[Jewelry making - Article 00681] - Re: [Orchid] Beaded wire

[Stephen Walker]

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Hello Janet and everyone else,

    I got the 1998 Jewllery Studies paper by Naimh Whitfield. She
    describes the tooling with top and botton dies or swedge blocks as an
    "organarium" based on a description by Theophilus. I am not quite
    sure when Theophilus wrote, but his text was in Latin. Experiments
    show that a set of dies that only make one bead at a time work better
    and faster than multple bead dies. 

    She also describes another method of making beaded wire that works
    very well for small sizes. It is a tool translated as a "beading
    file" This is a steel tool with a groove or series of parallel
    grooves. Short pieces of wire are rolloed between this tool and a flat
    surface. The sharp ridges press make the wire narrower where they
    press in the wire and also the displaced metal gets a bit thicker
    right met to it. Theophilus also describes this method. 

    You can also make beaded wire with a single ridged tool rolled onto
    the wire. I tried this with the blade of a graver and it worked, but
    it is difficult to make the beads evenly. According to Whitfield a
    single rided tool makes beaded wire faster than a grooved or double
    ridged tool, but the double ridged tool makes more consitently sized
    and spaced beads. Multiple grooved beading files take longer also
    because the pressure is distributed over more area and she concludes
    that Theophilus' description of a single grooved, two ridged tool is
    the most efficient for making beaded wire by hand. I havn't had time
    to make one yet and try it, but I will. 

    Jack Ogden's work is quoted as a source in the notes. 

Stephen Walker


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