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Wire Gauges

The gauge of a wire is the measure of how large that wire is, either in terms of its diameter or its cross-sectional area. One of the most difficult things to get used to is that as the gauge gets larger, the wire gets thinner. In metal work, a thick wire can be pulled through a draw plate in order to make it thinner; the more times the wire is passed through the draw plate the thinner it becomes. Before the creation of today's modern gauges, the gauge of a wire represented the number of times that the wire had been passed through a draw plate and so it made sense for the wire diameter to decrease as its gauge increased.

Today there are two major systems for gauging wire and both use mathematical formulae to represent the gauge rather than the older, more empirical approach of counting the number of passes of the wire through a draw plate. The American Wire Gauge, or AWG, is generally used to measure base metals such as stainless steel, copper or aluminum. The Standard Wire Gauge, or SWG, is used to measure precious metals such as gold and silver. The table below, reprinted from Comax, identifies these common gauges and their measurements. Most chain maille typically requires wire between 14- and 24-gauge. Wire that is less than 14-gauge is heavy and too difficult to work with while wire that is greater than 24-gauge is too fine and will break or deform easily.

Gauge	SWG		AWG
	inches	mm	inches	mm
0000000 (7/0)	0.5000	12.700	--- --- ---
000000 (6/0)	0.4640	11.786	0.580000	14.7320
00000 (5/0)	0.4320	10.973	0.516500	13.1191
0000 (4/0)	0.4000	10.160	0.460000	11.6840
000 (3/0)	0.3720	9.449	0.409642	10.4049
00 (2/0)	0.3480	8.839	0.364796	9.2658
0 (1/0)	0.3240	8.230	0.324861	8.2515
1	0.3000	7.620	0.289297	7.3481
2	0.2760	7.010	0.257627	6.5437
3	0.2520	6.401	0.229423	5.8273
4	0.2320	5.893	0.2043	5.1892
5	0.2120	5.385	0.1819	4.6203
6	0.1920	4.877	0.1620	4.1148
7	0.1760	4.470	0.1443	3.6652
8	0.1600	4.064	0.1285	3.2639
9	0.1440	3.658	0.1144	2.9058
10	0.1280	3.251	0.1019	2.5883
11	0.1160	2.946	0.0907	2.3038
12	0.1040	2.642	0.0808	2.0523
13	0.0920	2.337	0.0720	1.8288
14	0.0800	2.032	0.0641	1.6281
15	0.0720	1.829	0.0571	1.4503
16	0.0640	1.626	0.0508	1.2903
17	0.0560	1.422	0.0453	1.1506
18	0.0480	1.219	0.0403	1.0236
19	0.0400	1.016	0.0359	0.9119
20	0.0360	0.914	0.0320	0.8128
21	0.0320	0.813	0.0285	0.7239
22	0.0280	0.711	0.0253	0.6426
23	0.0240	0.610	0.0226	0.5740
24	0.0220	0.599	0.0201	0.5105
25	0.0200	0.508	0.0179	0.4547
26	0.0180	0.457	0.0159	0.4039
27	0.0164	0.417	0.0142	0.3607
28	0.0148	0.376	0.0126	0.3200
29	0.0136	0.345	0.0113	0.2870
30	0.0124	0.315	0.0100	0.2540
31	0.0116	0.295	0.0089	0.2261
32	0.0108	0.274	0.0080	0.2032
33	0.0100	0.254	0.0071	0.1803
34	0.0092	0.234	0.0063	0.1600
35	0.0084	0.213	0.0056	0.1422
36	0.0076	0.193	0.0050	0.1270
37	0.0068	0.173	0.0045	0.1143
38	0.0060	0.152	0.0040	0.1016
39	0.0052	0.132	0.0035	0.0889
40	0.0048	0.122	0.0031	0.0787
41	0.0044	0.112	0.0028	0.0711
42	0.0040	0.102	0.0025	0.0635
43	0.0036	0.0914	0.0022	0.0559
44	0.0032	0.0813	0.0020	0.0508
45	0.0028	0.0711	0.0018	0.0457
46	0.0024	0.0610	0.0016	0.0406
47	0.0020	0.0508	0.0014	0.0356
48	0.0016	0.0406	0.0012	0.0305
49	0.0012	0.0305	0.0011	0.0279
50	0.0010	0.0254	0.0010	0.0254
51	--- --- ---		0.00088	0.02235
52	--- --- ---		0.00078	0.0198
53	--- --- ---		0.00070	0.0178
54	--- --- ---		0.00062	0.0157
55	--- --- ---		0.00055	0.0140
56	--- --- ---		0.00049	0.01245