Let's talk about ring closures! Perfect ring closures are very important in making quality chainmail. It's what makes chainmail feel so smooth and slinky in your hands. It's what other mailers look at when we judge each other's work. And it's what separates good chainmail from bad chainmail.
Every piece of chainmail I create involves closing rings: sometimes only a handful, sometimes dozens or hundreds, and sometimes even thousands. But no matter how many rings end up in the finished product, I strive for a perfect closure with each and every ring I close. This means that the opening of every ring becomes nice and smooth and flat. And if I've done it right, then the closure itself can sometimes be very hard to find. Some chainmailers pride themselves on speed. But I pride myself on making my finished products as nice as I can.
I order my rings already cut and, in the case of aluminum, already anodized. The rings are manufactured from wire spun around a mandrel and then sawed apart. So when I received them, the rings start out neither closed nor fully opened, but just slightly offset the size of the wire. There is also a tiny gap in the opening called a kerf. This is a gap due to the width of the sawblade itself
In order to close the rings, I take my pliers and bend the metal into place. It sounds easy enough, but there are a bunch of common closure mistakes that I work to avoid:
 | Gap. Simply lining up the ends of the ring isn't enough to make a good closure. Due to the kerf, there will still be a gap between the ends. |
 | Misalign. The absence of a gap between the ring ends is only half of the equation. The ring ends themselves also need to be lined up perfectly straight and flush. |
 | Sixing. A funny sounding chainmail term is sixing. It's a type of misalignment where one ring end is higher than the other and the whole ring kind of looks like a 6. |
 | Pringled. This is my favorite silly chainmail term. When a ring is pringled, it means that it's bent into a potato chip shape instead of laying flat. |
 | Marred. The worst of all the ring closure mistakes is marring or scratching the rings. Unlike with the other mistakes, marred rings are permanently damaged and can't just be bent back into shape. |
Avoiding all these mistakes takes time and practice. But it's worth it to have a finished chainmail piece with perfect closures. It keeps the rings from snagging and the product feels nice and smooth. This is especially important in my chainmail dice bags. Smooth closures mean that there are no rough edges to damage resin dice. Check them out here.
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