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[Girlinhat]

Ordered a bit of colored aluminum, this time in blue as it was out of stock earlier.  Wanted sky blue but they failed to stock it, and regular blue was getting bought up so I decided I'll try for sky blue later.  Also got black, sky blue, pink, and purple in micro sized aluminum, which I intend for earrings.  To compliment this, I got some ring-nose pliers, which are basically fine-point pliers more suited to detail work than the wide-nose pliers that I've got now.  Wide-nose is good for larger rings where you just need to get a grip, and for harder material because the surface area and leverage helps in bending.

And this will be useful, as I've gotten a tiny bit of rose gold fill and some stainless, in my usual 18g 1/4".  I should have enough to make a nice bracelet for myself or whomever wants to be generous and buy a fine fine piece of jewelry~

4-12 day shipping, will take additional time to prepare the order, but it's all fairly mundane stuff so I don't think it will take long.

[Girlinhat]

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I name it Nemesis and it's inspired by the terrible psychopaths at Cataclysm.  Black and green aluminum, with the green captive inside the black.  The weave is Captive Inverted Round with one captive.  The third image there is an example I found via google images that shows what the weave is supposed to look like.  My camera doesn't do it justice, but hopefully you get the idea.  Currently not long enough to be worn as a bracelet, though it's almost there and I just paused.  CIR is a very stiff weave, very sturdy-feeling, although aluminum isn't very strong it would be a tough one in steel, it's still flexible enough to make a bracelet and more than enough so to make a necklace.  Not sure what I'd price these at, the weave is fiddly but easy once understood, a bit more detailed work and a bit more rings to chain up.  Probably $15 at least, for bracelets.

[Yoink]

That is damn cool! Sort of a... Sci-fi look to my eyes, almost like some kindof robotic cable or something.
A little hard to envision it worn as a bracelet though, perhaps once it's long enough you could post a picture of it actually being worn?

[Girlinhat]

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I pinned it under my wrist and wrapped the extra length around.  It's currently "units" long but would need to be ~32 or 35 to be a bracelet.

It does have a very "borg" feeling, doesn't it?  Because of the stiffness, this weave is often used for sculpture when made stiffer via smaller ring sizes.  Things like the stalk of a flower or a column on a building do well for CIR.  I can also fit one of my knitting needles through it entirely.  With a larger size you could probably fit wire through it, so instead of having ugly black cables of your surround sound along the wall, you could instead slip the wire through the chain and decorate it a little.  Probably use very large rings and cheapo material, like galvanized steel, for that purpose.

Also of note is that you can fit other things into it.  Like instead of green rings, you could do glass beads of a slightly smaller size.  In fact I'll probably be making myself one from blue aluminum and obsidian beads.  Sufficiently large weaves can use things like marbles, which actually makes for a rather stylish and painful blunt weapon!

[kisame12794]

make a chainmail shirt and wear it under your clothes. no more fear from muggers.
depending on how large the holes are/what metal it is made from.

Dude we talked about this. Check back a few pages.

[Hitty40]

The Mugger stabs the Metalcrafter in the chest with his iron knife, going through the *chainmail vest* and tearing apart the skin!


Girlinhat has been struck down.

[CatalystParadox]

The Mugger stabs the Metalcrafter in the chest with his iron knife, going through the *chainmail vest* and tearing apart the skin!

Girlinhat has been struck down.

First of all, that's a really strange knife, to be made of iron in this day and age.

Second, stabbing is one thing chainmail protects against really well.

But I don't think Girlinhat has that much interest in making a vest.  It's a huge project, after all, and it's probably more interesting and rewarding, for her and for us the audience, to do smaller, prettier, more intricate work.  Besides - probably not getting mugged anytime soon, right?

[Blargityblarg]

I posted in the Happy Thread that I'd gotten my rings, and whilst I've underestimated the amount (and therefore expense) of rings require for a guitar strap, I've been making some reasonably cool shit regardless.

Couple patches of Euro 4-in-1:

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Full Persian (I think) earrings:

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'Musketeers'- I call them that 'cause there are three double rings; all in one and each one in all- probably been made by someone else and named something else:

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Images spoilered for hueg.

E: All in stainless steel.
E: Fixed the last image.

[Girlinhat]

The second and third image are the same.  Either way, yes, you generally want some large rings to work a guitar strap, that's a long piece and you don't want to muddle through thousands of small rings to get your length.

And chainmail isn't made for protecting against stabs.  A concentrated force will pop the individual rings, while slashes will be distributes across multiple rings and resist the impact.  There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the simple form.  Chainmail is strong because it's a chain, rings supporting rings.  Any force applied to an individual ring exploits the weakness of a singular ring.  Plus vests are a LOT of rings.  Half the people I've told I do this are like "oh you should make a whole shirt!" and I'm like "Oh you should give me $200 to buy the materials!"

My rings have shipped, should be arriving in 4-12 days from now!

[Eidolon]

Warning - pics are rather large.
"Thunderbolt" in stainless steel and bronze, 16g 5/16

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Two short byzantine chains in brass and bronze, and a bit of oriental 6-1 made from spare galvy.
(16g 1/4")x2 and (1/2" 12g + 1/4" 16g) respectively.

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I was interested in making the "Thunderbolt" because it's actually a 1-in-1 weave, but uses orbitals to make everything link together. My rings have a too-tight AR though, so they really don't have a lot of play in them, and the end result is a bit chaotic looking.

The byzantine and oriental aren't anything unusual.

I was planning to start work on a shirt, and ordered 7 pounds of stainless steel wire to get me started. I foolishly underestimated how strong stainless is, because it's wearing down my tools pretty fast. My aviation snips are starting to pop the kerf out around the rings now, and have a few good dents in them. My file has a gouge in it from where I tried to take off a sharp edge. I might just start buying the rings I want instead of cutting them myself, unless I can figure out a better method.

'Musketeers'- I call them that 'cause there are three double rings; all in one and each one in all- probably been made by someone else and named something else

I've heard that called a "Mobius" when there isn't really any specific amount of rings, just however many you can reasonably pack in there. I vaguely remember reading that it was patented, which seems like an odd thing to do with a chainmail weave  . Dunno or really care whether that's true or not, but they do look neat.

Girlinhat: That CIR looks really neat, I might try my hand at it later. Currently: blargh finals.

[Yoink]

That is pretty cool as a bracelet. It's kindof interesting how, hundreds of years after chainmail was effective, we (well, you, I'm too lazy and untalented!) are turning the stuff into kickass jewelery*! Who knows, that sort of thing might go well with the wristbands etc I usually wear.

*Jewelery, accessories, whatever you'd call it.

[Girlinhat]

You could argue the same about painting, thousands of years after it was first scribbled on a cave wall we're still scraping stylus over tablet.  Great thing is, it improves with time.  We're not just making armor, we're using different sizes and materials and making jewelry!

[Girlinhat]

So I've been thinking lately about possible funding drives.  Namely donation drives!  Then I realized that I don't honestly care that much about things.  I mean I know I should care about environmental funding and wildlife and whatnot, but I'm not really in a position with disposable income to be polite about things.  But I DO care about games!  Particularly indie games that might be having some trouble getting started.  In specific, I just saw the kickstart page for Star Drive and it looks fantastic.  So I'm thinking of some little fund drive that per piece of chainmail sold, a certain percentage of or all profits would go towards an indie development.  Since this may not cover all the cost of the indie, it may be needed to keep a running pool of donated funds and dump them all on one project once the pool gets to a nice size.

But a good beaded bracelet might go for $25, and that'd be $20 put towards an indie team (as opposed to my own selfish desires).  Five bracelets sold would put Star Drive towards a personal reference, which for me would likely be the "Haberdashery" class space station that certain merchant races might build

I'd probably try to make a specific design that reflected the game, as well.  Different colors or weave choices, y'know...  Any thoughts on this?

[kisame12794]

Hmmm. You know, if I had the time to set up some sort of mail order thing, I could sell some of my smithing to help these guys. Some of the more dangerous stuff would have to stay here, but little things could go anywhere from $8 to $30.

[Girlinhat]

Got my rings got my rings got my rings~  Apparently, that excitement hasn't worn down after the third package in the mail.  It's like Christmas came early!

First impressions:
Rose Gold Fill looks a lot like copper or new bronze, which makes sense because copper is already kinda golden, and rose gold is cut with copper.  But it has a peculiar sort of weight to it that probably only I can tell because I'm finicky like that, and a certain warmth to it.

Stainless steel is like dulled aluminum, a sort of "slate grey" that's been polished to reflect light.  Almost reminds me of dark, decorative stones.  It's pretty rigid and strong, but not very different from bronze (debatably more workable than bronze).  I think I love this stuff.

Blue Aluminum.  Oh my god, blue aluminum, oh my god.

Needle-nose pliers are VERY fun.  Very fine tip, very precise control, a bit too precise.  I'm going to have to get used to gripping rings in different places to get proper leverage and turn on them, but worked a few tiny rings and they're a joy to work with.  A little bit of patience and an eye for detail, and these are very fun.