Years ago I came up with the idea of using CPVC plumbing pipe to make Maille rings after taking some inspiration from behind the scenes material from LOTR. I made a small small piece at the time which is now lost, but didn't pursue it further because cutting the rings with a handheld bladed pipe cutter was simply too awkward and far too dimensionally imprecise for a decent finished product. In addition, all I could think of to color the rings was spray paint, and that did not work well.
Fast forward to January 2025 and I decided to revisit the subject. I bought a tiny chop saw from Harbor Freight which is comically underpowered for almost anything else, and began experimenting. I built, rebuilt, and added to my jig to make it vastly more precise and faster to cut with. I also have done some experimentation using dye for synthetic fabrics to color the rings, as the beige natural color of the pipe is kinda lame.
Finally I have an actual "finished" product in this shirt. It's right around 6500 rings, almost exactly 4 pounds, and took less than 20 hours to weave, though with ring cutting, dyeing, and reinforcing key open rings with super glue, it has probably taken closer to 55-65 hours total so far. I say "so far" because I will likely continue adding glue to close rings permanently as more weaknesses show themselves.
I would love to improve my process even further by building a sort of guillotine-style ring cutting machine, and I still have lots more dye experiments to run, but I feel like this concept has a lot of potential.
Fast forward to January 2025 and I decided to revisit the subject. I bought a tiny chop saw from Harbor Freight which is comically underpowered for almost anything else, and began experimenting. I built, rebuilt, and added to my jig to make it vastly more precise and faster to cut with. I also have done some experimentation using dye for synthetic fabrics to color the rings, as the beige natural color of the pipe is kinda lame.
Finally I have an actual "finished" product in this shirt. It's right around 6500 rings, almost exactly 4 pounds, and took less than 20 hours to weave, though with ring cutting, dyeing, and reinforcing key open rings with super glue, it has probably taken closer to 55-65 hours total so far. I say "so far" because I will likely continue adding glue to close rings permanently as more weaknesses show themselves.
I would love to improve my process even further by building a sort of guillotine-style ring cutting machine, and I still have lots more dye experiments to run, but I feel like this concept has a lot of potential.
