Coming from someone who hand-beaded a dress for two years, I am so ready. Starting with aluminum rings because I'm a newbie+money....the first bags just arrived today. I did some googling and came up with these links to start with: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-chainmail-shirt/ http://realbeer.com/jjpalmer/4in1page.html Anyone have tutorials, resources, or their own projects they want to share?
I haven't done this stuff in a million years but some stuff I remember: START SMALL. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD START SMALL. Like, a bracelet. A necklace. Maybe a dice bag. I think I still have a 4"x 16"ish strip of 4-in-1 lying around somewhere that was to be a shirt and I just Could Not Even anymore. Japanese 6-in-1 is a neat pattern for noobs. It's easy and fast. I couldn't wrap my brain around half persian chain until I found this one tutorial that I naturally can't find now. I got wire from The Ring Lord way back in the day, glad to see he's still around. Winding and cutting your own rings will save you money, but it can be a pain (literally) with harder stuff like 16ga+ stainless. Leather work gloves will be your friends for that. I tried aircraft snips for cutting thicker gauge rings but the best thing I found was a pair of really small bolt cutters. For thinner stuff, a pair of small end nippers worked fine. A surface you can pin your work to would be helpful too. My dad made me a sort of lap desk out of thick foam, with two little cutouts to put little metal cups in to hold rings.
I compared a lot of prices before ordering anything and someday I would LOVE to make a shirt out of stainless steel, but if I do that I will probably make my own rings. Just. SO MUCH MONEY. D: I need to go out and get more comfortable pairs of pliers, actually. All I have rn are tiny jewelry pliers. My hands hurt just thinking about using them for this. I really want to make a shirt for cosplay, but I'm giving myself a lot of time and I'm going to experiment a bit first, so I only bought about 6k rings to start with. Most of the tutorials say a full length shirt runs between 20-24k rings D: Doesn't Japanese mail require two different sizes of rings?
off to a wee start. I wanted to see if I could wrap my head around the pattern. it took a little bit but I think I got the hang of what to look for. I can absolutely see how a pin-board would come in handy. My only concern is that the rings are too small. I'm having difficulty gauging how flat they're supposed to lie. For the record, these are "14 AWG/16 SWG-5/16" " aluminum from Chainmail Joe.
Yeah, Japanese does take big rings and small rings. It's a good jewelry pattern, though. Easy to leave spaces to install pendants and dangly bits and whatnot. Your little piece there looks pretty good to me! Tiny bits of 4-in-1 and its relatives always look kind of weird when you first start them. That also looks about like the Standard Big Ring Size I used but your mileage may vary.
If you make bracelets I will buy the absolute fuck out of them. I did not know how badly I needed a chainmail bracelet until this moment.
The Ring Lord is awesome! My boyfriend taught me how to chainmail ages ago, but neither of us have done so lately. Good times! !!
hi! i took a class in it.. years and years ago and I still have the general hang of it. i made a lovely bracelet for my friend rowan once with blue beads worked into it; I am going to see if I can find a picture.
Just bought two of these babies for like $13 total, bless Michaels' coupons. They're slightly smaller than I'd like but the hardware store had nothing larger that didn't have teeth. Also the handles are fun to squish. @Aviari I can check out what beads I have that will fit this wire! And also look into closures. My only concern about bracelets is that the wire ends might snag skin but I'll see if sanding them helps.
I did some Etsy trolling and beads aren't a deal breaker for me, at least. I just love the look of some of the interlocking patterns :D At a guess, it'll be E beads, that looks like the most common ones used.
did some digging into my jewelry making stuff and found some wooden beads that will fit the rings. Also, I have a shitton of glass beads that will fit smaller rings if I wanted to go with the Japanese mail pattern. Plus i found a ton of gold jump rings that have been just sitting around waiting for this moment. I tried it out but my jump rings are still too large to make a tight weave: I'm going to grab some 4mm ones and see if those work. I wish I could remember where I got the large gold rings, though, because they're awesome. I also found some giant aluminum rings that are light enough for me to open and close with my fingers, so I tried out joining strips together to see how it worked. Sadly i have no clue where I got them either, because making a cosplay shirt with them would have been a snap. But either way it was a fun exercise.
hokay so. Bracelets! I made some test ones, using the small rings that were too big for Japanese weave. they actually work quite well size-wise. the long gold one I tried on. I found the same rings again at the store but they seem to have changed the wire thickness since I bought them last so the bracelet became shorter as a result, even with around the same amt of rings. the silver one was made with the exact same product in a different color...and came out longer. /SHRUGS I'm going to buy some more and maybe try fancier patterns, or mixing gold and silver in stripes or something. In the meantime, are these something people would be interested in?
I feel like I'm spamming this thread but I'm really excited about this one! Full Persian 6 in 1 weave I poked around for more complicated weaves and they all made my head spin except for this one. it makes a chunky bracelet but I know some people prefer stuff like that.
Wow, that's lovely!! it's so shiny... Here's the bracelet I made last Christmas: Spoiler: spoiler bc huge image It's aura 2-in-1 from this website, with seed beads strung on, although it kind of suffers from my only having one size of ring.
chainmail jewelry looks really awesome! how long does it generally take to learn such things and make a piece? i might be considering to learn chainmail even though i have weak granny hands >_>
Hmm. I taught myself by looking at pictures but I'm sure there are youtube tutorials around. I'd start w soft metals, like aluminum, tho whatever they make regular jewelry jump rings out of is usually easy to bend. I made the bracelets while waiting for MMO dungeon parties to fill up. The regular 4-in-1s took me maybe an hour or two each, and the complex one maybe three hours? (total time, but I'm bad at estimating time. I worked on it on and off for about 3 days.) there's definitely a learning curve to each weave; I started out going "bwuh!??!?" at all the pictures and trying to understand which ring goes where, but you hit a point after struggling a bit where it clicks and then you know just what to look for. Edit: that MAIL site has picture tutorials for each weave if you click the links, they look like this: http://www.mailleartisans.org/articles/articledisplay.php?key=13 Basically all you need to start with is two pliers, preferrably w/o teeth so they won't scratch the rings, and comfy for your hands, and the rings themselves. The more complex weaves can require specific ring sizes but the simpler ones you can basically do with whatever.
also, I think I may do a little 4-in-1 picture tutorial and put it here bc the ones i found were difficult to follow and it took me a while to understand them.
Bleh, I can't decide which size rings to get. I subsisted on the one bag of .. I think they're 18 or 19 gauge (SWG) with a 1/4" internal diameter, but I'm not sure.. for the last. Five or six years, because I didn't make much and kept cannibalizing projects I didn't like. But now? Should I get the same ones? Should I get small ones for jewelry? Should I get multiple sizes aaaaaa Realistically I think the answer is "they're not that expensive, don't worry so much about getting the ideal ones the first time" but - ! Edit: also, I think the tutorial is a great idea! I learned it in person, so it was easier, but I would have had a lot of trouble with pictures.
