In article ,
"Mary Fisher" writes:

Also, what gauge of wire to use to replace the elements.

It's nickel-chromium wire, and the guage of wire will depend
on the model. Often it's in a ribbon profile. I have repaired
them sometimes by crimping broken ends together, but you have
to be very careful a loose end isn't going to be able to
touch something it shouldn't. A bootlace ferrule is the
right thing to crimp with, but a folded over steel washer
lasted about 20 years before it needed replacing in a 50
year old Russell Hobs toaster. Nearly all breakages of
toaster wires I've come across have been due to poking
cutlery into the toaster, never to the wire burning out.
I've seen a small number of cases where the failure was
due to a bad connection at one end of the wire too.

--
Andrew Gabriel