This is the current “chainmail” tab armor – a piece I started almost a decade ago. The armor was originally 8 in 1 ChainTab, but this was conceived as a stronger, though less flexible ver.
- Difficulty: 2/5 – Not that hard at all but requires prep time of cut tabs and 2-chains.
- Flexibility: 3/5 – Tends to get less flexible the larger it gets, but still fairly moveable.
- Tabs per sq. ft: ~1,250
1. First start off with ChainTab prep – you’re going to need quite a lot of tabs. Then arrange about half of your tabs into 2-ChainTab using the length of the chain as your swatch size, and number of chains as half the width.
2. Now notice the arrangement of tabs as they alternate you’re going to add tabs to only tabs facing the same way.
3. Now add 2 tabs back to back to each part of the tab. Making sure the cut side goes on the uncut and vice versa.
4. Continue this for the rest of the chain – making sure it’s every other tab. You’ll want to do this for all chains except the final one.
5. Now we connect the “connector” tabs to the other chain – as you may have noticed to do this you had to flip the chain in order to have uncut only connect to cut sides.
6. Continue on down the line making sure connections match up.
7. Finally go outwards with your swatch’s width. This is considered 10 in 1 Hole TabChain. This is a lot more flexible but obviously it is incomplete as full chainmail.
8. So then we begin the process of filling it in. You basically add a connector in-between the connectors. Making sure in this step that the top side has the shiny side of the tab.
9. And add the other side so the shiny side faces you. This way the 2 tabs “bad sides” face each other.
10. Then it’s just continuing this out filling in all the holes, and you’re done. To connect swatches to one another simply put a 2 chain between them (or step 3-4 connection depending on how it connects) and fill in as necessary.
