A hand-made chain is one of those jobs that looks impossible and turns out to be mostly patience. It comes down to two skills: making a great many identical rings, and closing each join so cleanly that the solder has nothing to bridge. Get those right and the rest follows.
It starts with consistent wire
Nearly every fault in a finished chain traces back to the wire. If your gauge wanders, your rings vary, your links sit unevenly, and the whole rope reads as handmade in the wrong way. Pick one gauge and stay with it for the entire piece — 0.8mm round wire is a sensible start for a first chain, heavy enough to handle and to solder without vanishing under the flame. Half-hard or fully annealed both work; annealed wire coils more easily and work-hardens as you go. If you are unsure which gauge suits the weight of chain you have in mind, our wire gauge guide lays out the trade-offs.
Winding and cutting jump rings
Rings begin as a tight coil. Wind your wire around a round mandrel under steady tension, each turn sitting hard against the last, so the coil is even along its whole length. The mandrel diameter plus the wire gauge sets the inside diameter of every ring, which is why a graded set of wire-wrapping mandrels earns its place — it lets you hit a repeatable size instead of guessing.
Cut the coil with a jeweller's saw rather than snips. A saw leaves two flat, flush ends that meet cleanly; side cutters leave a pinched wedge that will never close tight. Run the blade down the length of the coil and the rings drop off one by one, all the same. We walk through the whole process in how to make jump rings at home, and you will find more rods and sizing tools in the mandrels & sizing collection.
Close the join before you solder
Solder fills a seam; it does not span a gap. Before a single ring meets the flame, its two ends must sit flush against each other with no daylight between them. Close each ring by springing the ends slightly past one another and back, so they meet under a little tension and hold themselves shut. Hold the ring steady while you work — split-ring tweezers grip a closed ring without marking it and free up your other hand for the pliers. Two pairs of smooth-jawed pliers from the pliers & cutters range give you the control to close a join truly flat. Run a fingernail across the seam: if it catches, the join is not ready.
A simple round-link chain
The plainest chain is a row of soldered round links. Solder half your rings closed first and set them aside. Then use an open ring to join two closed ones, close it flush, flux it, and solder that single join — a snippet of hard solder and a small, sharp flame is all it takes. Pickle, rinse, and repeat, adding a link at a time.
Keep the heat local and brief. Overworked sterling picks up firestain and the pitting that comes from too long in the flame; soldering sterling without pitting covers heat control in detail. Once you have a run of links, you will notice the rhythm: close, flux, flow, pickle. That rhythm is the whole craft of chain.
The classic loop-in-loop
Loop-in-loop is older than sterling itself, and it turns those same rings into a supple woven rope. Start with rings soldered or fused fully closed — fine silver fuses cleanly, flowing shut at the join without any solder, which is why many makers reach for it here. Take each closed ring and fold it into a narrow oval, pinching it into a long U so its two sides form a pair of eyes at one end.
Now thread the folded end of the next link through those eyes, fold it in turn, and pass the following link through it. Each new loop locks into the two before it, and the rope grows denser and more fluid with every link. Work single loop-in-loop first; once the movement is in your hands you can double or triple the weave for a heavier, rounder chain. The links must be genuinely closed for this — any that spring open will pull through and unravel the run.
Rounding, clasps and the finish
A freshly woven loop-in-loop looks a little rough and sits slightly oval. Draw it. Pulling the chain through progressively smaller holes in a drawplate compresses the weave, rounds the section, and evens out any link that sat proud — this single step is what turns a homemade rope into something that reads as jewellery. Go gently, and step down one hole at a time.
Finish with a clasp. You can buy one or make your own hook and jump rings from the same wire, closing and soldering them exactly as you did the chain. A pair of 3-step wire-wrapping pliers forms neat, repeatable loops for hooks and connecting rings without hunting for the right spot on a tapered jaw. The same skills carry straight over into hooks, clasps and ear wires and earring findings — once you can make a clean ring, you can make almost any finding on the bench.
Every chain starts with an even ring on the right rod — find yours in the mandrels & sizing collection.