Just a few of the odd ideas I've come up with over the past year to make chainmail easier for me. No guarantees they'll work for you. I take no responsibility for how you use this information.
About a year ago I wanted to cut some galvanized rings for my first real project, a coif. I hate to cut rings but I needed 10 pounds. I had bought some sawcut links from Ironband and liked them but could find nothing about how to cut them. After trying the dremel and not liking how quickly the blades ground down I tried a slitting saw I borrowed from work. It had a .016" thick blade and gave a great cut but it was dangerous to use, I knew I'd eventually slip and give myself a scar to show off. I finally came up with pushing the rings through a tube onto the blade. The rings are cut and fall out the end into a waiting bin. Your hands are safe 8" away. Best of all, it's fast. I can easily cut 5-10 rings per second continuously, only pausing to grab a new coil.
Put the tube into the vise so only an inch hangs out the left side and then position the blade so it is cutting into the wall of the tube by about .1" (this assumes you are cutting 14ga). Look at the pictures, they will do a better job of explaining than I can. The blade is rotating clockwise if you look at it from the top. Blade should be spinning at about 380 rpm. This provided me with the best cut, but you should experiment a little to find what works the best for you. I'm using a mill machine here, but you can easily use a drill press or mount your dremel vertically.
I only use this setup for galvanized steel. Stainless is too hard and it dulls the blades really quickly. Aluminum is too soft and it leaves a very large burr. Again, your experience may vary so try it.
Front view
A little closer
Side view
A lot closer...
Here's a picture of a good blade, 1 inch diameter .016" thick
A bad blade, notice the missing teeth.
Need to cut a lot of rings but your hands are too tired? Place your cutters into an arbor press using zipties to hold them in place. My hand gets really tired when I have to cut rings by hand so I decided to try this. Because of the action of the press, it only takes a little pressure on the handle of the arbor press to cut any size rings. No squeezing, no aching hands.
This is a little hand tool I had made from steel. It's got two small grooves in it to hold different sized rings. I use this when I open or close rings, making chain, or working with large rings because for me it's much faster than using 2 pairs of pliers. One side is just larger than 12 gage wire and it's used for 12 or 14 gage, the other is a bit larger than 16 gage and I use it for 16, 18, or 20 gage. In my experience this causes less scratching on the ring than a pair of pliers. It also leaves your thumb and first two fingers available to hold rings or a patch of chainmail.
Want to do inlays but having trouble? At www.pcstitch.com you can download a trial version of their software that can take a picture and turn it into a cross stitch pattern. You control how many colors the final pattern utilizes as well as the length and width in stitches (or links). It is not quite as good as an inlay pattern using Maillemasters graph paper, but you can have a workable pattern in minutes. The full version of the program can be purchased on ebay for $17, and older versions can be found for $10. Click here for the page about my Hellraiser Puzzlebox inlay I made using PC Stitch.
Hope it helps, Misellus.
For those metals I can't cut, can't find, or simply would rather have a professional make, I buy rings from:
Click here for my models and painting page.
All images and pages copyright randy starcher, all rights reserved.