Maille Forçat chain in 18k gold

Link chains are a jewelry classic, often worn by men in general, giving a masculine style to 18k gold necklaces even when they are thin.

They are in great demand for making gold necklaces and bracelets. Although they are classic in design, they can be easily customized by choosing the size of the links and the length of the chain, so as to adapt them to everyone.

This type of network is relatively easy to produce, given the simplicity of the network shapes. forced .

However, the work of making a chain manually will always remain laborious, since you will have to make the links one by one, assemble them, weld them, polish them, etc.

Here we present the steps to create a link chainCin solid gold it measures 50 centimeters in length and 4 millimeters in width for a total weight of 21 grams in 18 karat gold. Each of the links is 6 millimeters long and 4 millimeters wide.

Link chain forced handcrafted in 18k yellow gold, through our custom gold jewelry creation service

And of course mechanization now offers the possibility of producing these chains at a much lower cost than manual production.

Fortunately, manual production still offers some advantages, namely:

• superior mechanical resistance of the links and chain
• the possibility of creating tailor-made links based on the desired size, the chains produced by machines of standard (small) dimensions and not customizable.

The previous photo clearly shows the oval shape of the chain links. forced.

These chains differ from the dark blue link chains in that the shape of the links is less rectangular and more oval, as shown here.

Comparison of a prison shirt and a navy shirt

Here are some other examples of 18k gold link bracelets for men:

How are they made?

The work begins by creating an 18k yellow gold wire of the right diameter.

This wire is obtained by rolling a small gold bar into a thin, square wire. Its shape is due to the shape of the rolling mill rollers, because we cannot roll a round wire.

Our golden thread is rolled up

This wire is then passed through a die to give it the round shape and the right diameter.

You can clearly see the wire coming out of the mold

We thus obtain a small spool of gold thread of the desired diameter which we can transform into a chain.

Our gold bar became a thin wire of the right diameter to make the convict links of our necklace

The wire is then wrapped around a mandrel that has the desired shape.

We adjust the mesh size with paper wrapped around the mandrel when the mesh size is close to that of the mandrel.

In some cases we are obliged to produce the customized mandrel suited to our needs for the production of the chain link.

We see in the photo our yellow gold wire wrapped on paper surrounding the metal mandrel, made for our needs

The spiral of gold wire is then cut lengthwise and we recover the links of our chain.

Golden net with golden wire spiral made on our spindle

The connections are then assembled and then soldered, each weld tested for strength.

If the weld breaks you have to start over, otherwise it will be tensile resistant.

Each link thus tested therefore allows the resistance of the chain to be maximized at the end.

The chain assembled before making the T closure

The clasp of the necklace is a T-shaped clasp: the T-shaped male part passes through a smaller circle of the T-bar.

An 18k yellow gold wire of the right diameter allows us to cut and shape the elements of the closure

The ring and bar of our closure are in production

The latter is then assembled on our chain via welding.

Link chain forced before finishing polishing

Once the necklace has been polished you can admire the final result:

Zoom in on the chain showing the T-clasp of the gold necklace

To go further: