Let me start off by saying that I do not believe that wearing a full suit of chainmail is advisable for any period of time. It is simply too heavy and will end up hurting more than helping when trying to fight or escape. You can, however, cover some leather gloves in it or make a neck guard, forearm guard, etc. out of chain that will protect against bites.

Now, in order to make some, you need a few things.

1. Wire. I use 16-18 gauge electrical fence wire on a spool. You could use aluminum to cut down on weight but that will cost you in protection.
2. Wire cutters. Get a good strong pair, you'll need it.
3. 1/4" dowel rod
4. Drill or some other means of making a small hole in the dowel
5. Pliers. You need 2 of them, preferably needle nosed.
6. Work glove

Start by drilling a small hole in the dowel, about an inch from the end. This hole needs to be the thickness of the wire so it can fit through. Assuming that you have an electric drill, you next want to clamp the other end of the dowel into the drill.

Put the wire through the hole and bend it so it won't fall out. Now, put on your glove and hold the wire as you turn the drill. This will cause the wire to coil around the dowel. Just guide it with the gloved hand, but make as long a coil as you can while you still have the electric drill and power.

Clip the spot where you inserted the wire into the hole and clip the end that connects to the wire spool and the coil should fall off the dowel. Make more coils, you will need allot of rings.

Now, clip in a straight line down the coil. This will create little rings.

You will not need to know decorative chainmail or anything special for this next part. Simple 4-in-1 pattern will be ok.

Close 4 rings with the pliers. Slide them all onto one open ring and close that. Lay it down on a table and get it relatively flat. Notice that there is now 1 ring with 4 rings through it (hence the name 4-in-1). The ring in the center should go over 2 rings and under the next two. This is the "direction" of the chain. You should have your center rings go left to right for the best protection (they don't separate as much that way so you get more chain over the surface area).

Now, make a bunch of those sections of 4-in-1. You don't have to worry too much about soldering or welding the rings, once you put them all together they just kind of hold each other as long as you closed them properly.

How to make coils and rings
Making 4-in-1 and linking it


Joining sections

Now that you've got a bunch of little sections, what do you do with them? You will want to join them together. This is demonstrated in the video above titled "Making 4-in-1 and linking it" but it warrants an explanation as well.

To do this, get two pieces side to side and make sure they are going the same "direction". Put piece A on the left and B on the right. Slightly overlap the right two rings of piece A with the left two rings of piece B.

Open a ring and thread it through those 4 rings. Try to make it like the center rings so that it goes in the same direction as the others. This means that if the center ring of piece A is on top of the two rings on the right, you want this one to end up that way as well. To do this, open a ring and insert it down through ring 4 and into ring 3, under ring 3 and ring 1, then up through ring 2. Close the ring. Refer to Figure 1 below for ring numbering. This should leave the center ring on top of rings 2 and 4 and under rings 1 and 3.


Keep linking chain sections as long as you need to. It may be a little tricky to get it to lie flat at first, but once you get it a few rows long and a few deep, the weight tends to straighten it out.



Making things out of chain

I've found that the easiest way to make gloves, neck guards, and the like is to attach chain to an existing object. No one wants to wear a glove made entirely of chain anyway.

I used leather work gloves and laid some joined sections of chain on top of it. I marked where the edges of the chain met the seams and cut little holes in the leather and threaded rings through to hold it. I only cover the backs of the gloves and backs of the fingers, otherwise you would have trouble grabbing things with chain in the way.

The real value in this comes from neck guards and forearm guards. These can be cloth or leather with chain attached for extra protection.

A neck guard will just be a strip of material with some fastener at both ends to secure it around the neck. You''ll use a similar method as used in the gloves in that you can lay out the material flat, lay chain over it, and mark off the places that need holes cut so you can thread rings through the material to secure your chain. Once you have the entire guard covered, with the possible exception of the clasping mechanism, you're done and should have some neck bite survivability now.

The same method can be employed for arm and shin guards if needed.

One possible enhancement would be to make the guard (neck, arm, whatever), attach chain, then cover with another layer of leather for even more protection. Just make sure that it's comfortable and not too heavy.