Micromaille/ Pencilmaille:
I doubt that this is the world's tiniest chainmail, but it must be getting close. These size rings are referred to as "micromaille" or "insanity maille" among maillers. At one point I had turned the top patch into an earring, but it needed constant upkeep so that didn't stick. A second coil of the top rings was used for the chain of the Captive Shell Chain, which was probably one of the craziest things I've ever done.Now, the pencilmaille picture. Have you ever heard of that theory that there is a maximum of seven degrees of separation between any two things? Well, see if you can figure this one out: I broke a pencil, so I decided to make some chainmail. Yeah, that sounds pretty remote, doesn't it. Well, the key here is that the pencil I broke was a mechanical pencil. Coincidentally, after it broke, the spring fell out of it. Taking a closer look, I realized how very similar that spring looked to, say, a coil of rings. So I cut it up into links (which was really hard to do, spring steel is hard to cut no matter what gage). It didn't make a lot of links...but it was enough for a small strip of European 4:1!
Rings:
28 ga., wrapped around a piece of 14 ga wireBrass
In the European 4:1 weave.
Unknown ga., unknownn ID
Some sort of spring steel
In the European 4:1 weave.