Thread: Making your own chains.

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I don't really care for the plastic chains and metal ones are too heavy and also expensive. So i tried an experiment last night and cut 3 links out of plywood. After rounding the edges, I split one link and inserted the other two then glued it back together. The result came out fairly good and once painted should look really nice. Now I have to see about building a couple jigs to help mass produce the links quickly vs. having to cut each one out by hand. These were made from 3/4" plywood. The links are 2 3/8" by 3 1/2" each. Will also have to try making links from 1/2" and even 1/4" plywood to see if I can make smaller linked chains.

That's a great idea! Thanks for sharing that.

Love, love, LOVE that idea Pod... they look great, and eliminate the cons of both plastic and metal. Great work!!

looks great. How long did it take to make the three links?

Wow looks good! When I first saw the picture it looked like those wooden letter "O's" that can be bought at an arts and crafts store. I wounder if buying a lot of those wooded letters would work too!

What do you think is the cost breakdown for each chain ring factoring in plywood costs, tools, and time?

The test links look great, but I can only imagine how time consuming that must be.

If you go thinner, say 1/2" or 1/4" you might want to try wood planks rather than plywood. I would worry that thinner plywood might be too fragile

But the heavy 3/4" looks fantastic!! really well done and nicely finished.

Originally Posted by voodoo willy

How long did it take to make the three links?

Took less than 1/2 hr but that was mostly all prep work (setting up tools, measuring and drawing the patterns of each link on the wood, etc.). Actual cutting time I would guess was about 6-8 minutes to drill, cut, router and assemble all 3 links.

Originally Posted by Eyegor

What do you think is the cost breakdown for each chain ring factoring in plywood costs, tools, and time?

Calculating out the dimensions I used, comes to 494 links per sheet of plywood or approx. 83' of assembled chain. Tools I used to make this prototype are just the basic drill with a 7/8" drill bit, jig saw, and a router with 1/4" round over bit. I'm thinking that by making some jigs, I could use a rotozip and a trace bit to quickly cut the hole and the links. Much faster and the links will all be identical. Will have to play with it more.

Originally Posted by TK421

If you go thinner, say 1/2" or 1/4" you might want to try wood planks rather than plywood. I would worry that thinner plywood might be too fragile.

Actually plywood is stronger than wood planks as you have grains going in different directions bound together by glue. Single piece of wood, you'll have easier breakage along the grain.

Thanks for you comments, I'll work on putting a turtorial together on this along with the measurements and pictures (maybe tonight if the rugrats aren't too needy). Otherwise it'll have to wait until the weekend......

Wow! the chain looks great, i would have never thought of doing chain out of wood. My son just used chain for his costume last year and we used the black plastic chain, very easy and inexpensive.

Originally Posted by The Pod

Actually plywood is stronger than wood planks as you have grains going in different directions bound together by glue. Single piece of wood, you'll have easier breakage along the grain.

I'm smackin' the side of my head. You're absolutely right.

I bow to your wisdom. The wood chain looks great.

hit the construction scrap piles and you could find enough scrap 3/4" to make a lot.