Steel wire squares

When I showed you my brick stitch pendant a few days ago I mentioned that I'm going to lead a hands-on project for the Loose Bead Society in March.  I'm still experimenting to come up with a project that is easy to understand and simple enough for a large group of people.

There are a number of examples on the 'Net of beading around a metal circle.  I thought maybe we could do something similar but bead inside a square instead of outside a circle.  I found a good square component on Fire Mountain Gems (you can see it here) but wanted to test if my ideas would work before placing an order.

I took out my steel wire tools and asked Steve to bring up his soldering tools, and we made some squares.

I bent the wire around a plastic box that was about the same width as the components I found on FMG:

I made a square the best I could then hammered the crap out of it:

Steve bent it back into shape and squared it up as best he could, then he soldered it together:

I assure you, he is not snorting up the solder smoke.

Here are the final squares:

I used two different gauges of wire.  Throughout this process I have decided (again) that I am not cut out for steel wire work.  My hands are not strong enough to work with it for long.

Now I have a way to test out my ideas.  I worked on it for a while last night but have nothing to show you yet.