Skip to main content

Silver-Filled Wire ~ An Affordable Alternative To Sterling

Browsing through the latest edition of Step By Step Wire Jewelry the other night I saw an article that mentioned silver-filled wire. I'd heard of gold-filled wire but not silver. I read a bit more and discovered silver-filled wire is pretty new and sounds like a great alternative to the much more expensive sterling silver wire.

So how is it different to silver plated wire I thought? Silver-filled has a thicker coating of sterling silver bonded to a copper or brass base. It can be hammered, oxidised and tumbled just like sterling and I should imagine it's less likely to wear off like plated wire can. I'm liking it more and more! Another plus is if you can wear sterling silver jewellery you'll be fine with silver-filled too.

I've just ordered some 20g from Etsy shop Cigarbox Supplies and at £4.36 for 19.5 ft it works out a hell of a lot less than sterling. I contacted another Etsy seller who uses it and asked her opinion - she loves it and said it behaves just like pure sterling wire. I'm not sure if it's available in the UK yet (probably not, maybe in a year or two!)

I can't wait for it to arrive so I can experiment and see for myself! Watch this space for an update in a week or two!

*Photo courtesy of Cigarbox Supplies
Labels:

Comments

  1. SophieFriday, May 27, 2011

    Sounds great! I may have to order some - silver is getting more and more expensive.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Miss Val's CreationsFriday, May 27, 2011

    Great review! I have been thinking about adding this wire to my store inventory. The price of sterling is out of control! ~Val

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cinnamon JewelleryFriday, May 27, 2011

    Definitely Val! If it looks ok I will start using it as an alternative too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. CindyThursday, June 16, 2011

    I've been hearing more and more about this wire, recently at Bead and Button as well. I'd love to give it a try too because I miss pulling out my sterling wire!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Chris Beads GaloreFriday, May 25, 2012

    I own a bead store and stock silver filled wire, along with Sterling, Gold Filled, Aluminium, Artistic, German and several craft wires. Due to the price of Sterling, I have been selling a good bit of Silver Filled wire. A lot of people are skeptical, because it is so new. I say try it out. You might love it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Your comments and questions are very welcome!
If you would prefer to contact me directly please use the contact form on my "get in touch" page.

Popular posts from this blog

Combining Soldering And Enamel

The need to make cute, brightly coloured enamel studs propelled me into the world of combining soldering with enamel a couple of years ago. I knew from reading up on it that it was possible to enamel and solder on the same piece but wasn't too confident I was able to do it back then. It was a slightly embarrassing occurance that made me just get on with - I'd made some enamel studs with glued on stud posts. I'd used 2 part epoxy resin which was a job in itself as it set hard after 5 minutes so I had to keep mixing more up. The finished studs looked ok but that little voice in my head kept asking "are you sure you want to use glue?" I wasn't but didn't think I had any other way to do it so I used glue. I sold my first pair and merrily sent them on their way to Canada. A couple of week later the buyer got in touch to say the stud post had come off one of the earrings and the other was hanging off. I was mortified, apologized profusely and refunded her m...
32 comments
Read more

Torch Enamelling - What I've been Up To Recently!

I've admired enamelled jewellery for a while now and not too long ago did a blog post about Etsy seller tekaandzoe  and her wonderful kiln enamelled creations. I didn't think at the time that it was something I would ever be able to do as the cost of kilns plus lack of space would be a problem for me. That wasn't until I saw an advert for a torch enamelling tutorial from US jewellery supplies website Beaducation  by Steven James . It's a great tutorial showing the basics on how to torch enamel on copper. Of course I bought it! I then spent hours scouring the internet for more information on torch enamelling, where to buy the tools I'd need and of course the enamel powders. There are quite a few UK sites selling enamelling supplies and tools but as usual I found the US sites had more choice (why do we always lag behind?) I bought some enamel powders from a couple of UK sites to begin with - Cookson Gold have a good selection but bear in mind th...
37 comments
Read more

Etching Silver Using Nail Art Stamps

So my love/hate relationship with etching sterling silver continues. I've tried a few times now and always end up with different results most of them not that great to be honest. I've tried connecting the silver and a piece of copper to a 9v battery and also heating the ferric nitrate. Sometimes the results are good sometimes not so good. I currently have an etched piece of silver sheet waiting to be reticulated and rid it of the mess that is the etched "pattern".  I now know that using stamps and Stayz On ink just doesn't work with silver - the time needed to etch using ferric nitrate is much longer than etching copper and the ink starts to wear away after about an hour. This results in the pattern being patchy as the resist is eaten away and the silver ends up quite lumpy and course looking. I have yet to try using pnp paper. I don't know why but it all seems a bit of a faff to do. I don't have a laser printer so would need to find somewhere or...
34 comments
Read more