Creating The Setting For Our Wire Wrapped Pendant Part 1

Wire Wrapped Pendant Setting

This is the stage we were at in the last post. We have our cabochon and our wire bundle ready to go.

We have 6 guide wires in red and the 5 wraps in gold. Now we have to bend it to the shape of the stone.

I'm very lucky to have found this Oval Mandrel in a bead shop. It has become one of my favourite tools as it quickly and easily lets me shape my bundles. I have round and ring mandrels for round shapes but any household objects that are around the same size work just as well.

Placing the centre point of the bundle against the mandrel I bend the wires down and around to form the shape. I usually pick a size bigger than the stone and do any tweaking by hand.

In this pic I have made the mistake of placing the outside of the bundle against the mandrel instead of the inside. Once I had discovered my mistake the wires are soft enough to allow me to offer it up against the mandrel and bend it around the right way.

I could just have easily used a household object such as this to create the rough shape. A quick check through toiletries and bottles will reveal many suitable shapes and sizes that can be used.

This is a headache roll on that happens to be exactly 25mm and I use it so often that I have marked where I put my wraps for this size.

Whilst creating the setting we need to constantly offer up our bundle to the stone to check it. At this stage it's a good rough fit for the stone and that's all we need it to be for now as we will correct it as we go along.

This is what our bundle looks like away from the stone. The middle is slightly off centre so grabbing both sides I can give it a few tugs until it is in the right place again. Losing the centre wrap to one side or another is going to happen every time an adjustment is made so this is something you will need to keep an eye on.

The guide wires have done their job on the bottom of the wrap holding the wires together while they were bent and can now be undone and removed.

For now the remaining 4 guide wires in red need to stay in place at the top of the oval and towards the end of the wires. They still have a job to do keeping our four square wires in place.

The centre wrap is going astray again so it needs correcting.

I want the 2 side wraps in the middle on this wrap so by hand I move them to where I want them. I have to admit to not measuring much and doing things by eye alone but I like my pieces to look hand made and not produced in bulk so a little bit off is fine. If you are more comfortable measuring carefully please do. This is just my way of working.


(By this point I have noticed my mistake and the cut half round wires are back on the inside where they belong)