Julian Adams, adamsbonsai.com. He has everything up to 6 ga. For 4 ga. you’ll have to go to Jim Gremel. His website is down and I don’t know his email address off the top of my head, but I’m sure someone will chime in. Adams’s wire is less expensive than Gremel’s and some will say the difference is worth it, but I’ve never had a complaint about Julian’s wire. Just be aware that he sells by length, whereas most sell by weight, so the difference is not as great as it first appears.
I might be wrong, but I believe your wire ends up being brittle because you are skipping a very important step: Quench it in ice-cold water. When I anneal copper wire, I put it in my charcoal grill, and close the lid until it is white-hot. Then, I quickly submerge it in a bucket of ice with some water. That way, the wire becomes soft and supple without being brittle.
It has for me
It takes a long time, though. You really have to build up the heat there. I keep putting more charcoal as it turn into ambers, and I usually spend the better part of a night annealing
I’ve annealed copper wire in my gas grill. I pulled the cast iron grill surface out and just put the wire right on top of the burners to get it as hot as possible. I did not quench with water and have not had trouble with brittleness. Opening up the grill lid and letting it air cool seems to work just as well. The result probably isn’t as good as what you could achieve with a kiln, but the wire was definitely softer than it was as purchased from Home Depot. The largest wire I’ve annealed this way was 6 gauge.
Quenching makes no difference to pure copper, as there is no dissolved carbon in the microstructure. It will not affect the resulting softness, quench or no quench.
The 6 gauge was still a bit stiffer than I would have liked. The 8 gauge was better than the 6 gauge. Everything thinner than that was great. I’m going to try cooking it longer next time to see if that makes a difference for the big wire.
The stuff I bought says “soft drawn annealed” or something like that on the package. However, the 6 and 8 gauge are, in my opinion, entirely unsuitable for the purpose of bonsai wiring the way it comes from the store. Annealing it yourself makes a real difference in the pliability of the wire. Sure, it’s annealed at the factory, but you can’t tell from the package if it was annealed before or after it was drawn & before or after it was wound in a spool. I very much doubt that they anneal it after it’s wound. So, it work-hardens during winding and that’s enough to make it worthless for bonsai.
When most people cut a piece of wire off the roll to use for wiring the tree, they subconsiously straighten it before they even put it on the tree! Which, of course, starts to stiffen it before they even get started! I teach NOT to do that. The bonsai shop owner where I teach classes uses aluminum. But he’s heard me teach. One day, I was wiring tree, and he watched me for a while, and he remarked, “Gee, you really don’t straighten the wire before you use it! I thought you were just kidding!”
