How to Make a European 4-in-1 Chain Maille Bracelet

	Artistic Wire, Chain Maille Jump Rings, 20 Ga / ID 3.57mm / 140pc, Tarnish Resistant Gold Tone Brass SKU: FMC-2353 $4.65
	Beadalon Beading Mats - Prevent Bead Rolling 12 x 9 Inch (Set of 3) SKU: XTL-9930 $3.99
	Xuron Jeweler's Super Fine Pliers Chain Nose Flat Nose SKU: XTL-5450 $25.99
	Wubbers Classic Series Bent Chain Nose Quality Jeweller's Pliers SKU: XTL-0036 $29.99
	The Beadsmith Jeweller's Micro Pliers Chain Nose Flat Nose SKU: XTL-5511 $8.45
	The Beadsmith Bent Fine Point Tweezers For Bead And Pearl Knotting SKU: XTL-4001 $4.99
	Slide Tube Clasps, Two Rings Strands 16.5mm, Silver Plated (4 Pieces) SKU: FCL-5500 $5.99

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi. This is Julie at Beadaholique.com. I'm going to show you how to do a European 4-in-1 chain maille. Here's the bracelet we're going to be doing today. You can see I've actually added some decorative little stardust sparkle silver plated beads to add a little bit of a decorative element to it. Before we begin this bracelet I want to show you a couple of other examples of european 4-in-1. All of these are the same exact stitch just done with the different gauge jump ring and also a different color. So it shows you've got a variety of what you can do with the european 4-in-1. You can make it as wide or as thin as you like. But for this video here we're going to be making this brass one right here. Artistic wire puts out these books Basics of Chain Maille a and Advanced Chain Maille. They have great instructions on how to do various weaves with pictures that show you exactly what to do. These can be very handy and they're coordinated too to the artistic wire chain maille jump rings which are the jump rings we're gonna be using. You can see on the back of these jump rings they have some weaves for you to choose from. Before we begin I want to go ahead and show you how to read the package. For this particular project we're going to be using a brass jump ring. If you're just starting out with chain maille I do suggest you start with a less expensive metal such as brass instead of sterling silver just until you get the hang of it. I'm going to start with a twenty gauge jump ring. It's a little bit easier than eighteen gauge just for the opening and closing in the workability. You'll be a little bit happier with how it goes to begin with until you get used to it. You'll notice on the package that it says ID 9/64 of an inch. ID stands for inner diameter. That is the diameter of the interior space of the jump ring which is 3.75 millimeters and there's a hundred forty pieces in this bag. When your doing chain maille you're gonna see the term aspect ratio come up quite a bit. Aspect ratio is a ratio which you can get to by taking the inner diameter of the ring and dividing it by the wire diameter. If you go to the Beadaholique.com website and you look under techniques and guides there's actually a wire gauge chart which shows wire diameter. That's important because when you're getting into more complicated weaves it's going to ask you for specific wire diameters to let you know if you can actually do a particularly weave with a particular jump ring. Sometimes a jump ring can actually just be too tiny to link all the different rings together that you need. So if you flip over an Artistic Wire jump ring pack you're gonna see it eight different weaves on all the packages. This is really handy because they actually tell you which jump ring you're gonna need. You'll notice that the byzantine here says if you're doing a twenty gauge you need 7/64 of an inch, if you're doing eighteen gauge you need 9/64 of an inch. Then more importantly as well if you're actually going to do a weave that has multiple size jump rings it actually going to give you both of the jump rings you're going to need. So it's really handy. It take some of the guess work out of it for you. So you're gonna wanna gather your jump rings. It's going to take packs to do this particular project which has a two hundred and twenty jump rings. You're going to need some tools. You're going to need several pairs of pliers. You're going to want to find which ones you're most comfortable with. I have a couple pairs of chain nose pliers here. I also have a pair of bent nose pliers. Whatever is most comfortable for you for opening jump rings and holding on to them. epperson I personally like to use a pair of chain nose pliers when i work. So that's what I'm going to be using here. I've actually gone ahead and I've opened up a bunch of jump rings and I also closed some jump rings as well. When you get you jump rings in the package itself they're gonna look like this. It's really hard to tell but they're just slightly open. They're not totally open and they're not totally closed. So you're going to want to either open them fully or close some completely. You're also going to need a pair of tweezer. These are not necessary. I just find it helpful to have them. I'm also going to recommend that you have a spare piece of scrap wire. I'll show you what to do with that in just a moment. So let's begin and what you're going to want to do is you take one open jump ring link onto it four closed ones. I looked at my pattern ahead of time and I saw that I was going to need approximately two-thirds of my jump rings to be closed and about one third to be open. So I went ahead and I did that ahead of time. So after you've linked four closed jump rings onto an open one go ahead and close the jump ring. Now what I want to do is I want to lay this down flat. Here's where your tweezers are going to come in handy. When making chain mail it's really important that the orientation of how the links are lined up this proper. So I don't want this link to be kinked like that. I want this laying flat. You see how the front ones are actually overlapping the back ones. For the european 4-in-1 it's important that you keep that in that orientation. So again you don't want it going like that you want it laying so that they're overlapping. So once I got that laid out I'm going to take another open jump ring and link onto it two more closed jump rings. I'm going to go under that bottom right one and under the top right one making sure I'm keeping them in the same orientation that they were in. Now I'm going to close that jump ring. Now I want to lay this back out agin and make sure that all of mine is straight. You won't need to work on the mat for a huge length of time. It just helps when you're first starting. Once you get this going you're gonna be able to forgo the mat and you'll be able to hold it in your fingers. So again notice how the front ones are overlapping and resting on top of the ones behind them. I'm going to do the same thing again. Take an open jump ring. Link on two closed jump rings. Now that I've got these on my open ring I'm going to very carefully lift up my stitching holding it in place. I've pressed it down on with my fingers so it doesn't go anywhere. Go under that bottom one on the right then under the top right one pull it through and close that jump ring. What I want to do at this point, you can see that I have my two original ones hanging there. I'm going to take that piece of wire scrap wire and I'm going to thread it through those two and take it around and kink it. I'm just going to twist it a little. Basically this is going to be discarded later but it's just holding your place. Letting you know if I was to drop this right now it would let me know where I started and where I ended. So kind of good to have that. So now we're at the point where we can just hold our chain maille in our hand and so we're just gonna keep repeating the process of picking up an open jump ring linking onto it two closed jump rings and then you can go under. You can work from either side. If it's easier for you to start with the top right one go under it and then under the bottom right one or do what we were doing before where you go under the bottom right one and then under the top right one. Because of how they're laid out it's not going to manner. You wanna keep double checking when you have this that you've got the top ones laying on top of the ones behind. That's what you want to keep having going on. So this is what we've got so far. Now what you're going to do is go ahead and continue with that exact same step until you get to the desired length of the bracelet. We've got our length now completed of our first row of our European 4-in-1. I actually just measured this against my wrist to see if it was a length that I wanted. You can use a ruler as well. Seven and a half to eight inches is a standard size for a bracelet. So I'm going to lay it back down on my beading mat. To begin our second row go ahead and take off that wire at the end. Don't throw it away you're gonna go ahead and use it again in a few minutes. Make sure all your jump rings are facing in the right direction. I'm going to pick up an open jump ring. We're going to link to it to two closed jump rings. We're going to take this and we are gonna go under the first one and under the second one pull it through take another pairs of pliers and close your jump ring. Pick up another opened jump ring and this time we're only going to link onto it one closed jump ring. Link this through that second jump ring which we linked onto that open jump ring before and pull it through so that's fully linked under. Now the second closed jump ring in your top row, the bottom of your top row, link under that and also third jump ring. It can be a little tricky making sure that your looking at the right jump rings and close that jump ring. I can pick this up at this point. You can see I'm creating that second row. It is always easier once you can actually pick your chain maille. But sometimes you have to work with on the mat to begin with. So we're gonna pick up an open jump ring linked to it a closed jump ring go through that hoop on your very bottom row up through the two adjacent jump rings above it. We're going to close that jump ring. Again pick up an open jump ring link to it a closed jump ring where you have that ring which is just kinda hanging there go ahead put the jump ring through it go under the jump ring in the row above it and pull through and then you want to also go under the jump ring next to it and close that jump ring. So I'll show you how this is looking at this point. You can see your creating that second row. What I'd like to do too is I like to go back and put my wire through my end. It's a little easier to tell on this one where you started and where you stopped. It's kind of nice to be able to mark it. So your going to continue all the way along the length of your bracelet until you get the other end. After you've completed your second row of chain maille take a clasp. I've chosen a tube clasp. They're actually very handy for chain maille just because of how they have multiple rings on the side. We're going to attach one to each end. So the way were you do this is we're going to identify you've got three jump rings on the edge and I want to take the two outer ones. So I'm not going to worry about that middle one. I'm going to take the outer one and I'm going to open that back up. Be careful of the orientation of the jump ring on how it's kinked when you put your clasp on. So you don't want to put the clasp for instance this way you want to make sure you put it on like such. Close that jump ring back up. I'm going to do that to the other jump ring on the end. Close the jump ring. Remember the way that this clasp works. So it's gonna be this part here fitting into there. So when you take this side of the clasp. You you put it over here. You wanna make sure it's all lined up properly. Now we're going to attach it to those two exterior jump rings, not the middle one. So we have our bracelet complete and you have a choice right now. For the particular pattern I've chosen I want to add these decorative stardust embellishments or you can just leave the bracelet like this. It's totally up to you. So we're going to add our decorative embellishment to the middle row. The way we're gonna do this is we're going to take our chain maille and we are going to pick the jump ring that we want to put the bead on. We're going to find the opening to that jump ring. Open the jump ring being very very very careful to not to let go and not drop this. Go ahead and slide that bead on there close the jump ring back up and now you have a bead on your chain maille. So you can do it at even intervals. You can get them all on one side. However you wanna do it. So I'm going to skip a jump ring and I'm going to do it on the next one. So go ahead and continue to add beads for the length of your bracelet or however you wish to arrange them. Here is your complete European 4-in-1 chain maille bracelet with decorative embellishments on it. 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