what's up guys it's jeff frey feature guest host here with ball.com on today's episode
we're going to be making a cuff bracelet out of some tig wire so let's get at it
we had a request for this video i've seen these online for years now with the cuff bracelets
i've never got around to actually try to make one so i said let's get at it we're going to be
utilizing some stainless steel tig wire as well as i want to try to incorporate some titanium
into it as well we have o45 116 some 332 i even have eight inch and 532 if i want to incorporate
that and i have some o45 titanium filler and then on the end of the cuff i want to utilize
the half inch tubing for the titanium maybe in the end we'll blew some of this up try to
get some of the blue out of the titanium maybe gold the stainless i kind of want to keep it
silver with the stainless and blue on the tie i think that would look really cool let's just get
right into it first we're going to start off with making some twists i have two of each one of the
sizes here and i'm going to start with one piece and i'm going to cut it in half now how i find
center when i cut my tig wire is i laid in the v of the pliers here and i let it balance itself
out when it's balanced that's the center then i cut it not that this matters too much but i don't
want one piece a lot longer than the other so i'll take this one i'll tack it together on one end
we'll spin it in one direction i'll take the other piece here we're gonna cut it then we're gonna
twist this one in the opposite direction that'll give me two twists both utilizing the o45 wire
we're going to do this with the o45 we'll do it with the 116. we're ready to tack these together
now before doing the twist this will hold the piece together and it gives us something nice to
grab on to in the drill we got the machine set on 28 amps we're going to be utilizing the everlast
powertig 210 ext dc negative we're operating with a foot pedal and 100 argon we've got the
mk12 furic cup on here with a piece of 332 e3 tungsten and uh we're just gonna buzz the ends
of these together we got two of the o45 ones and two of the 1 16 ones we'll start with that
we've got them all tacked now now we're ready to twist them with the drill
what i'll do is i'll chuck one end up in the drill and then hold the other end with a set of pliers
and then twist it i'm going to be paying attention to how much i twist them because i want my smaller
size diameter wire to be on a different twist than my larger diameter size wire but i want
both of my smaller diameter size wire to be on the same twist but they're going to be opposites
it well so just something you're going to have to pay attention to when doing this process
i'm going to pull some tension on it when i do it too
we got the first one twisted here took me a second to get it figured out
uh i grabbed a different set of pliers that held the end better and allowed me to twist this and
not slip now we're gonna make the same exact twist but going the opposite direction so we're
going to switch the drill truck over to reverse and we'll chuck the other o45 piece in here
cutting off the factory stamping on the wire it just makes it difficult to hold on to as well
this one's still tighter so i need to go some more now when i'm doing this i'm pulling apart
on the two to try to help keep the tension on there and keep it straight at the same time
all right so there's our first two sections there that'll look pretty
good now we're gonna work on the 1 16 and get that twisted out i'm going to go for
not as tight of a twist on that and then i'll probably use the belt sander and flatten it
just to give it some texture like a flat face on it or something so
i think that'll look pretty cool it's not as tight i don't have to follow no set of instructions
there's nothing telling me how to do this this is purely artistic so you guys can pick whatever you
want size wire twisting you could utilize other different kinds of wire i see where people use
copper and brass and incorporate it into their bracelets as well looks really cool that's why
i want to try to add a little bit of titanium in here just to give it my own pizzazz that'll be the
1 16 right there now i'm going to spin one the opposite way try to keep it at that same twist
looks pretty good it's kind of hard to keep it consistent you'll see there'll be a little hiccup
here and there where the wire just didn't you know form perfectly to it but other than that
they look pretty close now we've got four pieces as a base to start with now what i'm going to do
is i'm going to take the titanium end cap piece that i'm going to use to finish the ends off with
and we'll get that flattened down because these will go down in there that's going to tell me how
wide i can make this cuff bracelet because all i'm going to be able to fit is what i can fit
inside of that crushed piece of half inch titanium tubing so i'm going gonna take a hammer we'll get
that thing flattened down so we got both our end pieces flattened out now we can kind of lay this
out and see what kind of a pattern we got going on i was kind of thinking putting the smaller twists
on the outside taking the solid 332 once in on each side and then having the two thicker pieces
in the middle that might fit inside of here it's looking pretty good i'm just getting a general
idea of what it would look like as well what i'll do is i'll chop all the ends off get them nice and
straight get the pieces straight then we'll weld the ends of them together then we can put the
clasps on the ends there get those welded start shaping this thing i took a piece to mock up as
my cuff so i can get an overall length that way i can cut these things down and weld them and we can
transfer this length to this get them cut welded together we'll have ourselves a cuff bracelet here
in a minute now i laid out that cuff brace length from the end of the table to the blue mark here
so where i just made that tack i'll make a mark here we'll go ahead and attack that spot as well
these are gonna be the two that are gonna lay in the center i want to keep
my twists together so i'm gonna get them lined up
i'm gonna use this clamp to hold it down and then i'll tack the two together
looks pretty good you can see all my twists other than when i had a couple of spots where the twist
didn't go perfectly but other than that they line up pretty good it's my first time trying this
i'm sure people that do this stuff all the time and sell this stuff as jewelry they've
got it down to a science as well as like i do with the things that i do a lot of
this i don't do a lot of but it's fun to try new things figure different techniques
out because i might be able to apply those to the things that i'm doing so
i really like that a lot turned out really good just how i envisioned it and now i'm going to lay
the wider pieces i think on the outside of that now i'm going to cut the 332 rod to the same
length as this then we can get all of them tied together we've got the two straight pieces tacked
onto these now we're going to go ahead and get these ones cut to length so we need to tack them
off before we get them cut and then uh we'll tack them to the outside of there looking pretty good
i think once uh once we get the end pieces on there get this thing curved to a cuff shape
i think it'll look pretty good if you guys have never tried welding your tig wire together it can
be a little hard it's all about the arc control can't have too much heat i know i'll do this
sometimes from getting low on the thicker pieces of tie wire i'll tack those together because that
stuff is really expensive so i'll actually tack that stuff together build up another piece so i
can continue using all the rod i'm gonna get this thing cleaned up maybe put a little bit more weld
on here and we'll try to get them massaged into the end pieces here so let's get at it
try to get this thing straightened up a little bit we'll put some weld on the end of this here
make a nice finish on there got a little hammer marks in there then we'll blew the tips bend this
thing around and we'll have a bracelet got the bracelet all welded out ground out on the end
caps here with the tie pieces now most of you may know you cannot weld stainless to titanium so i'm
not able to actually put filler metal here for it to stay i've got it hammered on there pretty
tight i'm probably gonna lay some glue or epoxy in there just to ensure that it doesn't fall off
this is only jewelry so you know this is for aesthetics it doesn't have to be
strong or anything like that so now we're ready to just form it to the cuff shape then we'll
pretty much be done i'm going to blue the ends a little bit give a little bit of color to the tie
here and then up in the stainless right there a little bit but the top side i want to keep silver
you don't want to just go bend in this thing and have kinks in here so we're just gonna slowly
work it i'm gonna get a piece to lay in the bench here it'll help me work it around on
rather than trying to do it in my hand we got the cuff bent now it's not the easiest thing to
bend because of the inconsistencies in the thickness of the wire material we're going
to go ahead and blue the tips and stuff now let it cool and we'll have a bracelet
that looks pretty good i think that blue on the stainless will look awesome bracelets cooled now
we're able to put this thing on i still don't have any super glue to glue the tie pieces on the ends
but nice cuff bracelet worked out pretty nice let us know in the comments down below some tricks and
tips maybe to help some people make bracelets like these it was really cool to get to do i would like
to actually build more of these maybe do some in thai maybe incorporate some copper or brass
or something like that real fun project i think the tie really made a nice touch to the silver
it looks really good until next time you can head over to weld.com where you can get connected with
us directly through the members section as well as you can head over to the members forum where you
can ask questions our advisors will gladly help you thanks for watching and we'll see you later