People often assume chainmaille is bought as chain and cut to length. It isn’t. Every bracelet and pendant in the shop begins as a spool of wire and ends as jewelry only after each ring has been opened, threaded through its neighbors, and closed again by hand, hundreds or thousands of times. Here’s what actually happens between the two.
It starts with a coil of wire
Before there is a weave, there are rings, and before rings, there is wire. We work mostly in anodized aluminum for its color and featherweight feel, and stainless steel where a piece needs to be bright, heavy, and hard-wearing. The wire is wound tightly around a rod called a mandrel, turn after turn, into a long spring-like coil. The diameter of that mandrel decides the inside diameter of every ring that comes off it, so the coil is really the first design decision in disguise.
That coil is then cut into individual rings, one loop at a time. A clean, flush cut matters more than it sounds: the two ends of a ring have to meet perfectly flat so the join nearly disappears and nothing snags a sweater or a wrist. A single bracelet can swallow a few hundred of these rings; a caged pendant, more; a large weave, thousands.
The one skill that matters most
Ask any maker what separates neat work from messy work and they’ll say the same thing: how you open and close a ring. You never pull the ends apart front-to-back, because that ovals the ring and it never truly recovers. Instead you hold each side with a pair of flat-nosed pliers and twist the ends past each other sideways, like opening a tiny sliding door. To close, you reverse the twist and bring the ends back until they kiss with a faint click, flush and seamless. Done thousands of times, that small, boring motion is most of the craft.
Aspect ratio: the quiet math behind every weave
Not every ring works in every weave. Whether a pattern locks up tight, drapes softly, or simply falls apart comes down to one number makers call the aspect ratio, the ring’s inner diameter divided by the thickness of its wire. A dense weave like Byzantine needs fatter, roomier rings; a tight European sheet wants something slimmer. Choosing the wrong ratio is the difference between an hour of happy weaving and a pile of rings that refuse to sit right. It’s the same relationship armourers relied on two thousand years ago, and if you’d rather not do the arithmetic, there’s a free aspect-ratio and weave tool that works it out for you.
Weaving, ring by ring
With the right rings in hand, the weave begins, and every pattern has its own logic. Some are built as a flat mesh where each ring passes through four others, the classic European 4-in-1. Others grow in repeating segments you fold and lock as you go: Byzantine, the chunky Vipera Berus, and their many cousins each have a rhythm you settle into. There’s no mold and no shortcut. You add a ring, thread it through the ones already there, close it, and repeat. The pattern only becomes visible once enough rings are in place to hold each other in tension.
Clasps, cages, and finishing
A finished piece is more than its weave. Bracelets get a secure clasp, often a lobster claw, woven in so it feels like part of the design rather than an afterthought. For a pendant, a stone can be caged directly in rings: a cabochon like a Montana agate is wrapped in a lace of metal that holds it with no glue, so the setting itself is chainmaille. Finally the piece is checked ring by ring, every join closed, every ring seated, and polished so it wears smooth against the skin. That last inspection is slow on purpose; a single open ring is the one thing that can unravel everything above it.
Why handmade takes time
Add it all up and even a simple bracelet is a few hours of quiet, repetitive work; a detailed pendant, much more. Nothing about the process is fast, and that’s rather the point. When each ring has been placed by hand, the finished piece carries a density and evenness that machine chain never quite matches, and it can be repaired, adjusted, and worn for years. Thousands of rings, closed one at a time, is simply what it takes.
So the next time a bracelet feels reassuringly solid on your wrist, that’s not the metal alone. It’s the hours folded into it, one small closed ring after another.
See the finished pieces
Every bracelet and pendant in the shop was made exactly this way, woven by hand, one ring at a time, here in Florida.
Browse the collection →