Making bags.

Just a quick shot here of the work area I clear off my trashed computer desk when I’d rather not be down in the workshop away from the television. Ya know, when History or something has a programme about the P-51 Mustang or something equally awesome.

I’m working on a batch of bags for a customer, and here you can kind of see them in various stages of completion.

I guess I do my bags a bit differently than most. I like them a little more flat on the bottoms when they’re fully stuffed with dice or whatever. So I used a ton of expansions in the first few rows, Here it’s 16 on the queen ring, then 24, then 36 and a few rows of 36 before I contract back down to 30 ring sides. This has the effect of keeping the bottoms more or less squared off rather than hanging in an arch.

These in particular are 1.6mm stainless steel with about a 6.4mm ID

While I have a confessed hatred of expanding circles, bags like these are a very simple project for beginners. Especially fellow gamer geeks. If your dice start to outgrow your bag, you can always add more rows at the mouth, or get ambitious and scale the entire thing up by adding more expansion rows for the bottom. With a nice tight weave they’ll hold coins just as easily. I even made a large one to carry my pliers and a couple of pill bottles for rings for travel projects.

Have fun
--Charon

Technorati Tags: Stygian Chains,bags,gamer,dice,maille,chainmaille,work in progress,crafting,stainless steel,weaving,beginner tips,projects

You want to know how to impress me?

  The short version. This:

The long version. I put in a small order for some beads with Artbeads.com because they had Swarovski in colours I couldn’t find elsewhere. And they offer free shipping in the U.S. I like free stuff. The image above were the contents of the shipping envelope exactly as I opened it. Yes that’s their business card secured in the tissue paper, nice touch. Inside the gems were in compartmentalized little capsule thingies, bagged individually, (in resealable bags even) and labeled. Then wrapped in a layer of… that flexible foam stuff that should be bubble wrap, because bubble wrap is more fun. Lack of happy popping notwithstanding, these little touches of presentation and attention are what make me want to come back to a company.

There was no question I got what I ordered, and it arrived quickly, and with free shipping. I like free stuff. Other companies, even home businesses, (myself included) could take a few hints from this to evaluate their packaging and shipping and labeling.

I’ve dealt with companies that cram unlabeled bags of whatever in a box, stuff contents list inside, and send it off. I’m thankful as all hell for a list of contents since half the time I can barely remember what I ate yesterday, let alone something I ordered a week or so before. The trick when it arrives, is figuring out what’s what without having individual bags labeled. Had I ordered rings in the same dimensions, in two similar looking materials, like Stainless and Aluminum, it’s that much extra effort to judge them by weight, make a label, and integrate them into my storage system (storage system, me? Yeah that’s a laugh, I have tchewbs, lots of tchewbs everywhere.) If a few more companies learned from Artbeads.com we could spend less time cutting open heat sealed poly and figuring out what’s what and more time putting nice labeled baggies in their place until their contents are needed for stuffmaking.

--Have fun,

Charon

Note, tchewb is the phonetic pronunciation of tube if you’re Australian. Ask any of them, ‘struth.

Technorati Tags: beadwork,beginner tips,suppliers,tchewbs,shipping,packaging,marketing

Jackassery, loopholes, copyright infringement, and 35 year old children.

Yep, that’s right. Some pathetic waste of bandwidth and skin set up a crawler to Chainmaille related images over to his own photobucket account, and post them to his site. Around a week ago, Peter Croteau of Virginia made the mistake of stealing images and articles submitted and owned by the members of M.A.I.L. Following him failing to understand the burden of proof, intellectual property laws, or how to conduct himself as a member of a civilized society. His website was shut down.

  That lasted about a week.

  Now Chainmaille.org is back up online, and using a loophole in the EULA with photobucket and several other free image hosting services. Packed with images owned by myself, and many other maille crafters. The solution, aside from pulling all my images from photobucket, is a bit elusive. I’d move everything from photobucket right away if I could find anything on flickr that allows me to link to my images directly, so they could be used in forum posts and such. Since I haven’t found that yet. I’m left with keeping my hosting private, which revokes the license loophole, but it may for the time being mean until I can obtain another hosting option I’m limited in where I can post my images. Unless I begin leaving them here as blog posts and linking to them.

  The rest of the solution, is more important. Association with little Petey and Chainmaille.org should be cut off by anyone with any respect for intellectual property. There’s a reason I’m not linking to him like I try to remember to do with everyone else. His site is an attempt at Search Engine Optimization, without putting any real effort into creating his own content. Search engines require links from outside sources, such as bloggers, community sites, or anywhere else, to partially determine how useful users are likely to find the site in question, and thus the order in which a site appears on a search return.

What Peter wants is to steal traffic from artisans and crafters by appearing in the top slots of search engine results, without actually being a crafter himself. Worse, he wants to steal traffic from you by using your work. Taken without permission through a segment of the EULA that states basically, that while you still own your work on Photobucket, you automatically grant every other Photobucket user the right to publicly display, alter, edit, add to, remove from, etc. He wants your traffic, maillers, for one reason, to generate revenue from advertisement links. Yes, like some of the ads I have here. The difference however is a vast chasm: I’ve made maille, I’ve taken photos, I’ve written articles and the occasional bit of funny; Little Petey there, hasn’t yet shown any ability to make maille, snap photos, or write anything but whiney confrontational blather directed at people who own the things he’s stolen in the past.

What have we learned from this? Peter Croteau is one of the lowest kind of parasites. Photobucket isn’t as cool as it seems. In the end, there’s still assholes on the ‘net. I wonder what Google will think about using the edge of the law to coerce adsense clicks?

Have fun, Unless you’re Peter Corteau of Virginia Beach, VA. If that’s the case, have a stroke, or a cardiac arrest.

--Charon

Technorati Tags: maille,chainmaille,copyright,loopholes,promotion,marketing,intellectual property,children,crafting,making chainmail,tools,beginner tips,chainmail

Using a Jeweller's Saw

Cutting rings for maille jewellry, especially in precious metals can be a challenege. When you're crafting something to be worn close to the skin, good cuts and closures are invaluable for the pure feel of the finished weave. If you're selling a piece, bad closures and sloppy cuts in something like Argentium or Fine Silver aren't going to catch any eyes. So what's the answer?

Read the title already.... Put down the wire cutters and find a jeweller's saw. It resembles a small hacksaw frame with thumbscrews. Don't try and use hacksaw blades with it, if you can mount the blade at all, you'll just wreck your rings anyway.
Some hobby stores have them for... in my opinion, way too large a price tag, but if you're unwilling to wait that's an option. I ordered mine from TRL and it's perfectly suitable for cutting rings. Blades are less than a few dollars a dozen, get a lot, you're likely to break a few. I prefer size 4/0 or 2/0 depending on the wire gauge I'm cutting. You'll need some kind of lubricant, beeswax seems to be the standard. I use the parafin wax that most cheese wheels come coated in, it's free if you like cheese.

Second, get yourself a jeweller's vise. Not a small bench vise. Where a bench vise secures your work by applying pressure between the jaws, and you risk crushing a coil; the movable jaw on a jeweller's vise secures by applying pressure to the body of the vise itself. This means that your can clamp something hand tight and lock it in place. I took a few pieces of masking tape folded cardstock to pad the jaws and prevent scratching, and help secure my coils.

If you're all set up, time to string your blade. If you have an adjustable frame saw, crank down that top screw first. Then loosen both the mounting screws. Look closely at your blade, the teeth cut one way, and glide the other. You want the cutting action to be when you push the saw forward, so the friction doesn't cause you to pull open your coil. Lock the blade in it's mount closest to the handle.

This is the tricky part, you need a little tension on your blade. So place the handle against your abdomen blade up, and lean forward with the other end of the frame against your bench, so it very slightly compresses the "[" shape of your frame. Now lock the far end of your blade in place and relax.

If you've done it properly you can pluck the blade like a guitar string and it will ping without buzzing or sounding dull. If it does either of those things, re-string it or you're just going to break a blade. Run your chosen lubricant across the blade a time or two, and you're ready.

This is the most important thing to remember when cutting: let the saw do the work, you don't need to press the blade down into your coil, it will cut perfectly just gliding along on it's own. There's a sound associated with cutting sheet metal by saw, but when your coils are secured this way that sound is muted. Listen carefully for something that resembles a slide whistle, up and down, as you cut. If you hear too much scratching rather than ringing, it's time to re-lubricate the blade, and while you're at that check it's tension again.

When you're done, and have gotten over admiring your new cuts. Unstring your blade, I left one overnight once and the blade broke while I was asleep, the springback of the frame recoiling cracked a glass candle holder on my desk. Stupid, stupid way to wake up...

Have fun,
--Charon

Making Chainmail step two: Weaving maille.

We're back, and we're on to learning the basics of actually weaving maille. Note that I didn't use the term "chainmail". Either one is acceptable these days. "Maille" is taken from the original term "mail" meaning armour made from chain. The spelling has been prettied up a bit to make it distict from Postal Mail.

There's another tangent... I'm good at that.

Alright, you have some rings cut, begging to be used, so let's get them and your hands a short workout. Pick up your pliers, one in each hand, and grab a ring. No, not with your teeth... either the pliers themselves, or you can free a thumb and finger and use your hands. Keep holding the pliers though. You'll be surprised how much time you start to save when you can craft without setting them down.

Set the ring in the jaws of your pliers with the opening at the top. You should be gripping about half the ring in each set. Now twist each end of the opening away from one another so it makes a longer spiral. It should still look like a spring. If you're opening your rings like you're turning an O into a C, you won't be able to get them back into shape. Open them about far enough you can fit two wire widths in the gap between ends.

Practice this, open about 5 rings to get a feel for it. Then go for some more new rings and close them with the same kind of twisting motion. Each end should meet as flush and close as you can make them. It helps to push the ends in very slightly toward one another while you're twisting them closed, so they almost snap together. Close 12 for now and set them in their own pile.

An open and a closed ring.

Starting a weave is always vastly more difficult than continuing one, so we'll go with something both recognizable and reasonable to follow. European 4 in 1. European maille is characterized by each row leaning the opposite direction of it's adjacent rows. Grab 4 of your closed rings, put them on 1 open ring, then close it. You have what we call a fivelet. Doesn't do much on it's own, but it's the foundation. 4 rings on 1 ring. Each ring (excluding those at the edges) will pass through four others, two above, and two below.

Your fivelet.

So lay your fivelet down a moment to get a look at how it the weave will expand. Two rings on top, leaning to the right. One ring in the second row, leaning to the left. Two rings on the bottom, leaning right. Now to add to that, take two closed rings, put them on an open ring, this open ring will become a new addition to the middle row. Weave that ring in from underneath the rightmost ring the bottom row then down through the rightmost ring in the top row. Close your open ring.

With a little jostling, you should be able to lay out your work and see that everything leans properly, and falls into pattern. Now you repeat that last step again. Two closed rings on an open ring, weave it into the final two rings on the adjacent rows, and close. Repeat this until you reach the desired width.

Red rings are the original fivelet, Green are the three added afterward, and Blue the step after that.

All well and good that you can make it as wide as you want, now how about expanding the other axis. Even simpler. Put two closed rings on an open ring again. Weave your open ring through the two leftmost rings in the bottom row, and close. From there, you add one closed on one open. Weaving through the rightmost on the bottom row, and the next two rings on the row above. Repeat as desired.

In the photo below. Red rings are the first three added in the new row, followed by the Green, and Blue again. Untinted rings are the original strip of three rows you've just built.

So here's the best part. I know this is what you've been wating for. You can make a barrel like tube out of a large patch, then add straps to the top edge, and you have a very simple mail shirt. In detail, it will probably take some tweaking, and there are alot of things you can do to tailor and fit. More on that another time.

If you're not looking for a shirt, say you went with a light gauge copper for your first project, maybe you'd like a choker or a bracelet. Clasps can be purchased for an impressively low price. Also hook, or toggle type clasps can be made using wire wrapping techniques. These same skills can be put to use to make earring hooks, chainmail earrings are my best sellers. If you want a look, check out my Etsy link in the sidebar. /plug

If you've been following along so far, I'd love to see your work. If it's a bracelet, just a small patch, or you whip up a full shirt thanks to what I've posted here so far, please send images to me here and they'll be featured in upcoming posts.

Have fun--

Charon

(A Special thanks to Glendon of Glendon's Chainmaille and Handmade Crafts for taking time out of his day at the booth to allow me to photograph E 4-1 in progress. I couldn't figure out how to handle rings, operate pliers, a camera, and a soda can all at once; he was wonderful to supply me with the chance to take these images. )

Making Chainmail step one: Making rings.

Ready to jump in and make your own chainmail? I know you are. If you have rings already, you're awesome. If you're starting with raw wire, you're just as awesome. Let's start from the beginning just in case.

1. Hop on down to your local craft or hardware store.


2. I recommend starting light, inexpensive, and easy to work with. 20 gauge copper, even the silver toned stuff in the beading section is a good way to cut your teeth.


3. You'll need two pairs of pliers sutable for the size wire you're working with. Small flat nose pliers work perfectly for small wire. Heavy gauge wire calls for maybe a six or eight inch pair of linesman pliers. Remember that pliers with teeth will scratch soft metal, but go with what you can find easily. This is just practice.


4. Side cutting pliers (wire cutters) the jaws will be sortof football shaped and sharpened. Heavy gauge will require something like mini-bolt cutters.


5. A mandrel. Don't ask the guys at the hardware store for a mandrel, they'll look at you funny. What you're looking for is something to wrap wire around to make a spring. Pen barrels, metal rods, knitting needles, even a screwdriver.


6. Gloves, please wear gloves, heavy work gloves.


7. Eye protection. Flying metal can seriously ruin your chances of retaining binocular vision.

Now pull out some of that wire and wrap it around that mandrel. Learned a new word while you're at it. Wrap it tight and as consistantly as you can. You'll find a small hole drilled crosswise through your mandrel serves perfectly to secure the starting end of your coil. Turn the mandrel, it's easier than flopping wire around everywhere.

This is important: Always release the tension on a coiled wire slowly. You don't want to see the kinds of nasty cuts it could cause if you just let go. All metals will have a certian amount of springback, the percentage of bendyness they resist as it tries to return to it's orginal shape. Over a long distance like a length of wire, this means that free end can turn into a circular saw. So hold the free end of your wire tight, and carefully turn your mandrel the opposite direction. You don't really have to apply any more pressure than you need to keep it from spinning back on it's own. Once it's stopped working against you, you're good to let go. Another reason I suggested light copper over a heavy steel to start with, it's much easier to manage without building a more complex coiling rig.

So your spring, coil, worm, whatever you want to call it, is done, you've carfully eased the tension off the wire. Cut off the spool end then the secured end with your angle cutters and slide the coil off. All you have to do is clip each turn lengthwise from the coil. making short springs of only one turn, essentially.

Now you have rings. After a short break, we'll move on to Step Two: Weaving Chainmail. Where I'll talk about opening and closing rings properly, and introducing you to your first chainmail weave.

Have fun,

Charon