter is one of the last pieces of the puzzle:
.010 thinnest and should be used for specialty pieces needing very small, fine wire.
.012 fine for seed beads and small Fresh Water Pearls or light stones. See note below.
.013 thinnest 49-strand for pearls and precious beads with small holes needing highest flexibility and
strength for the size
.015 Medium light diameter for most fresh water pearls and small hole beads
.018 medium heavy diameter - mid-size, all purpose diameter
.021 heavier diameter when needed
.024 extra heavy, used with bali type silver and heavy glass or stones all of which have a larger than
average diameter hole.
.030 super heavy for specialty projects
Please note that the same diameter can be within the different strandage levels - diameters never change, just the strandage level. We have a guide in the our Me page which does a different take on the subject of which wire.
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