How to prevent making nicks and marks in wire?

Hello everybody!
I hope this topic has not yet been discussed to death, but I did a
search and nothing really came up, so...
How can I prevent nicks and marks from my pliers when I work with
wire?
I have tried several things that were suggested to me: I put both
masking tape and duck tape over the plieres. (Not at the same time, of
course.) While that was good in the beginning, the surface of both
eventually got destroyed and there wasn't really any protection any
more. Plus, the sticky stuff made the wire all nasty and slippery, so
it was actually harder to get a good grip. (And I had to clean the
sticky stuff off afterwards.)
Now somebody suggested to superglue thin leather on the gripping
surfaces of my pliers. Haven't yet tried it and hope for some input
from you. Does anybody know a foolproof solution? Thanks in advance.
Jennamyria

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 19:22:52 -0800, in rec.crafts.jewelry
(Jen) wrote:

Hello everybody!
I hope this topic has not yet been discussed to death, but I did a
search and nothing really came up, so...
How can I prevent nicks and marks from my pliers when I work with
wire?
I have tried several things that were suggested to me: I put both
masking tape and duck tape over the plieres. (Not at the same time, of
course.) While that was good in the beginning, the surface of both
eventually got destroyed and there wasn't really any protection any
more. Plus, the sticky stuff made the wire all nasty and slippery, so
it was actually harder to get a good grip. (And I had to clean the
sticky stuff off afterwards.)
Now somebody suggested to superglue thin leather on the gripping
surfaces of my pliers. Haven't yet tried it and hope for some input
from you. Does anybody know a foolproof solution? Thanks in advance.
Jennamyria

No one foolproof solution, but for larger plier jaw sizes, you can get them with
nylon surfaced jaws. Also, there are several suggestions in the thread called
" I need a very small plier with nylon jaws....", which was started a couple
days ago in the rec.crafts.jewelry newsgroup. I, and several others, posted
suggestions to what is, essentially the same question.

Hope that helps.

Peter Rowe

Rio Grande sells something called "alligator skin". It's like tape, and you
wrap it around your pliers, bu then it comes off, so you can put it on and
take it off at will. I think it's great!

--
Jerri
www.beadbimbo.com

To subscribe to the Beadbimbo mailing list, send a blank email to:


"Jen" wrote in message
...
Hello everybody!
I hope this topic has not yet been discussed to death, but I did a
search and nothing really came up, so...
How can I prevent nicks and marks from my pliers when I work with
wire?
I have tried several things that were suggested to me: I put both
masking tape and duck tape over the plieres. (Not at the same time, of
course.) While that was good in the beginning, the surface of both
eventually got destroyed and there wasn't really any protection any
more. Plus, the sticky stuff made the wire all nasty and slippery, so
it was actually harder to get a good grip. (And I had to clean the
sticky stuff off afterwards.)
Now somebody suggested to superglue thin leather on the gripping
surfaces of my pliers. Haven't yet tried it and hope for some input
from you. Does anybody know a foolproof solution? Thanks in advance.
Jennamyria

Try using round nose pliers and leaving your wire long so you can use
leverage to bend it rather than another pair of pliers.

-Stanley
A&M Jewelers
Baltimore, MD

"Beadbimbo" wrote in message
...
Rio Grande sells something called "alligator skin". It's like tape, and
you
wrap it around your pliers, bu then it comes off, so you can put it on and
take it off at will. I think it's great!

--
Jerri
www.beadbimbo.com

To subscribe to the Beadbimbo mailing list, send a blank email to:


"Jen" wrote in message
...
Hello everybody!
I hope this topic has not yet been discussed to death, but I did a
search and nothing really came up, so...
How can I prevent nicks and marks from my pliers when I work with
wire?
I have tried several things that were suggested to me: I put both
masking tape and duck tape over the plieres. (Not at the same time, of
course.) While that was good in the beginning, the surface of both
eventually got destroyed and there wasn't really any protection any
more. Plus, the sticky stuff made the wire all nasty and slippery, so
it was actually harder to get a good grip. (And I had to clean the
sticky stuff off afterwards.)
Now somebody suggested to superglue thin leather on the gripping
surfaces of my pliers. Haven't yet tried it and hope for some input
from you. Does anybody know a foolproof solution? Thanks in advance.
Jennamyria

Hi Jennamyria,

How can I prevent nicks and marks from my pliers when I work with
wire?

Most times the marks you speak of are caused by the edges of the
pliers jaws. Typically, the jaw edges are a sharp 90 deg. They tend to
leave marks on wire when the wire is bent.

One way to eliminate or alleviate this problem is to round the edges
of the jaws just a little. I like to use 400 grit or finer wet dry
paper to sand the edges & remove the sharp edge.

The only other cause of marks created by wire is too strong a grip.
The way around this is to lighten your grip on the pliers. They should
be gripped just enough to prevent the wire from moving, not so much
that indentations a left in the wire. The right grip comes with
practice & experience.

Dave