Hillbilly wire twisting

Wow Chuck 5hanks for posting those!!! I feel so honore, I now have a thread with PICTURES!!!! LOL.

These are my girlfriend Susans first and only 3 wraps. She is my foreman in the silver smith classroom. She will do more but she prefers silver wire and no marks so she is looking for a Eastwick hatchet and ballpeen hammer. She did these by herself from just watching me teach the classes. I did not show her give her individual instruction. This stuff is very easy to learn! I do several other styles of wrap. These are larger cabs, for smaller cabs you need a different style wrap.

This is called Cold Forge Wire Wrapping. It originated with a homeless man who teamed the desert southwest and hung out at rock shows, festivals, celebrations, whatever. He carried some 14 gauge copper and sterling silver wire, a hatchet, pliers, a bail pliers, file, sanding sponge and a wore out ballpeen hammer and a few stones. Plus he would scrounge up a piece of firewood.

He would stick the hatchet into the firewood or preferably a small sawed off stump. This was his anvil. He sit and peck away on his hatchet and create these wraps. Mostly he wanted to wrsp other people's stones or cabochons for a fee.

There are many more wrap types plus cold forged necklace to hang the pendants on.

He taught a fellow named Dennis to do some of his wraps. Dennis spent 4 years perfecting the wraps.

I met Dennis at a demonstration and he offered to show me how to do it in front of a 200 person crowd. Who am I to turn that down!

Needless to say I did good! LOL. I sorta had an advantage. You see I been fooling with horses all my life. Done a lot of wire twisting fixing fences! Also she my own horses. You cold forge a store bought horse shoe with a anvil to fit each hoof! LOL. It's the same principle. When you hammer wire or horseshoes the metal moves and flows a certain way.

So I ended up teaching it at the Gem Club in Quartzsite. Got sorta famous and ended up with people bringing me other wraps done by the old fellow to reproduce. Also the flint knappers found me to wrap their arrow head points.

So there you go,my method is rustic versus Dennis. Dennis is very perfect with no tool marks etc. I put them in on purpose and folks love it! It's rustic because I use a five dollar hatchet and hammer from Harbor Freight! Can't afford 75 dollar hatchet from Eastwick and another 75 for s hammer. My students don't want to invest in that much either to just start. So my hatchet and hammer have a texture facet quality to the wire. I do sand the faces to remove oxidation before hammering.

I like 'em! Other than a gold band, I'm not one to wear jewelery, but those are very masculine.

Any wire wrapping that doesn't look like a dog chewed on it gets bonus points - these get those points.

Hot damn, Orrum!!! I didn't know you could wire wrap! What a freakin' treat! I know this wrap. Dennis calls it the silk wrap. I have seen the videos. I have to say, I like the Hillbilly wrap better. And I LOVE, love, love your story. So cool!!!! I'm really happy to know your story, Thanks!

Keep on wrapping! Anytime you want to post, and Chuck is busy, just let me know- I have a domain to post on and I'd be happy to post emailed pictures for you--- esp if they are more wire wraps.  

Nice style, I agree, very manly.

Rich

Bill, have thought about wrapping some really hard unfractured coral tumbles with very annealed copper that was pre hammered flat.
Once wrap is rough formed and reannealled reinstall it around the coral
The tough coral cannot withstand the heat, but can handle careful hammering on annealed copper to a degree after final wrap.
Final hammering effectively hardening the copper on the stone.
Some alloys of copper are super soft. But harden readily with hammer taps.
And using a tumble that is not feathered to thin on the edges that may take the abuse of the hammering.
Thinking that may have an interesting effect.
Sort of like hammer forming a ring over a mandrel, but the tumble is the final recipient.
Probably not a good idea to hammer form copper around someone's finger

May practice this stunt with medium gauge solder wire to see if it can be done with super soft metal before attempting copper...
Does this idea make any sense ? I worry that the more the metal is hammered the longer it will get, and so the looser.
Maybe hammering from one end and working down the wrap.

Anyway, I get into hammering. Kinda OCD about it.
Thinking along the lines of using a very hard rock to hammer form metal on for it's final encapsulation.
Maybe soft sheet copper as a hammer formed 'bezel'.
sorry to go off subject, but your heavy gauge wraps are very desirable in some markets around Atlanta.
We have some interesting Goth and bondage folks around here LOL.

I'm late on this but wanted to chime in here. I did take one of Bill's classes on the hillbilly wrap so have done a few but didn't post any of mine on here yet. It is fun to do especially the hammering. It takes some skill to get the right angle and force to hammer the wire into submission. His classes at the club were definitely popular. I can say those arrowhead wraps were really cool looking. Wish I could have gotten a picture but alas I didn't think of it.
Susan did a great job on the wraps even when she was working with Bill's tools.

Put it on me. I want to learn different. Your wrap is intriguing.

Tommy, could you fix the photos? Thanks.