Chainmail making in pictures

     Hail Ye brave warriors ! Here is one project I would mark as " quite challenging " as to amount of material needed and time needed for completion.  CHAIN MAIL armour ( the basics are valid for any chain mail project). Now let's see...

What do we need ?

TIME - you'll need plenty as this could take anything from a week to a couple of months, depending on what you decide to create. My chain mail body armour took me more than a year to complete. I do attend a regular daily job off course... and I certainly ain't Chuck Norris.

   Wire. The choice is yours, I'm using 1.8 millimeter mild steel zinc galvanized wire ( quite easy to work  with  and  will not rust, on the other hand it is quite heavy, so for lighter products a thinner wire is an option ). For a chain mail armour shirt with short sleeves reaching down to your thighs you'll need approx. 1000 meters. That is a load isn't it ? The finished product weights up to 15 kilos.

   Set of pliers - a pair of flat-nosed pliers to close the wire rings and small bolt-cutters to cut them. I've tried normal cutting pliers and well,  it is just impossible to cut more than a few rings in a row, unless of course you are Chuck Norris. Remember, you'll need thousands of rings.

 * safety tip : wrap up handles in something soft to reduce stress on    your palms

   Crank rig. I made this thingy out of some scrap wood and reinforced it with metal. The crank shaft is made of straightened lighting rod wire ( any  metal rod that can be bent without you being Chuck Norris will do)  approx. 8 millimeter in diameter. Well the choice is yours here again, but in my humble experience, smaller rings make nicer pattern in the end.

    Note the hole in the crank shaft - it serves this purpose : you insert the wire into that hole and start turning the crank clockwise, thus creating a coil as seen below. It is a good idea to clamp the rig to your working table using a screw clamp for example.


* safety tip :  wear protective gloves

Stage 1, making metal rings

   The coil of wire should look somewhat like this. It's loops should be uniform, fit snugly one right next to the other, without any gaps. Make plenty of these, ring consumption will be immense.






    Here we have to split a bit - we are going to need two kinds of rings - open and closed ones. First, let's make some closed ones.

   Take your small bolt cutters and snip your coils along the longer axis into rings as seen on the pic. until you have a considerable amount, be patient, there is no use in making a few of each kind of rings at a time, it is much more effective to make a nice stockpile before starting to actually weave the chain mail.

Remember, this project is  mainly about patience and persistence. To be honest, I had to learn mine doing this : ) 

    Now, provided you haven't given up yet, take a ring, place it in your pliers - give it a tight grip, the cut facing upwards. Now grasp the ring with the second pair of pliers on the other side of the cut FIRMLY and close it pushing the pliers towards each other - should look like this pic. No sense to rush, nice and steady, you'll learn the move quick and after a few hundred rings it comes around automatic. I watch YouTube videos while making rings without even thinking about what I am doing.

   In this part of the process, you should now have  a couple of hundreds of nicely closed rings now. Let's move on to open rings.

   Remember the first coil you've made ? Now make another dozen or so and pull them longer. If you have a vice at your disposal, grip one end in vice jaws and pull the other end, if not you can use my method. I'd bend one end to form a hook as seen on the pic, then I'd hook it onto a screw clamp fastened to my table and grasping the other end with pliers, I pull towards myself. Pull slowly and steady to make a straight and uniform spiral. The gap between the loops should be circa 6 millimeters.

   Now grab your trusty old bolt cutters and cut the spiral to single rings. Try closing a few at first to make sure you have it right, the closed ring should be nice and round and match the size of closed rings you made earlier, if it is oval, you cut it either too short or too long. Having this step done, we can move to stage 2.

 Stage 2, making of the actual product

    Probably the easiest weave of chain mail is the 4 in 1 weave. This means that there are 4 different rings going through every single  ring of the mail. It works best for me to make semi-products first. This way is a lot faster than weaving in 2 rings at a time. Let's see..

     The open ring needs to pass through 4 closed rings as seen on the picture. To achieve this, simply grasp 1 open ring in a pair of pliers, place 4 closed rings on the open ring and close the open ring. Now You have Your first finished semi-product. Bravo. Proceed with this until You have plenty. And by plenty I mean plenty, for an armour You will need thousands of these. Mine took about 4000 - that makes to 20 000 rings.





    It of course depends on the ring diameter, but as i said before, smaller rings make for a nicer pattern, and of course offer greater protection and flexibility. I encourage anyone undertaking a larger project to make a few sample pieces first - let's say about the size of a cigarette pack. I made a few combining various diameters of rings and gauges of wire to find what suits me best.

    Now let's start stiching it up. Place your semi-products like this and connect them with spare open rings, always making sure You have 4 rings going through each and every single ring ( except the edges of course ) 

    It starts to look interesting finally ey ? Don't try to make the entire armour at once. Make smaller pieces instead and join them into bigger sheets later. Think ahead, make exact measurements, and count Your rings well. it is a big nuissance to redo parts of Your armour when You realize it does not fit. Oh, and make it big enough to wear a padded coat under it, otherwise any force applied to the armour while wearing it will demonstrate in rings being burrowed in Your flesh.

 
     Thanks for Your attention fellows, feel free to comment, ask and share. For those of You that might wish any advice, feel free to ask, I'll do my best to help. Cheers and lots of persistence : )