Chainmail 2016

You will need...

1. Two pliers

2. One small pair of bolt cutters (similar in size to the pliers)

3. A quarter mile of 14 Gage Electric Fence Wire (You can use different gages, but this is what I used)

4. A rod with a diameter of half an inch (also varying depending on what you want your chainmail rings to look like)

Step 1: The Coil

You will want to take the wire from the spool, and you will wrap it tightly around the rod. It should look like the picture above. Some prefer to place the rod into the drill bit space and let the drill rotate the rod to form the coil. If this is your plan, than you will want to use a smaller diameter of rod. Most drills will run up to 3/8 inch in diameter.

Step 2: The Rings

You will use the aforementioned bolt cutter to cut down the coil. This will produce rings that are spiralling. Closing the rings with pliers, later, will make the flat rings that you are looking to work with. Your work should result in something similar to the image above.

Step 3: The Unit

This step is simple. A unit is comprised of 5 rings. This is called the four to one method, which was the common practice of European smiths. You place 4 closed rings on an open ring. Once all 4 rings are on, you close the center ring, creating a unit.

Step 4: The Chain

I prefer to make a chain of 8 units for this project. Your take two outer rings each from two units and place them on an open ring. Yu close that ring. Repeat this until you have a chain of the length that you want. It should look similar to the picture above.

Step 5: Connecting Chains

This will require patience and time from you. Make sure that the ring for the chains point in the same direction before binding them. The sets of two should be opposite of the center rings' directions. Look closely at the picture above. This needs to be done correctly, or your chainmail will look like a tangled mess, and it will not ligh right. It won't even look like chainmail. The binding ring will look like the central ring in direction.

Diagram: [ ^ = away from you on top, V = towards you on top, V = binding ring

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

V V V V V V V V

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

V V V V

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

V V V V V V V V

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Step 6: Repetition

Repeat the first 5 steps until you have the desired amount of chainmail. I will not be going into how to make any specific armor in this instructable, but I plan to make a chainmail shirt in the future. I hope this was helpful to you, and good luck with your chainmail crafting. I will do my best to answer any posted questions to the best of my ability, but I am not a serious instructable poster. So my visits to the site are fairly infrequent.

< ENJOY >