The Armour Archive

I have some 4awg aluminum wire that I plan on making into rivited maille. I know that the wire is probably to big to make maille out of but i'm going for light and easy to work. So what should the inside diameter be for 4 awg wire?

Grendal[/code]

That depends. Do you want to make a loose or a tight weave? Loose weave could be 7/16 o.d. with a 3/8" i.d. Tight weave could be 3/16". Its all up to you on your design. I hope this helps.

4 gauge? Wow that's thick. I have never worked with that gauge before but I imagine you will have trouble with with most of the common inner diameters because the thickness of the wire will make it hard to weave other rings into it. I am going to make a guess at 1/2" or larger. How are you going to coil this? Whatever method you use, be extra careful because it's bound to build up ALOT of tension as you wind.

Cat

Its actually thicker than 4 guage. I'll try a 7/16 id.

Grendal

4g is over 3/16" in diameter (0.2043" actually), are you sure you have that thick of wire? Regardless the best average for link size is the inner diameter of the link to be 4 times the diameter of the wire used. Any tighter and you start to lose flexibility and is harder to put together (typically you can go as tight as only three times the dimeter of the wire), any looser and you start to lose protection and links are more prone to come appart. So if you actually have 4g wire you'll need links about 7/8" diameter. Measure you wire and go from there.