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I Forge Iron

Chainmaile my first metal working love


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Well hello to all those out there interested in maile work. I have been doing maile work for over three years now and am far from being a master. But as far as many people are concerned my work is very high quality. Through these past three years I have learnt almost every trick possible to make life faster and easier to manufacture rings as well as mastering many patterns of mail. If there is anyone who would like assistance or a little guidance with this beautiful subject feel free to ask me anytime.

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I started doing maile when I was about 14, started making it from a big old role of fencing wire that was in the back yard. Hand rolled it and cut each ring with mini bolt cutters.

Took me a whole Christmas holiday, but I ended up with a respectable vest of maile (cant get my self to throw it out). Went on to make the odd patterns which went alright. 

Biggest drama I ever had was sourcing metal that would not corrode on the skin, Used to use SS welding wire with success.

Ultimately it kills a lot of time when you are bored, But I found that  it was not financially viable to sell things, due to the time involved  

Unless you had time that you needed to kill (boring job or long train trips)

At least it help you develop strong fingers lol 

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Yea I have moved onto galvanized steel spring washers as my jump rings, they are amazingly strong and don't really mark skin, their colour changes but that's about it. Their only limitation is their thickness, this reduces the amount of weaves you can do, At the moment I make Japanese, English 4-1 and byzantine and a few other self invented things but I cant do Dragon scale and other oddities of the maile world. Making the links myself is just to tedious. If you look at the gallery at the last few posts, the chainmaile shirt is mine, tell me what you think of it.

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Very shinny, but it is a hard thing to really give an opinion on without extreme close ups. It looks like you are making it one panel at a time. The way I did mine was just make a thick belt of mail about 8 rings wide and just keep adding on the length. When I get to the length of one loop around my chest I would cut it off and add it to the vest.

That what you could size it as you go, and it was easier to bring along your maile belt when ever you had spare time.

I managed to do dragon, looked cool, very impractical and thick. It is all about getting the right ring size and ring thickness for each weave. Plenty of sites out there with the how to o them.

Gave up a few years back now I am mainly doing metal work with forging.

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