HOME | DD
Terreflare — Beginner Chainmaille Tutorial
Published: 2010-07-13 04:35:25 +0000 UTC; Views: 13592; Favourites: 66; Downloads: 817
Redirect to original
Description
This is my self taught method for making basic 4 in 1 chainmaille. It may even help pros to speed up production. By starting with a chain and following these instructions you will find it near impossible to make mistakes or mess up the pattern. That's right! No need to pin down the rings or deal with a confusing mess of rings and lose track of your pattern. By pulling on the ends of the chain all of the rings will line up in the diamond shape and when adding rings it is very hard to mess up the pattern. I like how this allows me to work twice as fast, and it lets me watch TV and not have to concentrate on keeping my pattern from messing up. I definately recomend this to any begginer and it makes simple stuff like bracelets very easy. I use this pattern to make all my chainmaille and with careful thought you can even make shirts out large diamonds. I will explain how I did that in another tutorial if you are interested. For now I hope this helps all you beginers who struggle with how to start a piece or keep the pattern straight. In my opinion this method allows for an easy start, quick construction, and is twice as easy to master as other mehods I have seen. I hope it helps you as much as it has me!I came up with this method, but for all I know it may be a common practice. I only claim it as the diamond method because I have not seen this simple method before and I see a desperate need for a simple tutorial like this one. Feel free to use this to help yourself and others learn this art, and I would love to know if this helped you or if you have any further questions!
Related content
Comments: 14
I linked to this page for an article on womenslifelink.com. Hope that is ok. If not please let me know and we will remove the link.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Oh sure, that is probably completely fine 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yes you should. People love to learn. Thanks for permission. The site is pg rated and about creativity and growing as women in all areas of our lives. I will post a link to the article as soon as the owner makes it live.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Usually in my chainmaille I use 16 guage rings with a 1/4 inch diameter, but there are tons of guages and ring sizes you could use. I used this size just because it was the only wire I had when I started. Really there are tons of different types of weaves and how thick or thin and how large the diameter can change how light the chainmaille is and how tightly weaved and flexable it will be. Here is a website that explains this aspect ratio and also has places to find the aspect ratio you can use in each style of chainmaille. [link] Using it you could determine what size rings of a certaian guage you may need to make if you find one size wire to be really cheap or the size wire you should use if you only have one size ring maker.
The four in one pattern in this tutorial is probably the most simple and forgiving as far as ring size goes and you should not have many problems finding rings that will work in this weave. That website is the only chainmaille supply site I know about so you could probably find anything you may need there as well as premade rings of all types if you do not enjoy making your own or want jewlry colored wire that is saw cut to have small seams.
Hopefully I am not completely over responding to your simple question when you may already know all of this.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thank you very much for your thorough reply 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yay!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Wow, yeah I can imagine x) I recently just finished some scale earrings [link] and they didn't cost me as much as I thought they would 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Neat, I am still saving my money to buy a whole vest of these scales. It will look beautiful, but the costs of labor and materials for large projects like a vest make it near impossible to profit off of. Still, I can not imagine a more suitable vest for a blue dragon
College may demand all my cash now that I am being dragged through a nightmare of problems, but if I can ever find the cash you can bet I will be buying hundreds of scales!
I am curious about them, do you find them easy to scratch, bend, or any flaws that the pictures do not show well? I plan to buy in a large bulk to save on costs so I really hope it is not disappointing in any way. If they scratch easy or lose their color then a vest worn often would look terrible after a while.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I bought the smaller scales and they certainly don't bend easily! They can be prone to scratching if you push hard enough with a sharp enough edge, otherwise they seem to not scratch much. When making my rainbow dragon earrings, I didn't scratch any - so you shouldn't have any problem!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Well that is nice, I was worried they may be too soft. To make a cahinmaille vest from them the scales will be rubbing eachother and so I still don't know exactly if they will loose color or scratch eachother over time. Sounds like it is worth a try, I think I will be using the small scales to make the vest so this should be fun!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Wahah, good luck with all of that work! I don't think I would have the patience for all of the work involved in something like that XD
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Really interesting.
Thanks for sharing this knowledge.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Your welcome! This seems to be getting a lot of views so I hope some people have found it helpful to them. Next I need to show how this method makes shirts easy to make and size while constructing. I just wish I took pictures of those steps when I made my shirt.
Should I be slightly sad that this tutorial took minutes to make and has over three times as many views as the drawing of my dragon that took days to draw? Oh well, I should probably find groups to submit my art to so others can find it. Thanks for your comment friend!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0