American wire gauge

American wire gauge (AWG) is used in the United States and other countries as a standard method of denoting wire diameter, especially for non-ferrous, electrically conducting wire. Increasing gauge numbers give decreasing wire diameters, which is similar to many other non-metric gauging systems. This seemingly-counterintuitive numbering is derived from the fact that the gauge number is related to the number of drawing operations that must be used to produce a given gauge of wire; very fine wire (for example, 30 gauge) requires far more passes through the drawing dies than 0 gauge wire.

Related Topics:
United States - Wire - Electrically - Conducting - Metric - Drawing operations - Drawing dies

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Note that for gauges 5 through about 14, you can think of the wire gauge as the number of bare solid wires that, when placed side by side, span 1 inch. That is, 8 gauge is about 1/8" in diameter.

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AWG is also commonly used to specify body piercing jewelry sizes.

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A comparing all known wire gauges to each other.

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