I used to make chainmail a lot. I would do it during lecture classes and also at
work. I would take my setup to work(graveyard tech support by my lonesome for
an ISP) at night and make all the coils and cut the rings. Then when I was in
class I would sit in the back and weave all the rings together. I got some weird
looks at first as I sat there with my Crown Royal bag filled with rings and my two
pair of pliers going to town heh.
This is the jig that I use(made from shop scraps
The following are a few pics of the armor I made for LARP.
http://exit3.i-55.com/~default/armor1.jpg
http://exit3.i-55.com/~default/armor3.jpg
http://exit3.i-55.com/~default/armor4.jpg
(The shield was for a Viking Myth. project. No way I would carry that heavy bastard for field battles
)
As far as ring production, that jig will make a coil of ~225 rings in a few
minutes. To cut the rings I use a pair of Wiss Aviation cutters, they allow me
to cut 3 rings at a time on the larger diameter rings and 2 on the smaller. It
then normally takes me ~10-12 minutes to cut the coil into rings. So I can
usually average about 1000 rings an hour. For the sake of my hands though
I usually alternate it up a bit with cutting, closing some rings, and weaving,
just so I'm able to do it for longer periods of time and the blisters seemed to
take longer to develop when I first started, no more blisters now thanks to
caloused hands
I'm waiting till I head to grad school in a few months before getting
everything out and picking it back up again.