We offer two types of kits; weave kits and project kits. Weave kits each teach a particular chain weave and are divided into three tiers of relative difficulty; Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced. Project kits teach variations of those weaves and require that you already know the weave a given variation is based upon. Project kits are also divided into three tiers; Apprentice (which requires that you know one or more Beginning Weaves), Journeyman (which requires that you know one or more Intermediate Weaves), and Master (which requires that you know one or more Advanced Weaves).

The short informational segments below will probably answer any questions you have, but if not, scroll down past them to find our kit structure explained in detail.

Note: We're in the midst of an extensive upgrade of all our instruction books and other printed materials. Details on this process can be found on About Our Instructions.

Beginning Weave Kits

If you've never made chain before, this is the place to start. These kits require no prior experience or weave knowledge and are designed to be easy even if you've never made jewelry before. The individual Weave Kits do not include the two pair of jewelers' pliers you'll need, but the Set of 3 Beginning Weaves Kit includes everything, even the pliers of your choice.

All of our Weave Kits feature spiral wire bound instruction books that lay flat for your convenience. All of our Beginning Weave Kits include a complimentary Ring Tool.

Apprentice Project Kits

Each of our Apprentice Project Kits requires knowledge of one or more of the chain weaves taught with our Beginning Weave Kits. You'll find the required weave(s) listed within each Project Kit's description.

Project Kit instruction booklets are thoroughly illustrated with photos and beautifully realistic 3D renderings. Unlike Weave Kit instruction books, they are not spiral wire bound and Project Kits include no tools. Project Kit prices are commensurately lower as a result of these differences.

Intermediate Weave Kits

Our Intermediate Weave Kits are more complex than our Beginning Weave Kits and are best attempted by those with some chain making experience. However, they do not require particular prior knowledge other than the skill to close rings seamlessly.

Intermediate Weave Kits each include a complimentary Rocket Tool.

Journeyman Project Kits

Journeyman Project Kits are like Apprentice Project Kits in that they require prior weave knowledge except that the knowledge they require is of one of more of the chain weaves taught with our Intermediate Weave Kits. You'll find the required weave(s) listed in each kit's information.

Additional kits will be added to this category in the future.

Advanced Weave Kits

We classify a weave as Advanced, not because it requires particular prior knowledge, but because of the amount of patience, coordination or finesse required to learn and master it. Those attributes tend to come only with experience.

Additional kits belonging in this category are currently in development.

Master Project Kits

Our Master Project Kits are currently under development in imagineering.

A great deal of thought and planning went into the design of our tiered learning structure. Although most people prefer just a brief overview of the way things work before getting to the shopping, those of us who are detail oriented want more information. If that describes you, this is your part of the page. *s*

First, consider jumping over to read our FAQ (frequently asked questions), if you haven't already. It answers a lot of questions you might be currently pondering and the information on the rest of this page more logically follows the FAQ than precedes it. Afterward, hit the back button on your browser or click Kits in the right menu to return here.

When I set out to create our structure, I knew it had to accomplish several things, all at the same time. First and foremost, the instructions had to be crystal clear. Not everyone learns in the same way, yet everyone's needs must be met. If you wonder how that turned out, just notice how many of the glowing reviews of our kits are by people who mention they previously had trouble learning from written material. *s*

Secondly, in order to be cost effective, our kit structure had to be clean and efficient so that no one is ever in the position of paying for the same thing twice. This is the reason that we have weave kits and project kits. Many, many projects can be made from a single weave, but including the instructions for that weave with each and every project means that a person might have to pay for the same instructions three or four times, despite needing them only once. That's clearly not the best way to go.

Instead, we chose to separate the weave from all the many things that could be made with the weave. That way no one ever pays for anything they don't need. If you need to learn how to weave byzantine, no problem, we have a weave kit that teaches it. But if you want to make our watch and you already know how to weave byzantine, that's no problem either because the watch kit doesn't teach you byzantine; rather it teaches something really cool you can do with byzantine once you know it.

A purist could spend a great deal of time tracing the antecedents of each family of chain weaves, trying to determine which came first in order to decide which should become the weave kit and which should be considered variations. That's fine if you're an historian, but it completely misses the point if your mission is excellence in teaching. My choice for the weave kit is whichever form of the chain is the most difficult. By doing it that way, our finest resources, in the form of the detailed spiral wire bound books, are used to learn the most difficult and complex form of the weave. That makes all the variations easy by comparison and therefore perfect for our project kits with their little color booklet instructions. Again, our focus is on making our kits cost effective and efficient.

There was one other condition I required of our kits; they had to be beautiful in every way. Just touching handmade chain is a sensual experience. It feels silken and slinky, it flows like fabric... cool, precious metal fabric. There's nothing like it. As I see it, Urban Maille's market is people like me; people who love chain as much as I do, people who can't just look dispassionately at those perfect, gleaming rings but have to touch them, run their fingers through them, people who are fascinated and enamoured of everything about chainmaille woven of precious metals, the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it scatters the light. If touching chainmaille is a sensual experience, making it should be more so. That means everything involved must be beautiful, a pleasure both to gaze upon and to touch, from the packaging to the tools. It means the rings must be shining perfection, the components lovely and of the highest quality, and no detail overlooked. It means doing everything right and never cutting corners to save a few cents. There's nothing ordinary about it, but it's the way we do business at Urban Maille.

We hope you enjoy our standard of service as much as we enjoy trying to exceed it.

More than a pattern....

"Why would I want to spend big bucks for your kits when I can learn the same weaves from free tutorials using cheap aluminum rings I can buy for $5 a pound?"

You might not want to. *s* Our kits definitely aren't for everyone and whether they're right for you depends on your current situation and your priorities. Twenty years ago, I had quite a bit of free time but not much money and I couldn't have afforded these kits no matter how much I'd have wanted them. Had I been trying to learn to make maille at that time, I'd have had little choice but to use free tutorials, cheap rings and a lot of time spent in trial and error to get it right. There's nothing wrong with going that route if you need to or you want to and there are plenty of places to find tutorials and cheap rings.

By the time I was trying to learn to make maille, my situation and priorities had changed considerably from twenty years ago. My priority was to acquire the skills I needed for my budding jewelry business and my situation was such that I was willing and able to make an investment to acquire those skills rapidly. I needed to save time more than I needed to save money but there was no option available for trading a bit of money to save a lot of time and grief because Urban Maille didn't yet exist.

That is the function we now fulfill. Most of our customers are jewelry designers who invest in our kits in order to acquire a lot of skill in a short amount of time, just as they might take classes or serve an apprenticeship to acquire new skills. Although some people buy a kit in order to make that one project for themselves or a gift and, in doing so, end up with a lovely piece of handmade sterling jewelry at considerably less than it would cost to buy something similar in a jewelry store -- assuming such a thing is even available in a store -- most of our customers are designers investing in their businesses by rapidly acquiring solid new skills. They are buying the finest quality sterling rings and really good, clear instructions, but they're also buying all those invaluable bits of knowledge that come from years of chainmaking experience, thereby saving themselves the years of trial and error necessary to acquire that knowledge on their own.

By the time I design a kit for a particular weave, I've woven countless feet of that chain in so many sizes and combinations of sizes that I know every pitfall it can present and every tip and trick that makes it easier or faster. The instructions aren't put together in a day or two, they're written and rewritten over weeks or months, honed to crystal clarity, then tested and retested on inexperienced innocents to make sure they're crystal clear. Each kit includes everything I've learned in untold hours spent on just that one weave as well as the tools I've hunted down or developed myself to make it easier to learn and easier to weave. The end result is that, when you buy one of our kits, you don't just learn how to make a bracelet; you learn everything you need to know in order to use that weave to best effect in countless pieces of original and highly profitable jewelry for the rest of your life.

So our kits aren't cheap and they aren't for everyone, but you get what you pay for... and then some. *s*