Roger D

When I say new anvil, I mean it in every sense of the words. I'm going to have about $3000 in the coming months with very few expenses (advantages of living with my parents :D), and so I was wondering what good brands of anvils are that I can buy on the market today. I'm ideally looking for something in the 200-250 lb range. I was looking at stuff on Centaur Forge, but their anvils are too light. Thank you for your responses!

that looks cool, what is it going to be?

I felt like helping someone, and had the time to do it.

The other day, someone messaged me about how to make chainmail. So I created a tutorial and sent it to him. this is that tutorial. I hope that my diminutive knowledge of the maille making craft can at least help some of you who aspire to make some. I found out how to make maille by youtube, and www.mailleartisans.org. I in no way pretend to know a lot about Chainmaille, I just feel that knowledge is best used if it's spread. so here is how to make European 4 in 1 chainmaille, enjoy :) materials: steel wire (anything 12 gauge and below is too big to work with, and 18 and above is too small.) two pliers (I find that needle nose work best) cutting device (there are many, and they all produce different types of cuts, search mailleartisans.org for great in-depth information. for my chainmail, i use a pair of small bolt cutters.) straight, cylindrical object (most people use wooden dowels, but i had none left around so i used a screwdriver. the reason people use dowels is so they know the size of the inside of the rings. i didnt really care, so i just used a screwdriver. I later found the diameter of it to be 5/16".) gloves are optional, i wear them because the tip of the wire hurts my fingers. how to do it: first, unravel a bit of wire and place it on top of the screwdriver perpendicular to how it's laying like so: second, proceed to coil the wire around the dowel or screwdriver for however long you see fit. third, cut off the coil from the spool of wire at the base of where the wire starts to coil around the dowel. fourth, cut the coil in a straight line (important!) to produce rings fifth, slightly open one ring with pliers. sixth, weave two rings inside the open ring, and close all rings. seventh, repeat steps five and six as many times as desired. eighth, open a ring that's holding two rings, and weave it into two rings that are attatched to another one ring. so the rings follow a 2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1 pattern. nineth, repeat step eight until desired length is aquired. tenth, make a separate chain of 2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1 eleventh, take a single open link not connected to the two chains , and weave it where two of the top "two" rings and two of the bottome "two" rings overlap. twelfth, repeat step eleven until you have a nice lattice of european 4 in 1 chainmail :) if you have any questions, contact me, or see youtube and mailleartisans.org thank you for reading, I hope this tutorial is helpful to at least one of you! :)

thanks for all of your input!

18 gauge wire. thats 0.48" and i used a screwdriver to coil them, its about 1/4" in diameter :P the pictures are just super close up

No idea what Jump cutting is lol, sorry. i coil the wire up, and then cut the resulting spring. Correct, i used small bolt cutters. How would one go about doing that? did this this morning :)

That's actually considered "closed" according to all the tutorials i've watched on youtube. as long as i get the two ends of the circle to line up completely, the links don't fall out

Hi guys, i'm new to blacksmithing, and my parents aren't too keen to let me have a forge just yet. So I decided to try my hand at cold metal working. here are some pictures of my very first try at Chainmail. this was after about an hour of me trying to undo random knots that kept happening lol