Posts Tagged ‘epic’

Making Chainmail Armor, Part 1: The Jig

Friday, February 10th, 2012

Yesterday I began the first phase of my chainmail project: making the jig.

The jig is 3 pieces of wood hammered together to make a box with no roof and with two parallel sides. There are little holes in the middle of the two parallel sides where the dowel will go. Take a variable speed drill and connect the dowel to the drill.  Make sure the dowel has a hole in it so you can stick the wire into it.

Take the wire and stick the loose end into the hole in the dowel then put on heavy duty leather gloves (in case your hands get stuck in the wire). Now run the drill at a very slow speed and carefully wrap the wire around the dowel (the drill will do this automatically). Then take the wire off the dowel and you’ll have  a product that looks somewhat like a spring. Now take your wire cutters and shear straight down the length of the coil. This will make chain rings. To be continued…

Going to Home Depot to get the stuff was actually pretty fun.  My favorite part was getting Almond Joy afterwards. Coconut and almonds and chocolate? So awesome.

We built the jig at the barn where we keep our horse Jack.  I made a new friend there named Aiden. He’s pretty legit. He also likes making things too, but he has never made chainmail armor. He bought his on the internet. He thinks that making chainmail is harder than it looks, but it doesn’t look very hard to me. It looks really easy.  I guess we’ll see.

Chainmail armor!

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

Chainmail armor is a type of armor that is made by making a fabric of metal rings and I will be making it. How to make it: take a dowel and wrap electrical fence wire around it until you have a spring-like product. Then take the spring and cut it into little open circles then you take 1 circle and 4 other open circles and connect them to the 5th open circle and close the 5th circle with two pliers. Then make another pattern like I just told you. Then connect those two patterns together by connecting the two open circles together. Then keep doing that over and over again until it makes a huge pattern.  But if you’re making a chest plate make sure you leave a hole in the middle for your head and shoulder cuffs. I am going to make a lot of chainmail armor and I will make and post a video on how to make it if you are really interested in this like I am. I like chainmail because it helps you by protecting you from little brother punches. Like my brother Chas, he punches me A LOT. Chainmail also protects your skin from sharp blades!