Newsletter - February 6, 2008

The Jewelry Crafter

A newsletter for the home jeweler

This newsletter will be published every 2 weeks, and will include hints and tips for your jewelry business. Any feedback or comments about the topics presented here are always appreciated. Click here to e-mail us.

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Chain Maille, part 2

by

Mary Harvey

In the last issue, we started talking about chain maille. In this issue, we will discuss how to get started making chain maille, where to get rings, how to cut your own, and which patterns are the best to start with.

Tools - To make chain maille, all you need are two pliers and some jump rings. Some people use chain nose pliers, others use flat-nose. Whichever you use is pretty much a personal choice. Just make sure that the pliers you choose fit your hand. Pliers with springs (to keep them open) are a good choice, and really cut down on hand fatigue.

Jump rings - There are lots of places to get jump rings. The Ring Lord, Urban Maille, Rio Grande and Spider Chain are just a couple of places that sell precut jump rings in a variety of sizes and metals. Purchased jump rings are great, but if you use a lot of them, you may want to cut your own. Tools such as the Jump Ringer or the Koil Kutter make cutting your jump rings easy. All you do is wind your wire on a mandrel and use the saw (attached to either a Foredom hand piece or a dremel tool), and zip through the coil. Voila, perfectly cut jump rings.

Patterns - once you have your tools and rings, you need a pattern or tutorial of the weave that you want to accomplish. Almost all of the ring suppliers have beginners kits, books and videos to show you how to do various weaves. If you like to learn by video, I can highly recommend Spider Chain’s videos, Weaving Silver vol. 1 and 2.  I have used these dvd’s personally, and it’s so much easier to learn when you have someone actually showing you where the rings go. Culture Jewelry also has great tutorials in e-book form, along with plans for a neat chainmaille jig for assembling the rings.

Some of the easier patterns to begin with are the simple ring-in-ring weaves, like the European 4 in 1, the Byzantine or the box chain. After these weaves are mastered, you can move on to more complicated patterns, like the half-Persian 4 in 1, the parallel helm chain or the Jens Pind. Finally, the more advanced weaves, like dragonscale and half-Persian 5 in 1 sheet, are very involved and take lots of practice and patience, but the results are spectacular.

A great site that has hundreds of different weave tutorials is MailArtesians.org. You can find instructions and pictures of all the basic and advanced weaves, along with some you’ve never heard of or seen before. It’s a great resource for chain makers.

So, as you can see, with 2 pair of pliers and some jump rings, the possibilities for beautiful chain maille jewelry are endless. I encourage you to give it a try - it’s a lot of fun, and it just may become your newest jewelry addiction.