Types of Wire for Wire Sculpting

Series Summary

The art of wire sculpting has a history dating back thousands of years. Wherever the technology has existed to refine metal and draw wire, artisans have found ways to adapt the material creatively. Today, wire sculptures and figures take a variety of different forms, and the artist is only limited by their own imagination. Certainly, those who have begun the world of wire sculpting know that the possibilities are endless! Whether your goal is to impress friends or tap into your unconscious artistic ability, learn how to create a homemade garden, wall, or 3D wire sculpture.

In this expert video series, Mark Kooy illustrates how to create these works of art. He teaches you the tools and materials that are needed to begin making wire sculptures and figures. With step by step instruction, you will learn how to pick the right kind of wire, use brazen rods, set up the torch, and weld the wire in place to create the perfect wire sculpture. Also, Mark describes different design ideas and painting techniques in making linear or abstract wire sculptures. Start creating wire sculptures and figures today!

Video Transcript

"I’m Mark Kooy here with Expert Village and we’re going to be talking about wire sculpture and braising techniques and tools. All right, to begin with as we look at doing our wire sculpture, we need to talk about some of the different kinds of wires that you might want to use. One of the popular ones that um, that I like to use is copper wire, right now in today’s prices it’s a little spendy and if you’re just starting out or what I like to as I begin I use just regular steel wire to be able to do a lot of my casts or 3-dimensional types of sketches before I go and spend the money on copper wire. You can go to your hardware store and you can get all different kinds of gauges, and wire is measured in gauges, not in inches or parts of inches. So you’ll find that you’ll be getting like 12-gauge or 10-gauge or different sizes of wire. Uh, the one thing you do want to watch out for, it’s not impossible to work with this, but if you find shinny wire like this its galvanized, usually, unless it’s stainless, and then you’re just; you’re dealing with some other issues. But the galvanized wire, when you heat it up with the torch is going to put off some fumes that could make you sick, not permanently but you, its kinda like having a bad hangover. So you don’t really want that. So, what I suggest for beginning and for doing your test runs and figuring out maybe what you’re trying to accomplish, is just plain, mild steel wire, you can get it at the hardware store, a lot of times its by the concrete, they use it in doing cement work, it does come with an oil on it, which will burn off. But those are the basic kinds of wires that are kinda fun to work with and I find that the mild steel has a lot of different capabilities and gives you a variety of things that you can do. "