Hand made chain mail
Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2022 1:41 am
This is a chain mail shirt I finish making a couple of years ago. It is sized to a men's large t-shirt, contains over 10,000 copper rings, and a few thousand steel rings. It took a couple of years to produce due to struggling with intense depression and then immediately after coming out of that landing a job that had me traveling to another state for a week or two at a time with only a couple days between each expedition. If I compress the actual time spent, it's more on the order of a couple months.
The copper rings are produced from recycled romex wire from a house I lived in when I began this project. It was old paper and cloth wrapped romex that was showing absurdly high resistance, so I replaced it all with modern romex, and updated the circuits to meet modern standards while I was at it. I believe the copper may have leeched some electrons from the steel since it was not that shiny when I produced all the rings and the steel was much shinier.
The steel rings are produced from stainless steel wire sold at hardware stores. I forgot just how many spools it took to produce all of those rings but it added up over time.
The rings were rolled on a set of tubes chucked into the end of a drill and mounted to scrap pieces of 1x4 I had around. After rolling out coils that were about 8" long, I would snip the steel rings with bolt cutters and the copper with wire cutters. Those poor bolt cutters did not survive the the process, the wire cutters did, and are still going strong today despite being cheap hardware store brand.
I have only worn the shirt a few times for more than an hour. It weighs roughly 50lbs, while a thick shirt saves my skin from that torture, it's a lot of weight just sloshing around when walking. Would not wear it now as it's got kind of dingy over time and some links need to be squeezed back closed.
The pattern is called Aura. Normally that pattern is used for small jewelry and it is not fit for producing mail. I am extremely stubborn when I want something special like this so I plugged away at the neck, the bottom edge, the arm holes, and the top seam along the shoulders to figure out a combination of patterns that didn't look too out of place. Definitely achieved that as it's hard to tell when worn. Some links are inverted with how it's sitting, that happens when it's hung loose from a wooden post like that. The pattern pulls itself back into shape when worn.
<a href="https://imgur.com/vzMdme8"><img width="75%" height="75%" src="https://i.imgur.com/vzMdme8.jpg" title="source: imgur.com"></a>
The copper rings are produced from recycled romex wire from a house I lived in when I began this project. It was old paper and cloth wrapped romex that was showing absurdly high resistance, so I replaced it all with modern romex, and updated the circuits to meet modern standards while I was at it. I believe the copper may have leeched some electrons from the steel since it was not that shiny when I produced all the rings and the steel was much shinier.
The steel rings are produced from stainless steel wire sold at hardware stores. I forgot just how many spools it took to produce all of those rings but it added up over time.
The rings were rolled on a set of tubes chucked into the end of a drill and mounted to scrap pieces of 1x4 I had around. After rolling out coils that were about 8" long, I would snip the steel rings with bolt cutters and the copper with wire cutters. Those poor bolt cutters did not survive the the process, the wire cutters did, and are still going strong today despite being cheap hardware store brand.
I have only worn the shirt a few times for more than an hour. It weighs roughly 50lbs, while a thick shirt saves my skin from that torture, it's a lot of weight just sloshing around when walking. Would not wear it now as it's got kind of dingy over time and some links need to be squeezed back closed.
The pattern is called Aura. Normally that pattern is used for small jewelry and it is not fit for producing mail. I am extremely stubborn when I want something special like this so I plugged away at the neck, the bottom edge, the arm holes, and the top seam along the shoulders to figure out a combination of patterns that didn't look too out of place. Definitely achieved that as it's hard to tell when worn. Some links are inverted with how it's sitting, that happens when it's hung loose from a wooden post like that. The pattern pulls itself back into shape when worn.
<a href="https://imgur.com/vzMdme8"><img width="75%" height="75%" src="https://i.imgur.com/vzMdme8.jpg" title="source: imgur.com"></a>
