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PEP BB metalworking.straw.draw - Draw Down the Diameter of a Piece Wire with a Draw Plate

BB metalworking - straw badge

posted 6 years ago

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This is a badge bit (BB) that is part of the PEP curriculum. Completing this BB is part of getting the straw badge in Metal Working.

For this BB, you will be drawing down the diameter of a piece of wire with a draw plate!

Here is one way to do it:

To document your completion of the BB, provide the photos or video (<2 min) of the following:
- The supplies you're starting with
- Partway through the build
- The finished wire that has been drawn down in diameter with a draw plate

COMMENTS:

David Huang

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posted 4 years ago

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Drawing down wire is a ton of fun! It's like some crazy magic trick where you insert a 6 inch piece in one end, pass it through the magic portal and you get 7 or 8 inches of perfect polished metal wire out the other end. One of the properties of metal is to be ductile, which means "able to be drawn into wire". It's hard to appreciate the wonder of this until you do it yourself, feeling the resistance on the drawing tongs, and watching before your eyes as the molecules of the metal rearrange themselves in a beautiful linear fashion!

For this BB I decided to actually start with a piece of scrap sheet metal, in this case 18 gauge sterling silver. From this I sheared off a thin strip that was basically a square "wire". Then pulled it through a series of round draw dies stopping after it went through the .80 hole which is about 21 gauge. The initial length was about 5.5 inches square and the final length was roughly 15 inches of round wire. It's a fun magic trick!

drawing-wire1.JPG