This post will give a general overview of the types of rings and ring sizes which are used in making chainmaille, and why it is appropriate to use some types for certain projects and not others.
Acronym guide:
- AR - Aspect Ratio
- swg - standard wire gauge
Make vs. Buy
As I noted in my first post, I am not currently making rings on my own. There are numerous pros and cons to the process of ring making, and I'll try to give an overview of why I chose to buy my rings instead of making them myself.
One of the first major differences is cost. In the long run, it is vastly cheaper to make your own rings than it is to be buying them constantly. If you already have access to the tools to make a mandrel (the tool for making wire coils) the process is even more attractive from a financial standpoint. But there are other considerations to take into account.
When making your own rings, you have a great deal of control over size and gauge, and therefore can dictate your own rings' aspect ratio( more on this later). But most of the time your access to a variety of wire from which to make rings may be limited. In addition, you will have to go through extra work in order to clean your rings if you want a bright shine, and if you want colored rings you still have to buy them, or anodize them yourself.
Still, many of the main types and materials of rings, such as aluminum, stainless steel, and copper, can be made on a mandrel with relative ease. and if your are working on a major project that requires thousands or tens of thousands of rings, a mandrel may be your best bet.
You can find instructions on how to make a few different mandrel types here and here.
The second site also gives a great deal of good information about the different cuts that are made for rings, and what tools are best used to cut rings from coils. Later in this section, I will discuss the two main types of rings cuts you will encounter.
Bottom line, as someone starting out in mailling, it is probably in your best interest to buy a small amount of rings outright and buy some inexpensive pliers( to be discussed in my next post) to see if chainmaille is interesting enough for you to further invest time and money into building a ring-making setup. If you don't intend to start on any extremely large projects, such as armor, or you need colored rings, I would recommend you stick to buying them for the time being.
Ring Sizes and Aspect Ratio
This is where things start to get interesting. When making your own rings, you have a lot of control over the size and gauge of your rings, which will determine their all-important Aspect Ratio, or AR. Purchased rings come in all of the standard sizes, and thus have a very predictable set of ARs which will suit most mailling needs.
AR is the inner diameter of a ring divided by the wire diameter of the ring (the actual diameter, not the gauge), thus the AR of a 16swg(standard wire gauge) 5/16" ring will be 0.335 / 0.062 = 5.4
Image and information courtesy of cgmaille.com
AR determines the amount of maneuverability you will have when using your rings, rings with a high AR will be much more loose and open, allowing for more complex weaves that require many rings to pass through a single ring. rings with a low AR, on the other hand, will result in a much tighter, and often more difficult to maneuver weave. The best AR to use depends heavily on the type of weave being attempted, and on how rigid or flexible you want the weave to be. It is important to note that some weaves cannot be made if the AR is too low.
The rings I currently use are 16swg 5/16" and 18swg 3/16" in aluminum.
Materials
If you can get wire of a metal, you can make rings from it. Chainmaille rings can be made from copper, aluminum, steel, stainless steel, gold, silver, tungsten, iron and almost anything else you can think of. The metal used is entirely up to the mailler, and is dependant on what they intend to make with the rings.
Aluminum is one of the most commonly used metals, and it is the primary type that I will be using on my projects for this site. It is extremely light and flexible, inexpensive and it can be anodized into a variety of colors
For a beginner, starting with aluminum seems like the best choice. It is light and easy to handle, and it can be bent easily. Not to mention that using a variety of colors is both fun and helpful when making more complex weaves.
Cuts
There are three primary cuts of rings for chainmaille:
- Flush/Saw Cut - these are the highest quality and the most difficult to make, requiring each ring to be sawed from the coil. When buying rings this way, the cost is only slightly higher, but when making rings this method is much more time/effort consuming.
- Shear Cut - these rings are cut at an angle with shears, they still make very high quality chainmaille and are much easier and faster to produce
- Pinch Cut - the lowest quality, these are made with cutters that pinch a break into the wire, leaving two pointed ends on the ring opening. They are also easy and quick to make, but require much mroe care in closing to insure high quality is maintained.
Other things of note:
My next ring order, which should arrive sometime late next week or early the week after, includes two more ring categories, rubber rings and split rings. I will discuss these rings and their uses in a later post.
The current rings I use are Bright Aluminum(aluminum which has been cleaned) 16swg 5/16" and Anodized Aluminum 18swg 3/16" in brown, red, orange, violet, pink, yellow, and blue. (it was a grab-bag of sorts)
The 16swg 5/16" is on the left, and the 18swg 3/16" violet is on the right.
All of my current rings were purchased from TheRingLord.com
In my next post, I will discuss the types of tools used in weaving chainmaille.
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