New Hobby Update.
Since my girlfriend had off Monday, she went to a craft store and thought she would help me along on my experiment into chain mail by buying me some jump rings. She bought be 2 bags of 9mm and 2 bags of 6mm rings.
For those who know me, you know my fingers are big, and so are my hands. I decided to go after the 9mm rings. I had read the book we bought, and tried to follow their instructions for a simple 4-1 pattern. That drove me nuts. They had wanted you to assemble a bunch of single rings with 4 rings attached, then come back and join them together. It kind of made sense, but I kept having trouble keeping which rings flipped which way right. And then when joining the 2 sets together, you have all these extra rings hanging in the way.
I mentioned to Dee that I didn't understand why they didn't make this more like knitting. When I was frustrated enough with the book's method, I decided to try it the way it made sense in my mind. Yay for me. Before long I had it down fast. I was just adding new rings to the end one row at a time. This made sense, had fewer rings in play, and made me feel productive and less clumsy. After a little over an hour or so, I had a single 4-1 wide chain long enough to make into a bracelet for myself.
Oh and during all that, I was opening and closing the rings all by fingers.
So last night when my order from FireMountain showed up, I was excited about starting up the new project. I sat down, and started looking at the parts and feeling like I could do it. Of course when it came to the 5.6mm rings we ordered, I started thinking, I will only be able to use it if I use the pliers. Luckily Dee has all those. Well I started into it, and I tried the O rings and the 5.6mm rings. I quickly figured out the O rings in the pattern where smaller than the ones we ordered, and while the pattern called for 5mm rings, the extra .6 wasn't enough to fit 4 O rings in and close them while maintaining my sanity. So, knowing I had plenty of rings laying about, I tried a string without doubled up O rings. That didn't look so good. Then it occurred to me that I had those 6mm rings that Dee bought the night before. That final extra .4mm did the trick. I was able to make a string of them and have them look right. Then I ran into the problem that even though I was using slightly larger rings than the pattern called for, the 13 links it asked for barely covered the top of my wrist. I ended up having to add another 10 links to the pattern to feel comfortable.
So I spent about 3 hours or more working on it before dinner, and maybe another 3.5 hours after dinner. The final product made me very happy. I only have a couple of rough openings in the links. But they are only slightly irritating. Maybe I will seek them out tonight and either fix the closing, ir get the dremel out for some filing.
Anyways, just ran the numbers on my adjusted version of the pattern and here it is.
96 black Oh Rings(yeah, strange name, but I am sure that is a brand.)
42 Red Oh Rings
2 10.9mm rings
10 6.5mm rings
250 6mm rings.
And I had to open and close all 250 of those 6mm rings for the bracelet. I'll try and get a picture up later when I have access to a camera. Mine is at home, and I am at work. Don't think the coworkers will have a camera here when they get in.
For those who know me, you know my fingers are big, and so are my hands. I decided to go after the 9mm rings. I had read the book we bought, and tried to follow their instructions for a simple 4-1 pattern. That drove me nuts. They had wanted you to assemble a bunch of single rings with 4 rings attached, then come back and join them together. It kind of made sense, but I kept having trouble keeping which rings flipped which way right. And then when joining the 2 sets together, you have all these extra rings hanging in the way.
I mentioned to Dee that I didn't understand why they didn't make this more like knitting. When I was frustrated enough with the book's method, I decided to try it the way it made sense in my mind. Yay for me. Before long I had it down fast. I was just adding new rings to the end one row at a time. This made sense, had fewer rings in play, and made me feel productive and less clumsy. After a little over an hour or so, I had a single 4-1 wide chain long enough to make into a bracelet for myself.
Oh and during all that, I was opening and closing the rings all by fingers.
So last night when my order from FireMountain showed up, I was excited about starting up the new project. I sat down, and started looking at the parts and feeling like I could do it. Of course when it came to the 5.6mm rings we ordered, I started thinking, I will only be able to use it if I use the pliers. Luckily Dee has all those. Well I started into it, and I tried the O rings and the 5.6mm rings. I quickly figured out the O rings in the pattern where smaller than the ones we ordered, and while the pattern called for 5mm rings, the extra .6 wasn't enough to fit 4 O rings in and close them while maintaining my sanity. So, knowing I had plenty of rings laying about, I tried a string without doubled up O rings. That didn't look so good. Then it occurred to me that I had those 6mm rings that Dee bought the night before. That final extra .4mm did the trick. I was able to make a string of them and have them look right. Then I ran into the problem that even though I was using slightly larger rings than the pattern called for, the 13 links it asked for barely covered the top of my wrist. I ended up having to add another 10 links to the pattern to feel comfortable.
So I spent about 3 hours or more working on it before dinner, and maybe another 3.5 hours after dinner. The final product made me very happy. I only have a couple of rough openings in the links. But they are only slightly irritating. Maybe I will seek them out tonight and either fix the closing, ir get the dremel out for some filing.
Anyways, just ran the numbers on my adjusted version of the pattern and here it is.
96 black Oh Rings(yeah, strange name, but I am sure that is a brand.)
42 Red Oh Rings
2 10.9mm rings
10 6.5mm rings
250 6mm rings.
And I had to open and close all 250 of those 6mm rings for the bracelet. I'll try and get a picture up later when I have access to a camera. Mine is at home, and I am at work. Don't think the coworkers will have a camera here when they get in.