You'll probably get a wide range of responses in this forum. IMHO you're starting from the right place. Use wire of at least 12 gauge (12 or 10 gauge). Properly terminated wire is much easier to use and creates more reliable connections than bare wire. You could add terminations yourself, but very good speaker cables can be had for very reasonable rates. Check out Blue Jeans Cable or Imact Acoustics

BJC and the other are great sources. You could also check out Anti-Cables which run about 10.00 per foot per pair.
The Anti's replaced 3,000.00 speaker cable in my system.
You could also buy 10 gauge magnet wire which is the same thing for much less. Just sand the insulation off the ends so you don't need to terminate them.

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You could also buy 10 gauge magnet wire which is the same thing for much less. Just sand the insulation off the ends so you don't need to terminate them.

Where does one get heavy gauge magnet wire? It would be fun to try this.

(These must be freakin' huge magnets . . .)

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Where does one get heavy gauge magnet wire? It would be fun to try this.

Any insulated 10 or 12 ga. wire should do for your experiment and should be readily available at your local Home Depot. You should twist the conductors to minimize inductance. For my first system, I constructed speaker cables from 12 ga., solid core wire. While my memory of the sound is that it was quite good, I also recall that it was a PITA to manipulate. Not my idea of "fun".

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How expensive do I need to be with speaker wire. I can get 14/2 and 12/2 at Lowe's and $4/ft. stuff from a local home theater company. I'll be using KEF 107 speakers and, maybe, B&W 802 speakers

How long are your speaker wires going to be?

According to the measurements done by Stereophile back in 1991, the Kef 107 is definitely a 4 ohm speaker (minimum impedance 3.6 ohms).

http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/550/index9.html

16 gauge cables should work quite well up to 20 feet or so according to the the table in Roger Russell's article.

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

The only problem with heavy wire such as 12 gauge is that it's harder to work with. It's hard to get it attached to the speakers, and more of a pain, if you ever want to disconnect and reconnect. However, I do have some small relatively inexpensive banana plugs made by Monster (blush-these probably cost somewhat more than the cables) which grab the cable quite elegantly (the wire goes through a base and is bent over the edges and the actual banana plug is screwed onto the base, crimping the wire very nicely and securely. Then you can easily put the banana plugs in the binding posts for the amplifier and speakers and can remove them just as easily (for example, if you want to move the speakers). That's more convenient, but other than that, there's no advantage over using bare wires.

I'm not sure what prices for cable wire are, but I think anything over a dollar a foot is too much and I think you can get excellent cable for half that.

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How expensive do I need to be with speaker wire. I'll be using KEF 107 speakers and, maybe, B&W 802 speakers

Buy something you are comfortable with (afford), something you won't have doubts about (recommended), something you won't be reluctant to mention if you were asked what cables are those (branded).
Anti-Cables are good. My favourite remains Kimber 4TC.

I agree, you can always start low and build up. I bought some architectural ribbon speaker wire (with the adhesive backing to adhere to the wall) that can be painted over.
It was from a company called AR (got it on the 'bay}, which can be found on Amazon and other sites. Used it in our NFS Audio system at the 2008 THE Show. Both Buddha and I were very happy with it...cost me about $50.00 for a 100 foot roll.

www.partsexpress.com
is also a great source for wire/cable and reasonably-priced terminators (bananna plugs, RCA jacks, etc).

Other wire sources are:
LAT International www.latinternational.com
I use LAT speaker cable and interconnects.

HCM Audio www.hcmaudio.com often gets close-outs (last year's model) on Audioquest cables and wire. Check 'em out as well.

There are also lots of web sites for making other DIY cable:
http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html
The above site uses CAT 5 computer cable, but looks very labor intensive.

Others as well:
http://diyaudioprojects.com/Power/power.htm

I made the DIY TNT U-Bytes for my Apogees, I used a Monster Coaxial RG6 quad shielded double cable that I bought in bulk on line. Since the cable ran as a pair, it was a nice tidy and clean-looking cable:
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/diycables.html
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ubyte2e.html

Finally, many web sources praise the virtues of Belden wire and cables...especially their coaxial products for DIY projects.
Hope you are good with a soldering iron!
Mike

Also: look into entry cables from Cardas, like Twinlink. Although cheap, they're solidly made, w/ litz copper & Teflon insulation.

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Where does one get heavy gauge magnet wire? It would be fun to try this.

Any insulated 10 or 12 ga. wire should do for your experiment and should be readily available at your local Home Depot.

Unfortunately, this isn't what I am interested in. I would like to ply with heavy gauge magnet wire; i.e., wire with an extremely thin dielectric like that used by anti-cable.

http://www.mwswire.com/awgsearch2.asp

http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?fr=ybr_sbc&p=magnet%20wire

Thanks for the searches, Jan - but this really doesn't help. Industrial supply manufactures have no interest in selling us what they consider minuscule amounts and we can all do a generic Yahoo or Google search.

Apparently my inquiry for a source should have been very precise.

Magnet Wire, Heavy Amidester (Ha), high temperature, (200

There are many manufacturers of ribbon type rectangular enameled voice coil wire, in the 20ga. range. The woofer dudes use it all the time. Shop around. Use www.thomasnet.com as a guide. After a few hours of phone calls, you'll be likely to have a roll of such sent you by the end of the day.

3 days later, with a bit of braid weaving (3 to 4 strands) and some long 96" or longer cotton shoelaces cut and used as a hollow tube and skin, you'll have some very decent speaker cables.

Don't forget to ask for OFC wire.

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Don't forget to ask for OFC wire.

If you're new to HiFi, 10 or 12 gauge lamp cord is cheap and will do you right. If you're going to be swapping stuff around a lot, add banana plugs, otherwise just use binding posts. You're not going to hear a difference.

Charles.