Making Chain maille is fun, however cutting chain maille jewelry jump rings by hand can be quite frustrating. Many rings will be out of shape and will not close correctly. Fortunately there are now some chain maille cutters in the market that attach to a number of power tools and allow you to cut very precise jump rings.
Two of these cutters are the Jump Ring Standard Cutter and the Koil Kutter. Both cutters come with saw blade and holder, coil holder, and blade guide/guard. The coil holder has four grooves and is designed to hold jump ring coils of different diameters. The jump ringer is all metal construction and is designed to fit a jewelers flex shaft only. It must be equipped with a No.30 hand piece and a motor that will run at 20,000 rpm. A Dremel flex shaft is not powerful enough to operate this system.
I use a Foredom flex shaft which works very well with this cutter. A Dremel or Proxxon hand piece is required to run the Koil Kutter. The blade guide on this cutter is made from poly pipe.
Wire diameters from 30 gauge down to 12 gauge can be cut by these saws. Coils should first be wound on a coil winder which is a drill chuck mounted on a bracket and has a small handle to wind the wire onto the coil mandrel. These can usually be obtained from the cutter suppliers.
Cut All Coils On Wood Dowels. Insert wooden dowels inside the coil to prevent the coil collapsing during cutting. Bamboo skewers from the supermarket work well. You may need to use a few skewers in each coil.
Liberally rub coil with a high quality stick lubricant such as “Cut Lube”, this is most important to prolong blade life. Place coil in coil holder, gently tighten slotted plate and place saw blade in slot, run tool at high speed and quickly move the guide along the coil holder until the cut is finished. Cut coil in one pass only, do not go back.
Turn off power and remove blade from slot, never try to place blade in slot nor remove while the motor is running. Remove coil and slide a piece of wire into the coil and slide the cut rings along the dowel and onto the wire, easier than chasing rings everywhere.
The rings should be neatly cut with very few burrs. For the best results tighten the wire and tumble the rings in a rotary tumbler such as a Lortone. This will not only polish the rings but remove many of the burrs. Tumblers are great for finishing your chain maille jewelry as they will give the completed jewelry item a very high polish. Apart from speed and ease of use, the major advantage of these cutters is the production of quality rings that will all close neatly and retain their shape.
