Summat for Nowt.
A stubby piece of silver, or a narrow offcut, can be coaxed into wire using the rollers and notches on a rolling mill. You just give it a half turn at each pass and anneal when you feel it hardening.
Once you have a credible wire it can be drawn through drawplates into more precise profiles such as square, round, rectangular, triangular and other shapes in between. I love the feeling of getting something for nothing.
Here is one of my One Inch brooches, using rectangular wire for the frame and triangular wire for the branches. The leaves were made from triangular wire, grooved along one side and cut into thin slices. They were then creased by hitting them with a punch.
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