Long time no post ...

Yes, it has been a long time since my last post. I have been busy doing other things, like studying. But anyway, to business ...

This is a necklace, length of 37 cm. Actually, to my taste it is a bit short, so I'll probably end up lengthening it a few centimeters. The rings are made of 1mm thick silver wire with an inner diameter of 3mm.

The weave is called Jens pind and although it looks really nice, it is equally boring to make. In Finnish this is called piina and a loose translation to English would be pain in the ... Some say that it is difficult to make and altough not the easiest chain, it's not that hard. If you are interested, give it a go :-)

Necklace

Long time no posts. Well, the holiday season is about over and I finally have time to do other things than visit relatives etc. That's fine and all, but you get tired of it after a while.

This time I decided to make a necklace. Well, actually, I had to dismantle and redo the blasted thing so many times that probably it would be better to say that it turned out to be a necklace. The weave is called Japanese 3-1. The thing is about 43,5 cm long and weighs roughly 50 grams. Or in other words, a bit over 17 inches and roughly 1,76 ounces.


The necklace is made of 1 mm thick sterling silver wire. I used three different ring sizes. Most of the rings (about half) have an inner diameter of 3 mm. These rings are the connecting rings between larger rings. Half the rings in the inner chain is made of rings with 4 mm inner diameter. The outer chain and the hanging weave are made of 3 and 5 mm rings. The inner chain must be a bit shorter so that the necklace hangs nicely around the neck. You can easily see the difference in ringsizes in the second picture.

My previous work (the bracelet) uses the same weave as european mediaval chain mail. I read somewhere (but can't unfortunately remember where) that this weave has been used in japanese armour. If my memory serves me correctly, you could also hide this kind af weave between two layers of fabric making a comfortable and very unmaillike protective gear. But I must check that up.

Bracelet

This time I managed to make a bracelet. I'm actually quite suprised how nice it looks. And it's still unpolished. This time I had a more or less clear goal, so this didn't take that long to make. I also had some rings left from my necklace.

The bracelet is 16 cm long and 2,1 cm wide. I used 1 mm thick silver wire to make the rings which have inner diameter of 5mm. The weave is standard European 4-1. I found it a bit difficult to start, but after few rows it became just plain boring to make. I find the rings make quite pleasing pattern. The second image shows a closer view from the side.

The weave itself has been historically used in medieval chainmail. The bracelet I made is quite small. It only has 112 rings. Now, imagine a hauberk or a knee lenght chain mail. One of those have somewhere between 15 000 to 45 000 rings. My bracelet is made of silver, which is quite soft as far as metals go. Medieval chainmail was usually made on wrought iron, which is "somewhat" harder to work with. Although armourers could work with waterwheels etc, making those chainmails without modern powertools must have been really hard work. So, I'll take my hat of to those ancient armourers :-)

First time ...

... I blog anything anywhere. So lets see how this turns out. Hopefully better than my first silver necklace, which didn't turn out so bad. At least I like it, but some people might think otherwise. Of course with more experience and practice I am able to make better job, but anyway, so far so good.

But lets go down to business. This is quite simple 2-in-2 chain. Rings are 1mm thick silver wire, inner diamater is 5mm. Chain is about 45 cm long. I wasn't looking how long it took me to make, but with more experience and a clear goal, it probably doesn't take that long. The first image shows how the chain is hanging while wearing.

The second image shows the pattern hanging under the main chain. Perhaps the whole necklace is a bit on the masculine side, but it doesn't bother me.