Jewelry Wire Gauge Chart

The jeweler's ladder

Jewelry work concentrates at the thin end of the AWG scale — 26 down to 14 — where wire functions change every couple of gauges: wrapping sizes (26–22) bend under fingertip force, structural sizes (20–16) hold loops and rivets, and anything thicker needs chasing or forming tools.

Matching wire to task

• Wire wrapping beads / briolettes: 26–24 AWG dead soft; wraps clean around 6–10 mm crystals with 2–3 turns.
• Ear hooks, clasps, jump rings: 22–20 AWG half hard; holds circles and arcs without annealing.
• Rings and bracelets: 18–16 AWG; ring mandrel work best in half-hard gold-fill or sterling.
• Structural frames, cuffs, display: 16–14 AWG; bend with pliers, then chase with a rawhide mallet.

Soft, half-hard and work hardening

Temper (softness) matters as much as gauge: dead-soft wire from the spool is grain-soft and shapes with bare fingers, but every pass of round-nose pliers work-hardens it — gentle formulas fatigue into breakage at the wrap point over time. If a finished piece must be durable, choose half-hard stock so the shaping itself doesn't exhaust the metal.

Jewelry wire gauge chart, project by project

Sizing reads fastest when you start from the job. Rings, bangles and cuffs want structure: 18-16 AWG (1.0-1.3 mm), half-hard for crisp corners. Chain links and clasps 20-18 AWG. Wrapped loops on earrings, headpins and drops 22-24 AWG. Prong settings, wrapped briolettes and bail ties 24-26 AWG. Crochet, weaving, Viking knit and fringe 26-30 AWG, where soft copper behaves like heavy thread. All picks are the same metal as the electrical charts — pure copper resists the same — but the craft spec sheet lives on hardness, so dead-soft spools shape freely and work-harden with hammering, while half-hard holds bends you set once.

Temper, tools and work hardening

Temper is the hidden half of jewelry sizing: dead soft wraps tight around a mandrel or bead without springing back, and it work-hardens as you shape it; half-hard keeps angles sharp and resists nicking from pliers; full hard barely moves — reserved for ear wires that need spring. Round-nose pliers that leave a nick are the enemy of draw-quality metal; cheap jaws with rough plating scratch the surface of every loop they close. Seal the deal with wrapped loops (two full wraps minimum) and the jewelry will outlast the plating. For bead-hole checks, the passes are: 24 AWG clears most 1 mm holes, 26 AWG almost all seed beads — and the actual diameters above slot straight into mandrel math because they come from the same AWG formula everywhere else on this site does.

Metal variants and when thickness lies

Jewelry wires come copper-plated, gold-filled, sterling, niobium, and memory-alloy, and the gauge stays the diameter all the same — but plated craft wire reads one size wider than the metal core (the coating adds ~0.02 mm), worth remembering for tight bead holes. Sterling silver scribes the same AWG ladder with slightly different resistivity that matters for wire-wrapped LED jewelry, not for drape. Wire-printed knitted pieces (see craft wire sizing) scale by strand count instead of gauge. When the numbers and the eye conflict, trust a printed diameter: the circles on the actual size chart print the exact diameters above, and a bead on wire never lies about clearance.