They say the first 200 links are the hardest -- I sure hope

[Konstantin the Red]

Well, I finally dug out some miscellaneous tools and baling wire, and I spent Saturday afternoon coiling, cutting, lapping and flattening links for riveted mail. Yes, it takes a long bloody time. No, I don't care -- this afternoon was devoted to experiments to see what methods work best for me, both right now, and for a future time when I am more skilled at this riveted thang. I tried various methods of executing the several steps that lead up to a flattened link. I didn't try powerwinding because I can't find my big drill yet, and I was winding 16ga. tie wire around a 1/2" mandrel. I used a screw eye sunk into a sawhorse to control the wire feed, and found I had less problem with wire tangles if I put a second screw eye some inches before the first, feeding the wire through both. I found it best to screw the eyes as tight into the wood as possible for better tensioning of the wire. I cut coils into links and strung the links, in small batches of 25 or so, on a 3/8" mandrel and rolled it between a hunk of 2x4 and my cement patio. This not only overlapped the links, it overlapped them rather too much and I had to struggle with bunny-eared links. It looks like you only need 1/16" difference of diameter in mandrels to get the overlap you need, at least in 16 gauge. I also experimented with overlapping links in air with pliers, especially links I had pre-flattened in their half-inch stage to reduce slipoffs and double-doorstop wedge-section overlaps. Flattening overlaps by hitting links with a hammer is possible, but very tricky, requiring a precisely vertical blow on the link lap to start the proper flattening and then several more taps going from gentle to moderate force. With every hammerstroke, there is the chance of hitting a bit off and messing your link up. I tried several hammers from 40 oz to 24 oz, finding better control with the lighter hammers, but more time spent hitting also. I got considerably faster and more consistent results by using my 40-oz singlejack (baby sledgehammer) as a flattening plunger, seating it on the link and then hitting the other hammer face a good lick with first my 32-oz ball pein (it worked fine) then my 16-oz deadblow (doubtless kinder to my singlejack's hammer face); I had to swing the deadblow harder for the desired effect, but using the singlejack as a tool really made things a lot easier and kept my left hand out from under descending hammers. I think I'll get me a 32-oz deadblow for this.

As for the quality of the links I've produced, I'm optimistic and fairly pleased with my first-day effort. Those links do look mightily medieval, however. I rejected no links, instead undertaking to tweak each one that didn't come perfect. I was seeing the following defects: double doorstop both widthwise (the toughest to fix) and lengthwise (not as big a deal-- if it was moderate, I called the link good), sometimes on both axes simultaneously (an incipient bunny-ears condition); bunny-ears and its interior cousin, the handshake -- the wire ends look like they are trying to wrap around each other. Sometimes even pre-flattening the links to keep double doorstop or slipoff (the link assumes a spiral shape) still had slipoffs; I just used pliers, lined the flattened ends up again, and gave 'em a good hit, as above.

Emboldened with my success at bashing tie wire, I rolled out a bit of 14ga galvy and tried a similar procedure. Whew. Okay -- it can be done, but half-hard 14ga galvy is gorilla wire compared to 16ga tie. I didn't even try to avoid bunnyears or handshake because there was so much metal there to work with that you get a really huge spread of metal to work on. I doubt I'll try going through that overlap with a slitting punch -- a tool I do not have, nor rivet setting pliers -- so this project will be taking a while. I think a dremel might be just the thing -- flattened 14ga links are bloody huge!

I'm cutting rivets from flattened tie wire and I need to get more consistent at that -- my technique is not quite delivering the desired quality yet. For experiemental quantities of rivets, a Blitz Mints dispenser -- that thing that looks like a small plastic cigarette lighter -- is a nice convenient little container for quite a lot of triangular rivets. Pop off the cap and top, sweep the rivets into the body, put everything back on.

I kept it up until I was tired and things like hands were starting to hurt. Presbyopia's no help either -- kinda hard to assess how well you are doing if it's kinda hard to focus. Now I get to tell you guys all about it.

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"The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone..."

[Konstantin the Red]

Sunday afternoon, I experimented with 16ga. galvy, 3/8" primary wind, overlapped down to 5/16. Same sort of story as the 14ga. above, just writ smaller -- still have to smack the flattening tool a lot. Makes a dang sturdy link though. I'll still dremel-drill these, as rustproofing would be lost to heating these links to normalize them. They definitely harden up under the hammer.

I also gave 16ga. tie wire a try on the same mandrels as the galvy. This is probably the stuff I'll make the bulk of the camail I'm planning to do as a first riveted mail project. More easily worked than galvy, it demands less time per link to flatten. Most of my links are quite flattened; so far I prefer pre-flattening my links before lapping in order to cut down my reject rate and I'm getting some nice pretty 5/16 links awaiting normalizing, punching, and use.

Misc notes: new wire feeds and coils better than old rusty stuff. Galvy feeds very slickly, tie wire somewhat less so. I experimented with the end-slot winding mandrel today; the method mandates forward pressure on the drill or there will be a lot of wind-overs as the wire crosses up. I did not discard any of the enlarged links so produced because they are a good match for 16ga. links wound on a half-inch mandrel, which links will make up some outer camail rows. Half-inch links in 16ga. tie wire are rather trickier to work with, though -- it's easier for the flattening after lapping to go wrong. 3/8 inch final size is still an attractive result, so I expect I will be making up more. For some reason the coils really cling to the mandrel, so switching the drill to reverse for as many as ten turns to relax the coil is a must. End-slot mandrels require a hand on the mandrel to stabilize them as control is minimal at the far end of the mandrel at coils' start; leverage is against you and if your mandrel wants to wander, you've suddenly got a handful of tool and likely a spaghetti-ball of over-winds. [img]http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/mad.gif[/img] I still need to work out how to start the wire swiftly and smoothly for end-slots.

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"The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone..."