How To Make Chainmail/wip (Pic Heavy)

[Spartianintraining]

First off, Mods if needed to be move go ahead and move it.

Now thats settled with to start off supplies



a dowel rod

im using 1/2 inch it all depends on how large of rings you would want

I'm using a normal pair of wire cutters, a regular pair or pliers and a pair of needle nose pliers

Also the main part of the chainmail 14 Gauge electrical fence wire

Plus some thick work gloves because of the wire you will need to guide it around the dowel if not your hands will hurt



ok to start off this method will make your forearms burn due to the excessive holding the dowel rod and coiling the wire around it

there are other methods to do this but this is the way that i am doing



ok so we take the wire and cut a decent length and start to coil it around the dowel rod

now you going to want to coil it very tight and close together so the rings will better plus a chance to have more rings

we are shooting for the black arrow not the red but you can still use the red side



now once you are finish coiling the wire you can start cutting it

you are going to take your wire cutters and cut as much as you can with it and use the

regular pliers and grab the opposite side of the cut and bend it forward

so now you have one ring

so continue to cut the rest of the coil thill its all gone



now when that part is done you can take your rings and start to make the pattern

so take 5 rings and using your pliers take close 4 of the rings and open the last ring more

slip the 4 closed rings into the open ring

this is called a 4 in 1 pattern so this is the main pattern you will use

so once you make anohter patch combine the two patches by an open ring

now you are going to weave in the open ring by sliding it into the top of one of the patches and the bottom of the other.

if any confusion just pm me



so now you have this

now continue to make some of these



when you have two sets of these

you are going to conect the two sides together with 3 open rings

continue to do this untill you have it across your chest

then you will know how long you will need to have the chain to come across you body

this is all i have for now

updates will follow

 

[Roadwarrior]

Nice tutorial, are you making a knight costume?

 

[Spartianintraining]

i might later on but im making this to wear to the ren fest round thanksgiving time me and my gf try n go she likes to dress up so imma join her

 

[Loess]

Cool! I used to do a bunch of maille work in college, since it was about the only armor I could make in my dorm room.



A tool that you might find useful for winding your coils:

1 - Get a block of oak wood.

2 - Measure the diameter of your dowel with a turn of wire around it.

3 - Drill a little bit into the block with a bit that's just barely larger than the rod with the wire on it.

4 - Drill a hole the size of your dowel the rest of the way through the block in the center of the over-sized hole.

5 - Cut a groove from the side of the block to the edge of larger hole to guide the wire onto the dowel.



That makes it a lot easier to wind nice tight coils, and helps to keep your hand away from the wire if you use a power drill to spin the rod like I do.

 

[Spartianintraining]

yea i know about this method but at the moment i dont have the power drill at my disposal



(UPDATE)



i have started making the chainmail a couple days ago but decided to make this tut today so here is my progress for today

so far i have 246 rings connected and im happy with it now

 

[rockthewarrior]

Hmm this could come in handy for some stuff later down the road. Nice job on the tut.

 

[noName]

[edit]

 

[Privateer]

Nice work on the maille and the tut ! I use a section of 1/4" steel rod and concrete tie wire for my maille the first piece I made was a coif for my fair armour about 20,000 rings in it give or take a couple hundred lol.

Keep up the good work!

 

[computergeek]

Nice tutorial! I'm going to get some fence wire sometime and try this out, it would be the coolest thing to do!

 

[Spartianintraining]

like i said the ring size is your choice i went with 1/2 in dowel and privateer went with a 1/4 in dowel

 

[guido666]

Good tutorial.



I would also like to add that there is a fantastic website, The Ring Lord, that sells many chainmail making supplies. They sell rings in a great many sizes, thicknesses, and materials (including exotic materials like titanium and gold). It also sells tools, and sheets of pre-fabricated chainmail. They seem to be one of the most notable suppliers of this stuff around, and have many movies they have made the chainmail for.



When I made the chainmail for the costume in my pic, I didn't want to make all the rings myself, and I wanted to make it out of bronze which is hard wire to find anyways. I was able to buy all the rings from The Ring Lord easily. I definately wouldn't have wanted to cut 26 pounds of rings by hand to make that shirt, haha.



Typical historical/combat chainmail was made with smaller rings, closer to 1/4". I used 7/16" 16ga rings for mine because I wanted the texture to stand out and be visible from farther away. (Even in the small picture, you can see the ring texture.)

 

[hyphen]

What I have found works well, is to wrap the wire around a bolt. It kind of locks it in well.

 

[Deathcoreknight]

What I have found works well, is to wrap the wire around a bolt. It kind of locks it in well.

damn i got beat to it the sedish pattern chain mail i can already make but ti suck's cause it f,,,k my fingers up ugh i hate it

 

[Spartianintraining]

I just had a ring count recently but by tonight i will have done about 816+ links done and i recently played Dante's Inferno demo and i really am tempted to make stuff to dress up as him