Whats new in the world of metal

Firstly I would like to yell. AAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAA as I am so pleased with my lucky find on Thursday last week. It was the biggest blacksmiths vice (Leg vice) I have ever seen in my life and for a giveaway price. Upon reaching home I took it apart and lovingly restored it by re greasing the spindle square and its housing and cleaning the much out of the spring and the leg joint. All I need to do now is make a table or post for it.

The work on the Chainmaille shirt is coming along and I will be posting pictures of it in its process tomorrow. I will provide some explanations and some learning's with the pictures as well. On top of this I will be making a separate post dealing with the three bracelet types I am now also making.

The work on the shirt is becoming increasingly easier as my hands become accustomed to the strength of the rings, I have now developed very hard callouses on my fingers and beginnings of ones on my palms from the pliers that I use. In the beginning I could do no more than 30 mins of work whereas now I can do sustained work for over 2 hours. All I need to do now is a find a better position to sit in as my back is beginning to become the limiting factor in my work.

These spring washers are definitely a very good find although they are slightly limiting in terms of their thickness to inner ring ratio meaning that I cant do any work such as the dragon scale or other such weaves that require a smaller ring to pass through a bigger one.

Happiness is found where the heart as well as the soul lie.

Work is going well

The work on the chainmaille shirt is progressing, tomorrow I will be going in to get more spring washers as my tester bag is almost finished. I will be posting pictures of it as soon as there is discernible progress to the uninitiated eye. This work takes a long time to do as well as a lot of patience and skill. These factors are not understood in today's society in which everything is mass produced and easy to obtain.

This is probably why I resurrected this ancient art, it goes against what everyone else is doing and challenges modern day ideas and beliefs, although not openly as some believers do. I do this for self enjoyment relaxation and also a bit of spare money now and then when I do sell some of my work.

I say when I do because there is not a constant demand from people for chainmaille works such as jewelry, this is also my reason for starting my blacksmithing. This to is an ancient art in which time and effort make up the body of what is produced unlike today.

The general trend for me is the love of manipulating metal. Metal as it is is unyielding, strong and dull in its pure form, but in the hands of someone who knows how to treat the metal and how to work it it goes from dull and solid to something that flows as if life has been breathed into it by the smith. Chunks elongate to form knives, swords, tools, decorations and even clothing and jewelry. All of this from one material is simply wondrous  but the journey towards it is even more so.

New project and Dragonscale

I have started again! This time it is going well and i have a ready supply of rings.

What have I started you may ask?? well its my biggest project so far. A chainmaille shirt. So far I am only on the right shoulder but work progresses. Also I have made a few interesting earrings out of the byzantine style as well as the square box 4-2 style. These are pretty easy especially since I use only the spring washers that I have found at the builders warehouse up the road from me at a really good price of R82.70 per kg of steel.

That translates to almost 200 rings per kg of steel for the larger links and even more for the smaller rings that are available. My only gripe with them is that their ratio of wire thickness to ring inner width is a bit to small and hense I cannot make my favorite weave from them, The dragonscale weave which i am posting below!!! have fun!

This pattern was not made by myself and I acknowledge it thus.


Dragonscale (CGI, preclose large rings)
Submitted by DeadManWalking

These are the instructions for creating Dragon Scale.
Red links are the current step and blue are the previous step
First off, you need to have 2 ring sizes, one being able to fit in the other with room to spare, I use 17 gauge 3/16" and 6/16" (3/8").

Step 1: Make a 1-2-2 chain alternating ring sizes.

Step 2: Next, place closed large links over the small links as shown
note: They are not connected to anything yet.
You may want to do this one at a time in conjunction with the next step.

Step 3: Now connect large links to the small rings, trapping the other links inside.

Step 4: Connect the trapped large links to each other using small links.

Step 5: At this point, I usually like to add the connecting links to the top row.

Step 6: Attach large links to the connectors (not the links you just added, but the links from step 4).

Repeat steps 5&6 to lengthen the piece.

Okay, I hope I didn't confuse you too much.

Part 3 - official

Hey part 3 is here now.

Leather and chain necklace

This leather and chain necklace is really simple to make as it is basically a leather thong 2.5 times longer than the chain that is woven through the chain and tied off at the ends to make a loop on one end and the other is to a coin with a hole in it, this makes a very nice clasp. Difficulty 2/10

Closeup

Triangular earring

 I cant even remember what prompted me to make earrings but here they are and more are coming. This triangular earring is reminiscent of the modular forms you see in modern day architecture and furniture. Difficulty 3/10

Japanese 12-1 flower earring

 Basically the Japanese 12-1 arrangement to make the flower not at all difficult. 2/10

Woven twisted bracelet

 This bracelet was made by creating three chains joining all three then plaiting them together joining them again every other plait so that the shape would remain as you see it. The clasp was also made by myself and is quite easy. Difficulty 4/10

Closeup

Here you can see the different colour I used for the chains.

Thanks be back soon with the last part, part 4 and then I will be going onto my blacksmithing experience and then onto some patterns and what I think of them!

Part 3

Part 3 is here.

Actually not quite as I have three more drawings to do and then I will devote my attention to something more less engineering orientated. Be back in about 4 hours.

Part 3 is still to come.

Part 2

Here is part 2!

Dragon Maille bracelet

The next thing I moved onto from the Miton was jewelry as you can see in this pic I also started on the difficult stuff and then amazingly found it to be pretty easy compaired to the usual 4-in-1 english maille. The weave used here is standard Dragonmaille and I would rate it a 3 on the difficulty scale. The weave produced is a very close knit almost impenetrable wall of links which considering its solid nature is very flexible. It makes such a wall due to there being two types of links in the weave. All of this will be explained once I have posted the pattern for this weave.

Byzantine bracelet

Closeup of byzantine bracelet

This bracelet is made of ordinary one sized links and is pretty easy to make, I would rate it as a difficulty of about 2.

Butterfly bracelet

This is more for the Ladies in terms of style and is also very simple I would rate this at about a 1.

Square bracelet

This is just 4-in1 European folded up and joined at the top, also a 1 on my scale.

Part 3 coming soon.

Part 1 of all the things I have made

Like it says this is part 1. Each part will have more of the things I have made, each picture or group of pictures will have a short description of materials and technique used to make them, also I will include a difficulty rating from 1-10 1 being easy as breathing and 10 being as easy as breathing underwater.

Chainmaile Miton (Glove)

This was my first ever project. Only the trees know why I started on a project I would now rate about an 8 but I did. This Miton or glove is made from the English 4-in-1 style as you can see in the picture below.

Closeup of glove to show weave used

Although this weave is the simplest and fastest to make the fact that the glove has so many changes in direction is what made it difficult.

Closeup of glove to show fingers

  The fingers where relatively simple to do but attaching them was a nightmare. I found that I had done the weave the wrong way and instead of having it run vertical like it is here I should have made it run horizontal.

Look out for part 2!!!