How does the American wire gauge system work?
In the American wire gauge (AWG), 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. Note that for gauges 5 through about 14, the wire gauge is effectively the number of bare solid wires that, when placed side-by-side, span 1 inch. That is, 8 gauge is about 1/8 inches in diameter.
