Recently Emma Madden and Luke Shimell demonstrated how to draw down wire
in the East London workshop of their jewelry company, Shimell and Madden. “You
have to anneal the metal first,” Ms. Madden said, using a small blowtorch to
heat a pencil-like piece of 18-karat gold.
“You heat it to a cherry red, then cool it in water, or ‘pickle,’ which
cleans off the oxidization,” she said, referring to an acid wash. “The idea is
to heat the molecules in the metal to become more free and jiggly. And then the
metal is more bendy.”
After an end of a rod is filed to a point, the point is inserted into the smallest hole of the bench’s steel plate and then pinched between tongs that are attached to a strap. The strap is pulled by turning a handle, much like a winch, and the entire rod is drawn
through the hole.
It is a slow, time-consuming process. “When you draw metal down, even though it’s getting thinner, it gets harder,” Mr. Shimell said, so the metal has to be annealed again every few passes. Depending on the type of metal, the amount of wire needed and the required thickness, it can take a few hours to as long as several days to draw down enough wire for a piece of jewelry.
