Another important point for a beginning wire drawer is to remember
to use the proper side of the draw plate. It is tapered and if it
has numbers/sizes on the holes they usually go on the outside; the
side that the new thinnier wire will be on. I often see beginning
students forget this especially when using small sizes on very old
well worn draw plates, which are the ones new students get to use.
The tapers are hard to see in the very thin gagues. I’ve magic
markered arrows on the top edge of on a couple of my plates just to
remind me.
Mark Kaplan