Fun With Chain (and No Soldering!)

I love interesting chain, and I especially love it if it's handmade. I really love copper and am frequently disappointed that practically all of the commercial copper chain I see is either copper-plated brass or steel--no solid copper chain! I'm sure there's probably some economic or practical reason for this but it still gives me the frownies. So sometimes I make my own. I love looking at an interesting commercial chain and figuring out a way to make something similar myself--preferably without soldering! Below are three styles of chain I have enjoyed making that require no soldering or even sawing.

The first chain is a simple figure 8, made from heavy-gauge double-ended ball headpins. I haven't actually ever used it for anything, I've been saving it for the "perfect" project. The two lengths at the top are copper and sterling silver, and the ones on the bottom are copper and brass.

The figure 8s are joined by other smaller figure 8s, which are just wire hammered flat before being formed into the 8-shape. For the larger 8s, I just experimented with different gauges of copper wire, making figure 8s of various sizes until I found a size and gauge I liked (these are done with 16 gauge wire, and the smaller connector figure 8s are 18 gauge wire.) I left what I thought would be enough length to form the ball at each end,

unfolded it and measured it, and then cut a bunch of pieces that length.

I balled up the ends in my torch and then created my figure 8s,

And then hammered them.

I could have joined the 8s together with plain jump rings but I decided to do something more interesting and did the smaller figure 8s. You could do beaded links in between, or wrapped links, or whatever you want.

You can also use figure 8s without the balls (*snort* I said BALLS), such as in this bracelet I did a few years ago. Those are just plain figure 8s, doubled up, with a couple of big jump rings around the middles. I did saw these jump rings, but there's no soldering here.

The chain below is based on commercial chain I have seen that I liked. I thought, "I bet I could do that myself!"

For this I just start with 6mm widths of textured copper sheet (I think this is 24 gauge--click HERE for a brief explanation of how this sheet is embossed) and hammered rings squashed into ovals (I just turn them on their sides and tap them with the hammer into an oval shape):

(It doesn't matter to me that the cut section of the ring is ugly, because it's going to be hidden inside the textured sections; but if you wanted to, you could certainly solder them closed and make the invisible parts tidy.) For the chain above, each textured strip is about 28mm total length. I curled the ends with the 3mm barrel on my step jaw pliers. The rings are formed from 14 gauge wire on the 6mm barrel of my step jaw pliers. Here's what the back looks like (I kind of like the back too):

And from the side you can see how it's formed:

It's not perfect, but I like my jewelry like I like my men. Primitive.

The last chain is a simple twisted bar chain. You cut a piece of wire, hammer half of it one way, the other half the other way, and put a hole in either end. Ta-da!

It looked plain so I wrapped the middles with double-ended ball headpins (or "bones," as I heard Shannon German call them once.) The ones below are just plain, obviously. You can link them with plain jump rings, or beaded links, or whatever you want. I especially like using the bar links for sterling chain, because you get a lot of mileage out of it for not a lot of labor or cost (compared to doing fiddly little round or oval links--especially if they're soldered. Ew. Not My Thing.) I think this is 14 gauge wire.

There is some other chain I want to try, some with some simple soldering and another with textured washers. I'll let you know how that goes!

Keirsten
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