I honestly don't remember having to score them, so maybe I was working with 16 gauge. I'll have to pull out my mail and check, if I haven't given it away.
I wish I had the time, patience, and money for something like this. Kudos to those of you who do! That is awesome. I love the look of that scale armor on The Ring Lord site. That is beautiful. Maybe one day...
I've thought about making maille too, but it seems like the entry costs are pretty high? Also not sure if I've got the patience or the smarts to do it either 
I've thought about making maille too, but it seems like the entry costs are pretty high? Also not sure if I've got the patience or the smarts to do it either ;)
Well under $100 for start up cost. You'd be hard pressed to find a cheaper hobby.
Two good pliers: $15-20
Spool of fence wire: $15-20
Tin snips aircraft shears: $10-$15
Cheap drill: $30
Metal stock for mandrel: few bucks for a 3' steel rod
chunk of wood for spool and mandrel jigs: few bucks for whatever you want to work with
Assuming you had no tools whatsoever you're looking at $100US as a rough guess high end.
This is sort of tempting. Ever since I moved out of my parents' house to go to college I have been living in dorms or apartments. I have really been starting to miss the nice sized garage that let us do serious woodworking and other sorts of crafts.
Making Maille is pretty tempting because it seems like it would be perfect since space is an issue.
Of course part of the problem is that I am so messy. If I tidied up I'd have plenty of room to make some models and such.
This is sort of tempting. Ever since I moved out of my parents' house to go to college I have been living in dorms or apartments. I have really been starting to miss the nice sized garage that let us do serious woodworking and other sorts of crafts.
When you say serious woodworking, what sort of stuff do you mean?
Furniture mostly, we made our own bunk-beds, desks, entertainment centers, Dog House, bookshelves.
Trachalio wrote:I've thought about making maille too, but it seems like the entry costs are pretty high? Also not sure if I've got the patience or the smarts to do it either ;)
Well under $100 for start up cost. You'd be hard pressed to find a cheaper hobby.
Two good pliers: $15-20
Spool of fence wire: $15-20
Tin snips aircraft shears: $10-$15
Cheap drill: $30
Metal stock for mandrel: few bucks for a 3' steel rod
chunk of wood for spool and mandrel jigs: few bucks for whatever you want to work withAssuming you had no tools whatsoever you're looking at $100US as a rough guess high end.
I work at Princess Auto up here in Canada and I think we have everything I'd need to start. Large selection of pliers, steel rods, fence wire, and cheap rotary tools. Might end up trying my hand at maille after all!
I have been thinking of things you could do to make more decorative pieces, an obvious one is something I believe you mentioned, alternating metals to achieve different colors. You could also vary the guage and width of the coil, which also may affect the color when viewed at a distance. Another idea I had was messing with the actual shape of the coil. If you were slow and careful could you wrap the wire around a hexagonal form instead of a cylinder without weakening the rings too much?
Trachalio wrote:I've thought about making maille too, but it seems like the entry costs are pretty high? Also not sure if I've got the patience or the smarts to do it either ;)
Well under $100 for start up cost. You'd be hard pressed to find a cheaper hobby.
Two good pliers: $15-20
Spool of fence wire: $15-20
Tin snips aircraft shears: $10-$15
Cheap drill: $30
Metal stock for mandrel: few bucks for a 3' steel rod
chunk of wood for spool and mandrel jigs: few bucks for whatever you want to work withAssuming you had no tools whatsoever you're looking at $100US as a rough guess high end.
And that's assume you have nothing of the sort already. Any pair of wire cutters will probably do...
To be completely honest most modest home tool kits have most of the equipment you'll need, all but the wire and steel rod.
Differently shaped rings would probably work, But they would be very weak unless you welded the ends shut. The wire would not wind accurately around an angled mandril. But I suppose you could use a hammer to flatten each side afterwards.
Hmm, or you may be able to set up a Mandril with two or more hexagons that rotated with each other, like gears, with a gap between them that matched the gauge of the wire you were feeding through. That may work to more accurately flatten them against the Mandril, although you would have to be careful not to jam it.
Well under $100 for start up cost. You'd be hard pressed to find a cheaper hobby.
Even less than that if you buy your rings premade. Most people don't have the tools or the space to make rings by hand, so its a nice skill to learn but not essential. If you check out The Ring Lord's website they are pretty much a one stop shop for everything you need.
If you would like to try making your own rings you need everything liquid mentioned. My pliars only cost 10$ for the pair and you will probably want jeweler sized pliars instead of using two big needlenosed. Stainless steel and aluminium are hard to coil and cut by hand, but galvanized wire is easy to handle. TRL sells bulk wire and you can save 80% or more per pound of finished rings. Instead of buying metal stock TRL also sells finished mandrels which have a handy slot cut into them and are cheaper than buying a blank metal rod to boot.
However I would heavily recommend skipping on the handmade rings and starting with precut bright aluminium rings. Its light, clean and most importantly, very easy on your hands. They are also dirt cheap, in most sizes and gauges each ring can cost less than a cent. The only other item you need are the pliers and the remaining 90$ will buy enough aluminium for more than 20 shirts. As an added bonus alum is about 1/3 the weight of steel, which saves a lot of money on shipping.
As for instructions you can find them all over the internet, I will also be going over the basics here in this thread.
I have been thinking of things you could do to make more decorative pieces, an obvious one is something I believe you mentioned, alternating metals to achieve different colors. You could also vary the guage and width of the coil, which also may affect the color when viewed at a distance. Another idea I had was messing with the actual shape of the coil. If you were slow and careful could you wrap the wire around a hexagonal form instead of a cylinder without weakening the rings too much?
A lot of the work I have listed is testing different configurations of different sized rings. Tiffany is a neat pattern but if you just made a sheet big enough to cover a bed it would be somewhat boring visually. However each ring of the shirt is load-bearing and the higher up you go the more weight it carries. This limits what I can do in terms of alternate metals. Anodized aluminium rings can be any colour of the rainbow, but they are somewhat weak. The best option I have found so far is nickle silver, its fairly strong and looks like stainless with a gold overtone. You can also get anodized titanium which has a different colour palette than alum, but those are very expensive. 80$+ per pound, a single pound being about 1500 rings.
One possibility with aluminium is to make panels and shapes and attach them overtop of the steel shirt. It wouldn't weight a huge amount, so I could make shoulder pads, bracers and that sort of thing. It would also work very well for a raised collar, because heavy steel collars have to be rigid or else they flop down and this makes them uncomfortable.
Differently shaped rings would probably work, But they would be very weak unless you welded the ends shut. The wire would not wind accurately around an angled mandril. But I suppose you could use a hammer to flatten each side afterwards.
Ouch, sorry to hear that. I can definitely feel the strain sometimes and its important to know when to stop. I try to limit my coil cutting to 1 coil a day. Maybe two if I run out of a specific ring. But once you get up to speed it turns into more of an endurance issue than a stress issue.
The pointedness of my rings is not that bad, thought sometimes I have to bend one end inwards a bit. Saw cut rings are pretty common these days. You can cut coils by hand with a jewlers saw, but most people use very thin rotary saw blades. A saw cut produces the best connection but blades are expensive. Stainless steel in particular is almost impossible to cut, I've heard that people burn off blades at a rate of one blade per 10-20 rings!
This is the cutting process:
Its pretty simple. The shears bite into the end of the coil, snapping off each ring one at a time and leaving a big dent in the rings behind it. Most of my coils are between 160-260 rings long, so this is very time consuming. When cutting 14 gauge wire it takes me an average of 6-10 seconds for each ring.
Every now and then the shears will jam because the ring doesn't snap and they bite too deep. In those cases I have to come in with pliers to lever the ring off. If you do this for every ring its called the score and break method and produces a very clean cut. S&B is required for very small rings because only the tips of the shears will fit inside the coil. Your cutting leverage becomes very bad if you can only use the tips, so score and break is the only efficient method that doesn't distort the rings.
Afterwards the rings are bagged and ready for use.
Overseeing my work is my cat Sparkles :3
You could certainly make some special rollers to shape the rings in that fashion. Square rings would be fairly easy to make, even if they end up with rounded corners. They wouldn't fit together anything at all like the round rings do.
Of course part of the problem is that I am so messy. If I tidied up I'd have plenty of room to make some models and such.
Almost missed this comment. You've seen the picture of all my ring supply bags. That picture should tell you all you need to know about the state of my room... But you don't have to be a clean freak. I clear all the rings off my desktop every night and vacuum the surface and the carpet below it to pick up any metal particles. And thats about it.
However, there is one habit that ANY person making mail needs to develop. If you drop a single ring on the floor or otherwise, get up and look for it right away. An opened ring is shaped in such a way that it acts like a caltrop. No matter how you step on it, one of the sharp ends will be pointing up. This goes double for me because I use an inflatable exercise ball as a chair. Wouldn't take much to pop it.
If you bought mild steel wire and case-hardened that wouldn't it be pretty similar (and maybe even preferable) to case-hardened iron?
That I wouldn't know. Maybe ask Robear? These days people use welded spring steel for maximum strength.
Pics to follow sometime today. My camera was borrowed.
You're making me itch to pull out my aluminum ring chaimail shirt design I've been working on (and off) for the past 10 years..
I'm using the same process for coiling my rings, but I built a rig to allow for better wire guidance, as I was getting lots of unintentional overlaps/non-tight coils. I highly suggest using the larger handled sheet metal shears as opposed to a simple short nosed wire cutter (for speed and wear and tear purposes).
Also, I found that using a large reel of electric cow fence aluminum is a great way to get your hands on some relatively cheap, shiny, easily-manipulated-yet-still-strong wire.
Now this process sounds quick and efficient. But what you don't get to see is me shaking that damn jar for about 5 hours. Talk about elbow grease! 5 hours per half pound of rings. Thought I admit it does beat spending 200$ on a motorized tumbler and extra for the electricity used to run one for 2 days or more.
You can probably find tumblers and tumbler material at gun stores, as they're used to clean empty brass casings before handloading.
Here is the ring cleaning process.
First the raw rings get dumped into an old jam jar with soap and water. My computer room is carpeted but the rest of the house has tile floors. So if I shake this while watching TV I wrap the jar in some socks in case I drop it. When tossing rings dry the jar creates a LOT of noise, if it becomes unbearable or the neighbours complain I stuff the jar inside an oven mitt.
Some vigorous shaking removes any remaining grease from the rings. Otherwise this rubs off onto fingers and clothing. Next the rings are drained and dried on a paper towel for a couple minutes. If I am in a hurry for whatever reason a hair drier speeds this up to 10 seconds.
Next the burnishing process begins. Burnishing is like extra rough polishing. Instead of refining the surface you are removing any existing crud leaving you with a clean surface for polishing. Burnishing compounds help this process along and prevent the dirt from being redeposited on the rings. Most compounds are acid based, but in this case I used long grain white rice.
The rice is quite effective, it is strong enough to abrade the dirty oxide layer on the outside of the rings. It also seems to "absorb" the metal dust afterwards. The rings come out clean and the grey dust can't be rubbed off the rice grains. After a lot of tossing around the rice becomes steadily darker. Depending on the amount of rings and the ratio of rings to rice they can reach light grey or almost-black.
The rings are then dumped on the paper tower again and hand-sorted. This involves sifting the rice out with my fingers. You would think steel would be magnetic, but this is alloy 304 stainless which is not. Not all iron and steel is magnetic and it has to do with the crystal structure inside the metal, or so I hear.
The rings at this point are fairly shiny, but they don't yet "sparkle". Most metals require some sort of polishing "media" to rub against. The most common is ground up walnut shells, but dried corn cobs also work, and for the tougher metals ball bearings and little steel disks can be used. Stainless is easy in that regard, because stainless rings can polish each other with no media required. The rings are tossed vigorously about with a little bit of water until they reach the proper level of polish. The water gets dirty and is changed every 30 minutes.
Now this process sounds quick and efficient. But what you don't get to see is me shaking that damn jar for about 5 hours. Talk about elbow grease! 5 hours per half pound of rings. Thought I admit it does beat spending 200$ on a motorized tumbler and extra for the electricity used to run one for 2 days or more.
Well I live in Canada so no gun shops in sight. Harbour Freight has low prices but I've heard a lot of bad reviews about them. With tumblers you really get what you pay for, an industrial duty tumbler will run you about 150$ but will *never* break. The 30-60$ range is quite iffy.
On top of that expense you have to buy tumbling media. I'm very allergic to nuts, so that rules out walnut shells. Steel shot and ball bearings go for 30-50$ a pound and you need at least 2 pounds. So it adds up very quickly. Rotary tumblers are designed to run slowly for days, and that puts a dent on your power bill as well. Vibratory tumblers are better and quicker at polishing but you can't deburr or burnish with them.
Well Tamren, you got me. I have been looking around Maille Artisans and have found myself thinking of mail and whatnot for a very large portion of the last week. I went to Home Depot and got myself two wire cutters (snips and normal, I read that they make different types of cuts) some gloves, and a drill. I've been meaning on getting those things for awhile, so I don't even have to count it as personal money!
Unfortunately neither the Home Depot or the Grainger had actual wire! Well, they had thin insulated wire, but that's no good. Home Depot also had 8 Gauge Copper wire, but that's no good either. So now unfortunately I'm going to have to wait for the wire and Mandrels I ordered from http://theringlord.com to get here. It's going to be a couple weeks :(. I'm really looking forward to getting started, I've been looking at the weaves and thinking of all sorts of things I could make. We'll have to see how long I can stick with it, but right now I'm pretty enthusiastic about it.
Well I live in Canada so no gun shops in sight. Harbour Freight has low prices but I've heard a lot of bad reviews about them.
Harbour Freight is like stepping down in quality from WalMart. You don't think it's physically possible, but they prove you wrong every time you use one of their items.
Ok, maybe not that bad. But they're not much better.
You just have to know how to shop Harbor Freight, they have some gems, like the stationary bandsaw I got from them. Their motorized tools you have to be very careful on, but if you need a specialty tool for a one-off project you can usually pick something up from HF cheaper than renting it. If it does break they basically just shrug their shoulders and tell you to go grab another one. Great place for stuff like C-clamps, hammers, gloves (leather and latex), foam sanding blocks, etc. Just don't ever buy anything you don't immediately need if it's not on sale as it's guaranteed to be on sale the next week.
All my air hoses came from HF, and their "top end" retractable air hose reel is awesome. But yeah, the only power tools of theirs I have are the bandsaw, an air compressor and an abrasive chop saw.
You just have to know how to shop Harbor Freight, they have some gems, like the stationary bandsaw I got from them. Their motorized tools you have to be very careful on, but if you need a specialty tool for a one-off project you can usually pick something up from HF cheaper than renting it. If it does break they basically just shrug their shoulders and tell you to go grab another one. Great place for stuff like C-clamps, hammers, gloves (leather and latex), foam sanding blocks, etc. Just don't ever buy anything you don't immediately need if it's not on sale as it's guaranteed to be on sale the next week.
All my air hoses came from HF, and their "top end" retractable air hose reel is awesome. But yeah, the only power tools of theirs I have are the bandsaw, an air compressor and an abrasive chop saw.
Yeah, for one off stuff they can be ok.
As a woodworker, I don't like their clamps. With their clamps, I'm always having to put spacers between the clamp and piece, where with other clamps I can usually just use the clamp directly on my piece and not mess it up (imprints / paint transfer).
Also, their sheets of sandpaper are in no way worth the money. They wear out in no time. 3M sandpaper, which is the best I've found (I believe Lowe's carries it) among HF, Norton (@ Home Depot), ACE hardware, and a few others. The new Norton stuff is better than it used to be, but still not on par with the 3M stuff.
Ok, sorry if that derails, but I guess it still pertains to the Harbour Freight question. Sort of...
Their wood clamps suck but you can't screw up a c-clamp. I bought some of their "quick grip" ratchet clamps though and for a brief extra hand their good but they don't hold pressure. Oh, I also got their dust collector second-hand and it works like a champ. It'll hold me over until we buy a house and I duct in a much more powerful cyclone system.
Sorry for the derail, my point was that you won't see me shaking a jar for five hours when there's a chance a $35 tumbler will work.
We'll have to see how long I can stick with it, but right now I'm pretty enthusiastic about it.
Sweet, what mandrel sizes did you pick up? I have the basic armouring sizes of 3/16 to 1/2 inch. Did you get the aluminium or galvy wire? When practicing I prefer to use alum for 3/16 and 1/4 because trying to work with small rings made of tough metals is excruciating. Especially at the start when your muscles are not yet used to the strain.
Some more pics to follow today when I get home later. I've been having some annoying internet outages recently. Its nothing I can fix, apparently the storms we are getting here blew down some telephone cables. Whatever network infrastructure remains is not enough to run everyone at once, so it tends to drop randomly and come back. On one of my phone lines I can't get anything but static most of the day and its the one that runs my DSL.
How many times do you edit your posts, Tamren? 
[size=1]Granted they're epic posts.[/size]
Lots of stuff going on this this picture. I fixed the yellowing on my camera but the light isn't as even as I would like. As well the yellowing actually added some contrast which is mising now. On the left hand we have European weaves. 4 in 1 european means that each ring connects to 4 others. It is the most basic weave that can be done as a sheet. This weave is the most authentic historically and has oodles of variations. On the right we have some more tiffany.
One of the most important lessons you have to learn when making chainmail is aspect ratio. Aspect ratio is the ratio between the inner diameter of the ring and the wire thickness. This determines how tight and rigid a weave will be when completed. The patch of mail at the top left is Euro 4-1 using 1/4 inch ID rings. This is made from 16gauge wire so the AR is 4.2. Beside it is another patch of the same weave, but this one is made from 14 gauge wire rings. The second patch also has an AR of 4, so the rings are bigger and thicker but the weave remains about the same. Contrast that with the patch below them, again same weave, but with an AR of 5.
Some weaves have a minimum AR with which you can put then together. Anything tighter and it becomes impractical because you don't have enough space to close rings. The reverse is true, a higher AR can be used to make something more flexible. But after a point the weave becomes too floppy and useless. How AR sensitive something is depends on its pattern.
The middle patch at the bottom is euro 6-1. Same principle only this time each ring connects to 6. This is far more dense than 4-1 and it has a bias. A bias is when a weave bends more easily in one direction versus another. In this case that patch can bend double vertically, but almost not at all horizontally.
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Moving on to the right. The little button in the centre is called a moebius ball. What makes it special is that each ring connects to every other ring in the "ball". This remains true if you make a ball from 4 or 20 rings. Moebius balls have all sorts of uses. If the AR is sufficiently high you can make them into a chain, or even a sheet.
At the top we have examples of a joint and a seam. A joint is what you get when you attach two pieces of mail and the weave changes direction. This can be directly perpendicular or at another angle. The joint pictured here is the simplest design, its not optimal because the rings hang loose and open.
Beside it is an example of a 60 degree seam. Looking closely you can see that the direction of the weave changes, but remains continuous. Each ring in there still connects to 4. This is the same seam used to make a 90 degree seam shirt. When you lay it down flat the angle produced is 60 or 30 degrees, 6 triangles form a hexagon. The reason they call it a "90" degree shirt is that when you only use 4 of these and drape the results over your shoulder they do line up in square angles.
Below on the left we have examples of chains. There are tons and tons of these that have been created over the years. I don't know many variations yet because they don't often figure into armour. The outer two are chains made from moebius balls in a 2-4 and 3-6 chain. The thin one beside them is called a 1-2 chain. This is the simplest chain you can make using rings and you will see it in all sorts of places. European weaves are just columns of 1-2 chain linked together. Tiffany is also composed of interlocking 1-2 chains in different orientations.
At the bottom right we have two variations than can be done on any weave. The first one doubles the rings in a stack. This makes the weave twice as thick but requires a high AR. Doubled Euro 4-1 is sometimes called "kingsmaille" so this technique is also referred to as "kinging". Queensmaille is the same thing only the rings are stacked in threes. Emperor and Empress maille are one step further with the weave being euro 6-1 instead of 4-1.
Beside that is a technique called "scaling". A smaller ring is surrounded by a larger ring to form a disk. This requires an even higher AR, but creates a neat fishscale look to the weave. The 4-8 variant of this is called "king's scale". In this case I did not scale every row, the alternating rows are just single rings. There was not enough room. Amusingly when you partially double the weave like this the name becomes "poor king's maille, and poor king's scale".
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Under all of that you can see a big black patch. That is an upside-down mousepad. It performs great as a no-slip surface and is tough enough to resist any gouging. The no-slip has a downside however. If I am working on a piece that must be rotated constantly I use the paper instead where it can slide.
All of the stuff shown here can be used to introduce variation to the shirt. I have seen plenty of shirts that use a consistent weave throughout. But that strikes me as a little boring.
Average of 5. -_- See the problem is halfway through the proofreading process I get an invite to go play L4D2. Then when I start again I get a second invite. Repeat until its after midnight when no one is playing. Only then can I finally finish. But some still slip through the cracks because proofreading at midnight with groggy eyes is far from ideal.
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