What guage wire for making clasps?

[suzi2]

I'm struggling to get nice looking copper and silver clasps for some jewellery I'm making so thought I'd make my own. What gauge wire would work best? Someone recommeneded a place to buy wire - what was it again?

57.555 recurring

not sure I get you...

I use 16 or 18 gauge wire for clasps and get my wire from Cookson Gold (www.cooksongold.com/). They're very efficient to deal with.

Ebay is full of sellers of wire, so trying a search might get you a bargain. If you want a plain wire clasp, I'd second using 16/18, or if you want to hammer it, perhaps thicker, 14 or so. (It gets a lot more expensive that thick!) I go here: www.scientificwire.com/ for a range of pure silver wires for wirework and filigree, but they also have copper wire and craft wires. Not sure if they do sterling silver or not. The pure silver might be a bit too soft for your purposes.