/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Unfortunately I don't have any plans or instructions past these pictures. I basically just winged it. I learned most of the general idea when I fumbled around to make a scale dicebag, which ironed out a lot of the problems I'd come into with the purse. It's all European 4-1 weave, with a ton of contractions and expansions as needed. You might be able to find a tutorial of sorts for a scalemail dicebag on Maille Artisans webpage, but otherwise, I can't offer you much.

My page showing the process of making the dicebag and purse are here:
http://www.zebeth.com/planetzebeth/stuff/chainmail/dicebag.html
http://www.zebeth.com/planetzebeth/stuff/chainmail/purse.html
Hopefully the pictures and text are enough to go on to get through most of any problems you come across. Some other chainmail things I've made are in there too.

Good luck with it though... the satisfaction of a completed piece is always great.

>>49737
The rings and scales I get from theringlord.com . I hand-coiled the rings for my shirt using galvanized steel, but since this is stainless, that would have been too rough on my hands to coil and cut. For the price of the rings (pretty cheap compared to just buying stainless wire), it's generally worth it to just buy rings. They'll be cut better anyway.

>>49738
According to my notes, only 3.5 pounds, which is surprisingly light considering what it looks like. Probably hurt the shoulder after a bit, but women aren't exactly known for putting practicality over fashion.

>>49735

Surprisingly little, since the main body of it is fairly solid. Also, if it's packed like a woman normally packs a purse, I imagine it'd be too full to shake much :P. The weight pulling down on the strap should also limit the sound.

But yeah, like anything chainmail, it'd probably make a bit of sound like change in your pocket type thing. Not nearly as much as if I'm wearing my chainmail shirt... kinda scared to walk near bums... they'd think I have a hundred bucks in change in my pockets with the sound it makes.

>>49707
Probably about 10 hours of work or so. I've made a scale dicebag before, so I had a good idea of what I needed to do which sped me up.

Completed purse. It wasn't the lightest thing on earth (used stainless steel), but the person who requested it know what they were getting into. She loved it one way or another.

If someone attacked her though, she could do some good damage with that sucker though. It'd probably survive just about anything, too.

Showing the smaller loops that the drawstring goes through, and the bigger loops the strap attaches to

Adding to the 'opening' part, giving it a way to close.

View from the side

View from outside. Was actually quite difficult to get it to look like that. The very very center of the bottom of the purse has no scales, since they all face eachother. Just enough to cover the bottom entirely in scale, and then just rings.

Contractions to start closing it up again.

Bottom done, view from above.

Same amount of rings, outside of it.

It may look somewhat backwards... the center of this is actually the purse opening. Lots of expansions to add scales and size.

Several rows of scales. Looks kinda funky.

Full ring of scales going around.

Bored right now, so figured I'd give people something to look at and dump the pics I took from when I made a chainmail/scalemail purse for a friend, showing the process of how I made it.

This was the very start, essentially the purse opening and start of the scales.

>>24444
>>24439
Ok, that's kinda creepy timing just about.

I've seen pictures of some people that modded one into a george foreman grill shortly after they came out. If I recall correctly, it took then a few hundred dollars, but it looked like it should work.

Or you could old-school game it and turn the inside into a Labyrinth type game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_%28game%29).). That'd be awesome.

>>24376
Or when the old gets too old, I'm all about improving the new stuff. Why settle for what some marketing manager somewhere thinks will suit me.

My tools are all over the place since I have various different hobbies

Chainmail: Several pairs of needlenose pliers, some bent-tip, others straight, some toothless. Also a pair of nippers for when making my own rings, linesman pliers for the tougher rings, and eye-bolts of various sizes to coil wire around.
Everything else usually involves JB Weld (the greatest shit on earth), GOOP glue, threads, needles, fishing line, and whatever else I makeshift into working for whatever I'm making/improving.

>>24247
I'm not so much for making "cool" stuff, but rather working stuff that I can't (or don't want to pay for) elsewhere.

>>22474
Gonna have to put my vote towards Red Green here.

>>24214
Several of those have a common theme, and most of them are too long or cumbersome to use.

I'm just going to call myself a /diy/ver. Several of the poll suggestions end with that anyway, and this is much smaller and simpler than like... all of those.