Wire Jewelry Tip for August 29th, 2017

New Pliers for Chain Maille

by Marilyn Gardiner

I’ve recently acquired 3 new types of pliers for chainmail and I’d like to give you my thoughts about them. You may want to try them out for yourself.

As I’ve said many times, there is no one pair of pliers that will best accomplish the task of opening and closing rings to perfection.

• Some rings are small, some are middle-sized, and some are quite large.
• Some rings are made with thin wire, and some with very thick wire.
• Rings made from one metal will open and close easily, but rings made from other metals need effort to move the metal.
• Some projects allow for lots of space to manipulate the rings, while others require you to close a ring in very tight quarters. I think you can see that if you plan to try a variety of chain maille projects, you will need to build a collection of pliers: ones with thin, narrow jaws (both short and long), pliers with heavy, wide jaws (both short and long), and pliers with different shapes: flat nose, chain nose, bent nose, tweezer nose, and more.

The new pliers I’ve recently acquired all have short noses. The first is a short, flat nose plier by Xuron, with narrow jaws. It is very useful for opening and closing small to medium sized rings made from wire that is thin to medium diameter, and for working in somewhat tight spaces.

The second pair is a stubby flat nose plier. There is one version by Lindstrom and another by Tronex. I really like these for working with medium to large sized rings and with medium to thick wire.

The third pair is a stubby, angled, flat nose from Lindstrom, and a chisel nose made by Xuron. Both are short and angled, but the first is wide, and the second is narrow

Here are some links for more information:

Lindstrom Stubby Straight Flat Nose Chainmaille Pliers

Lindstrom Stubby Angled Flat Nose Chainmaille Pliers

Xuron 487 Chisel Nose Pliers

Xuron 475 Short Nose Pliers