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Hi this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and I'm going to show you how to do a
Byzantine Chain Maille Weave
and this here's an example. This is a bracelet using the byzantine weave
it's really pretty from all sides, almost forms a slightly squared off
pattern
and you see these
rings they're going in opposite directions that form a really
pretty pattern
I want to show you how to do this
I picked up some
artistic wire chain maille rings and these are specifically for chain maille and what
helps is they actually show you on the top of the package
the inner diameter and the gauge
and then if you were to turn over this package
it's going to give you a handy develop chart for some of the more popular weaves like
dragon scale, european 4-in-1, the turkish round
it's gonna show you what size range in gauges you need and I said what inner diameter
you're not familiar with terms like inner diameter and aspect ratio
I would say go ahead and that google those terms there's a lot of different
information out there explaining the whole mathematics system of chain maille
but for this video I really wanna concentrate on the weave itself
so you're gonna need a series of open rings
and close rings
the open ones are just open jump rings. Open them the same way you
would with any other jump ring
and for the purpose of this video I used two colors, so hopefully you'll be able
to see how this works a little bit better
I have a scrap piece of wire handy. This was a head pin from a
project that did not work out
and I've got two pliers and you want to use pliers that you're comfortable with because it
is a bit of work to do
so let's begin
for the byzantine weave it's really helpful if you think of it in terms of
pairs of two
so I'm gonna take
two of my gold rings and again I'm just using two colors for the purpose of the
video
and I'm going to take an open
silver ring
and I'm going to put it
through the two closed jump rings
and then I'm just going to close it up
and since we want to think in terms of pairs we need another open jump ring
to repeat the exact same process as the other one
go through those two close rings
close it back up
so now we have two sets
of two
so I want to add a third set. Take a open jump ring
go through
the two jump rings that I just attached
close it. You want to try to close your rings as carefully as possible so
that you don't nick the finish. Also you want them to be lined up and closed
It'll help if you
when you're going further along on this weave if everything was neat and
tidy
this one here needs a pair so keep the same process
go through the two rings I just attached
so now
fold this
we have got
three sets of two, two, two
and two
so now's the first time we really need to go ahead
and start to do the weave
so what I want you to
fold down
the last two that you just attached so they almost form a V
going in the downward direction
I'm going to take an open jump ring
This is the hardest part of the entire process just getting
this first one on
so be patient you might have to redo it a couple times
go between
the two
rings that were the middle section
and then we wanna latch on
to one of the folded down rings
and latch it onto the second folded down ring. This can be a
bit tricky to begin with
Do what ever you need to do to get this first one on there
so we split the top, the middle, what were the middle two
and then the folded down ones we latched onto their top parts
close this back up
repeat the same process because we're thinking in terms of pairs
this one needs a match and it's going to be much easier
latch that one on
remember how I said you needed a scrap piece of wire
flip your chain maille over so I was holding it like this,
this was the direction I was going from
flip it over
and basically just gonna mark where my end is because if I was to drop this
right now
I would have no clue
which end I was working from
all right so let's go back to where we were working
it's not looking like a lot right now. It's hard to see what's happening
we're starting to form a little bit of a pattern
so what we need to do now is we need to recreate what we started with
when we have those three sets of two
the easiest way to do that is to take an open jump ring
latched onto it to already closed jump rings
and latch those
onto the top two
that you just placed
close that up
it needs a pair, so take another
open jump ring
go through all four of those rings
close it up
this is what we've got so far
so now we're gonna repeat that next step where we took the two top rings and we
folded them down so they'd be in a V shape pointing downwards
and then we're gonna take an open jump ring
split
the two that are at top so we can go between them
latch on
the top part of these two rings
facing downward in a V shape
this can be tricky. It does go a lot faster
the more you do it
there we go
close that one up and we're gonna attach it's matching pair
I noticed that I didn't quite get this one closed all the way
you can see how it's starting to build a really pretty pattern
take an open jump ring
link on to it two closed jump rings
and then we will link back through the tops of the two rings that we've just
attached, so now you've got four on there
close that up
and repeat
we want to just make sure it has a matching pair cause it's always working
in twos
go through all four
and close it up
and let's look at what we've got so far
you can see how it's building
I'm going to do a little bit more here so that you can see the process
and then you'll just keep doing it for whatever length you want if you're making a
necklace or a bracelet
so we've got
the three sets of two, set of two,
two and two
now we have to fold
the top two down to form a V
take an open jump ring
take an open jump ring
go through, we want to split those top ones
and we want to latch on
the top
of the two rings which are folded down in the V shape
Add a second one
here's how it's looking
Add two more sets of two so that we have those three sets of tw
take an open jump ring
link onto it
two close jump rings
link that to two the one you just attached. You have four on there
close it on up
take another open one
link it through all four
and close it
and one more time with that
folding down to form the V shape
so that you can see that process one more time
and we're going to
fold that down
so it forms a V
take an open jump ring
split that top one
go between it
and latch on to
the top
of the two that are folded down
and close it
add it's matching pair
close that one as well
You can really see the pattern taking hold now
It's really pretty from all different directions. You just keep doing that and
the more you go, like I said, It'll get a little bit easier
it'll go a little bit faster, you'll figure out what angle that works best for you to
try to link
those jump rings together
and then eventually
you will end up
with something like this
which is a really pretty piece of jewelry and you can make it
into a necklace or a bracelet or even earrings whatever you
want it to do
it's quite nice. It's very flexible
it's all done just by interlocking jump rings
by using the byzantine chain maille weave