Chainmaille

People often ask me how I learned to make chainmaille. I taught myself from the internet. There are lots of sites with tutorials and information about making chainmaille. If you do a search, be sure to also look at different spellings. I’ve seen it called chainmaille, chainmail, chain mail, chain maille, maille . . . well you get the idea.

The first place to check out is M.A.I.L. The Maille Artisans International League. They have a huge listing of maille weaves and many of them also include instructions. The forums are a great source of help if you have questions.

The Ring Lord is another good place to check out. They sell the largest variety of rings of anyplace I know. There are also tutorials, information about ring sizes, and a forum for asking questions. 

C.G.Maille has fantastic tutorials with graphics that help you see exactly how the rings are inserted into the weave. Phong has most of my original weave tutorials on his site.

Derakon’s site is another great resource for weave tutorials.

Spider Chain has lots of information on her site and also sells rings. Her DVD’s are the best way to learn new weaves if you are like me and need to “see” it done. 

Need to know how many rings you need for that bracelet or necklace? Zlosk’s site has a ring quantity calculator that I find very helpful. If you click on one of the weave links, the calculator will open up and you can type in the size of wire and diameter of the rings and it will tell you how many (approximately) you will need. I always order 10% more just to be on the safe side and to take care of any defective rings you have to discard. All of the information you need to enter about the rings can be found on The Ring Lord’s site.

There are a couple of my newer weave tutorials on my website as well. Beaded-Baubles.

Pick up some pliers and start creating chainmaille!