Polar Bear Forge - Chainmail

There are plenty of pages that deal with the construction of chainmail. Rather than duplicate their efforts, I've just included some links to those pages and how I cut links.

Coiling:

I made a jig by drilling a hole through the size of the mandrel. Then I drilled a hole about halfway through the size of the mandrel plus twice the thickness of the wire I'm using. Finally I drilled a hole from the side right where the larger hole stopped for the wire to feed through. If I'm lazy, it'll take about thirty minute to coil 1/4 mile of wire into four foot coils.

Cutting links:

This seems to be the bane of chainmaillers everywhere. Many use bolt cutters, some use dremel discs, and some use jewelry saws. The list continues, but those seem to be the main ones. I started with a jeweler's saw, went to a dremel, and ended up with a bandsaw. The jeweler's saw gives a straight cut, the links look like ] [ at the cut. That is the look I prefer but it takes too long that way. The bolt cutters are faster than the jeweler's saw, but the cut is similar to > < which I don't like.

Here's my new way to cut links.

There were several things that I wanted from a cutter. It had to be fast. It had give cuts that were square. It had to be adjustable with speed and depth to allow for different sized coils, different sized wire, and different materials. I've tested this with links from 3/16 inch inner diameter at 18 guage up to 3/8 inch inner diameter at 14 guage. Works great the whole way through. A four foot coil of 14 guage galvanized steel takes less than two minutes to cut! It isn't pictured, but there is a hood that fits over the blade that the vacuum attaches to collect the dust.

The blades are slotting saws. They have an arbor of 1 inch and an outer diameter of 2 3/4 inches. The one pictured is 1/32 of an inch thick. I have thinner ones too. (In case anybody wonders, I got them from eBay. They can also be bought at MSC or at http://www.jtsmach.com/jtswebshop/saws/S054.asp )

I have tested on it on mild steel, galvanized, 4340, stainless, copper, brass, aluminum, and whatever wire I had laying about. It works great for all of them.

My old way to cut was using a jig with my metal cutting bandsaw. I already had the saw for other tasks, and it adapted quite well to making links. I got mine through Harbor Freight, item 37151-1VGA. There are a few modifications that need to be done to make this saw completely useful, mainly get good blades, replace the base with something sturdy, and build a new support table if you use it in the vertical position.

Here's a picture of the saw with the jig clamped in it. This jig has two different sized mandrels on either side.

When I made the jig, I angled the mandrel to almost but not quite match the angle of the bandsaw blade. I'll put a coil on and when it's to the end of the mandrel, the remainder of the coil falls off and usually hits the switch to turn off the saw.

I can make quite a few links with this method. When I calculated it, it was about 3000 an hour with time spent pulling the links off and sliding another coil on. Now my problem is having more links than I know what to do with.