Wire

[Statik367]

Hello all,

I am not new to the site, but I am new to the forums. I hope this is not a commonly repeated question but, I had a question for everyone. I do quite a bit of chainmailing, and I am looking to turn it into a business. I offer custom made pieces, sometimes allowing the client to choose the colors and such. Right now I buy all my rings, the issue is when I get a request for a color I don't have, in a size I don't always use, then I have to order them and I have leftover rings.

I want to start making my own rings, cause I would rather have a collection of wire that I can make to fit. I found mandala crafts has some nice anodized wire, but I can't seem to find bright aluminum wire. Is it just aluminum wire that's been anodized silver?

Also, does anyone have any other shops they like to use to get their wire? Any suggestions and help would be very much appreciated.

 

[chainmaillers.com]

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I am not new to the site, but I am new to the forums.

Welcome to the forums

I hope this is not a commonly repeated question

As we don't have that many forum posts, there are very few commonly repeated questions at this time

I want to start making my own rings, cause I would rather have a collection of wire that I can make to fit. I found mandala crafts has some nice anodized wire, but I can't seem to find bright aluminum wire. Is it just aluminum wire that's been anodized silver?

There are a few issues with this.

Most craft store (not sure if Mandala Crafts is a craft store) wire is not suitable for chainmaille as, I believe in most cases, it is dead soft wire (more for wire wrapping than making rings).

Bright Aluminum (BA) is more based on the alloy that is used, there is no anodized layer in rings commonly sold as "bright aluminum". One of the problems with BA is that as it oxidizes, there is sometimes a black ruboff associated with it (may get on skin and clothing but generally easily washed off). To combat this problem with ruboff, many vendors started anodizing a silver color.

As for anodizing Aluminum (or Aluminium as it is called in some places) it is a chemical process that I believe most vendors have done offsite. In most cases, they either send presized coils (these rings have "silver" ends) or already cut rings to be anodized (these rings have ends the same color as the rest of the ring). In other words, I'm pretty sure that no one is sitting on spools of already anodized wire and then sizing and cutting to order.

Hope that helps