On the art of Chainmaille - Part 1 - Basic tools

Since I am an avid maker of chainmaille, one of the things I planned to use this blog for is to set out several guides on it, from tools, through basic weaving and more exotic weaves and decorations. Starting without delay.

BASIC TOOLS

The making of butted mail(the difference between butted and riveted maille will be explained later) requires several relatively simple things. Now you can obviously get better and more useful gear later on - powertools to speed up things being the prime example, but these are the absolutely basic things you would require to make something with no power, except for manual labour. 

For the weaving.

2x ordinary pliers.

Make sure its a decent pair and you can work comfortably with them. Slight modifications like wrapping the handles with tape of some kind is a good idea.


Sharp nosed pliers.

You won't be needing these in the start, but a tight fit, or working with small rings will require them.

For cutting the coils into rings.

A small bolt-cutter.

You want to buy a small one that can easily be operated with 1 hand only, or with 1 hand once you've locked the second handle into something, like a vise for example.

Making the coils.

That would require a mandrel of some sorts fixed to a handcrank. There are many things you can make them from, you literally have to look around and you will find it. The basic rule is, that the mandrel should be a bit smaller than the size of rings you want. For example, if you have a 8mm in diameter mandrel, you will get 9mm inner diameter rings.

Those are the very basic tools you will need to make chainmail, and they can be aquired at any tools shop for no more than a dozen or so euro or dollars or whatever local currency you use, if you don't have some of them already(like the pliers). Next thing in line - implementation of power tools.
http://drunkethics.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-art-of-chainmaille-part-2-power.html