Round maille bracelet

Over the last few months I've tried a few different chain maille weaves - out of curiosity to see how they work and if I can do them.

I couple of months ago I started a section of Round Maille - this is a "tube" of linked rings made from 1 mm sterling silver wire where the rings have an inner diameter (ID) of 3 mm. It was fun to do and grew quite fast as there are only 3 rings in each "round" of the tube - but it takes a lot of rings. In fact, I didn't have enough rings to finish a bracelet at the time so I put it aside for a while.

Then I made some more 3 mm ID rings and finished the bracelet. It's a lot chunkier than I expected it to be and I had a problem figuring out how to attach a clasp to the end of the tube until I asked for help on a forum and was given some help.

Round maille bracelet

This bracelet contains 307 individual 3 mm ID rings. It seems to be a much more "masculine" bracelet than the other ones I have made so far, just because it is much thicker and a lot less flexible than the byzantine or helm chain weaves made with the same thickness of wire.

I'm planning on making another round maille bracelet soon, but this time I'm going to use 0.8 mm wire and the rings will have an inner diameter of 2.75 mm - this should produce a narrower, less chunky, bracelet which may be more suitable for a women to wear.

Until another time
Anne

A charm bracelet and the first helm chain

Earlier this year I was asked by a friend how much it would cost for me to make a charm bracelet for her daughter's 18th birthday present.

I quoted a price of £50 ish and she agreed that I could go ahead. We agreed that I'd make a byzantine weave bracelet with 6 places to attach charms on it. She already had one charm to attach but it would leave space for more in the future.

Sterling silver byzantine charm bracelet

This photo shows a similar bracelet to that of the one I produced for the friend's daughter. And, luckily for me, the price of the bracelet for the friend was £55 at the time of making, so I think I'm getting better at pricing items.

After spending the last year using mainly byzantine weave in my jewellery I decided it was time to try a few more weaves. There are numerous books out there but none that is considered the 'definitive' chain maille book, instead the best sources of inspiration and instructions are found on the World Wide Web. There I found instructions for a number of different weaves, all of which I like the idea of completing, and so I'm working through some different ones.

Here is a helm chain weave bracelet that I made recently in sterling silver using 1mm thick wire. For this project I made my own jump rings, there are 2 sizes used in the helm weave and I chose to use rings with an inner diameter of 3.5 mm and 6 mm. This weave involves the 'capture' of some of the rings meaning that the captured rings are held between two layers of rings but are not actually through any of the other rings themselves.

Sterling silver helm chain bracelet

This weave hangs well on the wrist and the bracelet is 19.5 cm (7.7") long which is a comfortable length for me.

Next time, clasps!
Anne

Pricing - how high / how low

Having made the sterling silver byzantine weave and amethyst bead necklace for my friend and priced it at £50 I wanted to know if I had priced it correctly or not.

About the same time as I'd been looking for sources of sterling silver jump rings etc to make the necklace I had revistied the website for CooksonGold which is a company which sells a huge variety of goods to jewellery makers. I had opened an account with them back when I did my silversmithing course and was slightly surprised to find that the account still existed even if it hadn't been used for years. I bought the sterling silver wire I needed from Cookson. While I was looking at their site I saw an announcement for their recently started forum and decided to sign up.

It just happened that just after I had given a provisional price for the necklace to my friend, a discussion about pricing started up on the CooksonGold forum and gave beginners like myself a huge amount of useful information about how to go about pricing items for sale.

After a bit of research through a few books and online I settled on a pair of formulae for pricing that I was happy to use. As I am not expecting to be a full time jeweller and have to pay my mortgage from my earnings, the formulae for pricing were a bit simpler than if I was giving up the day job. The formulae I chose of follow include one for a trade price and one for a retail price and are given below:

Trade price: (((price of materials + price of hallmarking) x 1.25) + a labour charge) + 10% of the total as profit margin

The retail price is calculated in a similar way except that instead of multiplying by 1.25, the total cost of materials plus hallmarking is multiplied by 2.

When I plugged the details of the sterling silver and amethyst necklace into these formulae I found that the trade price should have been £63 and the retail price should have been £88.50 - I guess my friend got even more of a bargain than I thought she did!

You live and learn, as the saying goes. So when the friend in question asked me to make her a bracelet in a similar style to the necklace I did and quoted her a price of £45 on the grounds that she'd got a good deal on the necklace. She was happy with the bracelet costing her £45 and admitted that she thought that the necklace was low in price.

I made the bracelet for her and then priced the bracelet using my formulae and found a trade price of £36.50 and a retail price of £47.00 so she still got a good deal on it too.

At the same time as we discussed making a sterling silver and amethsyt bracelet, the friend and I had discussed the idea of a matching set of earrings. I didn't tell her what I was doing and made a pair of earrings when I had finished her bracelet. I then gave her the bracelet which she was very happy with and then presented her with the earrings as a 50th birthday present as her birthday was only a few days later.

Here are the earrings and bracelet - giving her the whole set with the necklace shown in the last post.

More another time

Anne

My first sale - and the resulting piece of jewellery

Last time I ended with a comment about my first sale, so a bit more information here and the problems I found with it.

A friend saw me wearing my sterling silver and purple bead bracelet around the office and asked where I had got it. Of course, being me, I launched into a tale about how I'd made it and where the problems were and pointing out that I'd love to make a similar bracelet using sterling silver jump rings.

The friend asked if it would be possible to make a necklace in a similar style - so I said "Of course". At which piont she asked me to let her know how much it would cost to make a 16 inch necklace for her!

Wow, I was thrilled and terrified at the same time. Where to find the jump rings? How many beads to use? What about the catch to use? What about the price?

So, I calmly said, "I'll let you know when I've had a chance to price things up", then I headed back to my work computer and tried to think.

I already had an account at a company that sells silver sheet to the jewellery trade, so I was sure they'd be able to supply everything I needed. Well, I was almost right, they could supply the silver wire needed to hold the beads and whichever style of catches/clasps I wanted to use - but the jump rings they sold were not of the size I needed.So the hunt was on for jump rings in the right size. Luckily I found the web site of David Scott Plumlee (see earlier posts about his books) and he had a link to a UK based maker of jump rings! Unfortunately this company has recently gone our of business so I won't waste your time with their name.

Luckily for me the company made exactly the size of jump rings I wanted, so I ordered what I hoped would be enough rings to make the necklace.

Then I asked the friend if she would prefer amethyst beads rather than purple coloured glass ones to go with the sterlinng silver - the answer was "yes please". That was easy as I already knew a bead shop in London that sold the beads, so I paid them a visit. I wanted 9 beads - and so I picked them out and took them to the till to be told "it's cheaper if you buy a string of the beads, and you'll have more" - so I bought a string of beads with no idea how I'd use up the spares.

I then told the friend it would cost about £40 to £50 to make the necklace - I wish I'd known then what I know now about pricing, but I didn't so she was getting a bargain (more about pricing in the future).

I made the necklace for the friend. Got it hallmarked (more about that topic later) and presented it to her wrapped in acid free tissue paper and a red velveteen bag. She was thrilled, and so was I when she happily handed over £50 in cash, and here is what she got for her money:.

It's 16 inches (41 cm) long and is closed with a bolt ring clasp. It contains 9 amethyst beads which are 6 mm in diameter each as well as 284 jump rings made from 18 gauge sterling silver and with an inner diameter of 3.25 mm per ring.

More another time

Anne

Lead up to my first sale

As I've already mentioned, I discovered chain maille last year, and that is what started my progression towards where I currecntly am with my jewellery making.

Silver jump rings

Since I discovered chain maille I've become addicted to creating pieces of chain maille jewellery using mostly my favourite Byzantine weave and more recently a few other weaves.

I have found that I really enjoy taking a pile of insignificant looking silver jump rings (like those to the right) and turning that pile of metal loops into a beautiful wearable pile of metal.

My first love is the Byzantine weave, partly because it is deceptively complicated. I find it very easy to create Byzantine weave quickly and sometimes find ways to use it that are not in the book I learnt it from. From the first pieces that I made which were copied from the book, I have enjoyed including beads of various shapes and colours into my pieces.

The first bracelet I made used silver plated jump rings I had cut myself and purple glass beads. The result looks good from a distance, but close to you can see the problems with it.

Silver plated Byzantine weave with purple beads

As you can see, the jump rings are not cut cleanly as I used half flush cuters to cut them. Half flush cutters create two different shaped faces in the cut metal, one face is flat and the other is pointed where the blades met - this causes unsightly gaps and makes it difficult to close the jump rings at times. Also, the wire sections used to hold the beads is made with much thinner wire which lookings out of place.

But I am still pleased with the results, and the fact that wearing this bracelet around the office led to my first jewellery sale.

More next time

Anne

Finally remembered name/author of chain maille book

Having finally remembered which chain maille book I meant I thought I'd give you the details. The author is David Scott Plumlee and the first of his books is called "Chain and Bead Jewellery: techniques for creating dimensional necklaces and bracelets". He has since released a second book, and it turns out has two more in the pipeline for this year so I've just pre-ordered both of those. I really like his style of writing and his explanations / instructions I found clear enough to be able to make the items in his book on the first attempt. His website is at DavidChain Jewellery if you are interested.

The Byzantine weave bracelet I showed in the previous two posts came from his first book. As I said earlier I made nearly every piece in the first book and a few pieces from the second book. I'm interested in seeing his next two books as they appear to expand on the techniques he has already shown in the first two, as well as one of the books being about soldering jump rings. Which is something I am very eager to learn!

I have a soldering kit in the house, but so far haven't really used it except to deliberately melt some Precious Metal Clay (PMC) to see how working with it under a torch flame affected it. Melting the bit of PMC into a ball of fine silver was fun I must admit, but didn't really help with learning to solder.

Byzantine weave charm bracelet

PMC is kind of a "side interest" as I'm hoping that by working with it I can start to make fine silver charms to hang from my chain maille bracelets and necklaces.

A bracelet I was commissioned to make as the 18th birthday present for a friend's daughter was a Byzantine weave chain bracelet similar to the one shown in this photo. The larger links are available for hanging the charms from.

Until next time
Anne

Finding chain maille for the first time

Byzantine chain maille weave bracelet

I finished my last post with this photo of a Byzantine chain maille weave bracelet that I made recently.

I have seen chain maille before, primarily used for making armour for re-enacting various battles, and once I got to try making a very basic sheet of maille from copper rings at a convention.

Last year I was looking for chain maille instruction sources on the Web, I found a few but found the instructions difficult to follow, so I kept looking. At some point I spotted a book on Amazon that looked interesting so I picked up a copy (when I remember to get the details together I'll put the name up here).

From this book I learnt about making jump rings, the basic building block of all chain maille creations, and about the Byzantine weave. From what I can tell the weave is not named for having been used in the Byzantine world, it is a much more recent creation than that.

I find that I love the Byzantine weave as it is deceptively simple (to me anyway) and it grows at a good rate when being made. I can easily sit in front of the TV and make sections with no problems.

I made nearly all the pieces of jewellery in the book from silver plated wire that I had cut into jump rings.

Those early jump rings are very rough in cut and sizing and I have since learnt that the sizing especially is very important when creating chain maille pieces as the slightest variation in size and affect the lie of the rings once woven together. Some weaves rely on an inner diameter of a ring leaving only just enough space for the other rings to fit inside so that the structure of the weave grows correctly, more about those later.

More another time
Anne