Ye Olde Chain Maille Rings

Step 2 Winder construction

Using the materials we had sitting around in the garage, we used a piece of an old shelf for the base. Standard 2x4 pine studs were used for the rest of the construction.

We used a 3/8" steel rod as our primary winding rod. A couple of bends were added to one end to allow it to be used as a hand crank. Be sure that the crank part extends off the edge of your base, as you don't want to be bashing your knuckles into the base with every turn of the crank. Later on, we discovered that the power drill could fit the rod into the chuck, and we cut off the handle so that we could run the winder at high speeds without danger.

You'll need to drill a hole in each support for the winding rod. Try to get them aligned as best you can. The friction from the turning rod will wear on the wood a bit, and makes the bearing smoother the more you use it.

To get the wire firmly anchored to the winding rod, we decided to drill a hole straight through the winding rod for the wire to slip into. This allows us to make a very tightly wound coil of wire.

The basic idea is to crank the winding rod, and guide the wire onto the rod directly adjacent to the rest of the coil. Initially, we used hand-cranking, with hand guided wire. Eventually, we upgraded to using the power drill for winding, and created a pretty cool winding tool that will be explained in the next step.

The washers you see at the left are used to offset the coil from the support post. When winding, you will need to keep pressure on the winding rod so that the wire through the hole is pushing on the washers, which are then pushing on the support.

Comments

[thepelton]

I used a threaded rod with a starter hole in it, attached to a reversible electric drill. I put the first inch or so of the wire in the starter hole, and in slow spurts, began rolling out the rings. When I got to the point I could no longer put any rings on the rod, or when the wire ran out, I tapped the end coming out of the starter hole so I could get a good spot to cut it off. Then I removed the inch of starter hole wire, and reversed the electric drill. I could then pull the threaded rod out, and end up with a section of wire that looked like a screen door spring. At that point, I cut each revolution into a singe loop with diagonal wire cutters.

[thepelton]

Just one other thing, you have to keep watching it to make sure that your wire doesn't start rolling over itself. If it does, you need to back up.

[matthewbeckler]

Exactly the problem that I was having before I made the little brass winding tool.