4 in 1 - The Weave is the Way

Okay, so now that you have your gear handy and a good supply of the rings that are your raw material, its time to talk weave.

European 4-in-1 Weave
For the vast majority of projects, the standard is all you will honestly need.  Four in one is a very very simple style where each and every ring is linked to 4 others. Its the meat and potato's of the chain mail world. For prep work on any project like this, I like to take the time to prepare a large number of rings that are already twisted closed so they make a perfect circle and are flush. These are the bulk of your work and the more you have handy, the faster you will see progress. There are basically two ways to do this as I think of it.


Option 1: You start off by taking a single ring between the tips of your two sets of needle-nose pliers and twisting it slightly so that the ends part enough to slip four of your pre-closed rings on. Once they are on, you need to twist your center ring shut and make sure its flush. Lay it flat on the table in front of you. the four outer rings should lay at one angle and the central ring should lay aimed the other direction, it looks kind of like a butterfly, with rows 1 and 3 being the wings, and the single ring in row 2 being the body. You expand on it by adding a ring to row 2 and threading two more closed rings onto it, which become the next layer of rows 1 and 3. Work your way down a ways, I usually go until its a few inches long. You can either make several of these little panels or just keep building it around until it is as long as you want it to be, then expand its width. To expand the width of this strip, just do what you have been doing, with a slight change. Instead of adding more rings to row 2, add another ring headed the same way on what is now row 4, hooking into two rings of row 3, and adding 2 new closed rings to make a row 5. From there, just hook the new row 4 rings into the 3 and 5 rows like you did before.

Option 2: I'm a step-oriented person, so I usually like breaking everything down into its individual steps. I'll usually split all my rings into the two types, open and closed. Once I have a good supply finished, I sit down and begin combining rings, going no further than a single ring hooked to four others until I have a few hundred of those little 'butterfly' links that I mentioned before. I think of them like Lego's, and I use them to build sections of the final project. The advantage to making just the little 'butterfly' units over making strips in my opinion is that the butterfly is small enough that you can use it in any project. If you make too many of them, just leave them put together. Its quick and efficient, plus its easier to see your piece taking shape like that.

Regardless of which of these two styles you pick for your project, European 4 in 1 mail is the easiest of the various chain-mail weaves and it can produce some very complex pieces. Once you have the hang of it, removing a single ring can make the flat panels curve, a very important trick to learn if your making a tunic or pouch.

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