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 :-)