How do we make a chain mail suit of armor from soda tabs?

September 28, 2021 8:43 AM

We drink a lot of cans of Bubly^TM sparkling water in our house. A lot. A case or two a day, and we have since the start of the pandemic. Bubly cans come with colorful little pull tabs with friendly greetings on them. We've saved all of ours, thousands of them in various colors. Kiddo wants us to make a chain mail suit of armor from these tabs for Halloween. How do we go about this? (Additional pertinent info in "more.")

We know about the technique for splitting the collar side open and threading them into the post side hole on adjacent tabs. However, Bubly tabs do not have a collar side hole. Instead they have that flat area with the greeting on it. So that won't work.

We could hand sew them, either to each other or onto a shirt/pants, but that seems like it would be extremely tedious. I guess we could also sort of string them in rows to fine fishing line and then sew those rows to garments, here and there to secure them.

I was thinking about getting one of those guns used to attach tags to garments, with the shortest possible plastic strand length. Is that feasible? Anyone done anything like that?

Crafty people, I'd love to hear your ideas.

posted by DirtyOldTown to Grab Bag (24 answers total)

Response by poster: Dang, I always forget something. We are away that securing them only on side will likely make this jingly jangly. Our kid seems to like the idea of jingly jangly for this. That should not be an issue.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:48 AM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

There is a technique that uses wire to put the tabs together; you could see if this might be suitable for you.

https://www.instructables.com/Wired-PopPullSoda-Tab-ChainMaille/
posted by Jade Dragon at 8:49 AM on September 28, 2021

Response by poster: Unfortunately, that one also seems to depend on there being two holes in each tab, which Bubly tabs do not have.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:59 AM on September 28, 2021

What about crocheting them together? I think it could work with just one hole.
posted by XtineHutch at 9:08 AM on September 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

I think your idea of knotting them on strings and then attaching the strings in layers is probably the easiest method; it will jangle nicely and look fine for Halloween, and you can always just do the front and wear a cloak or something if he gets bored before finishing a whole tunic. It will stretch and pull apart after a while though.

If he wants something more permanent, I'd say get or make a sturdy, non-stretchy pullover out of corderoy or something, and just settle down to stitching them in by hand, one by one, and accept that it will take time, but be pretty awesome in the end. Valuable life lesson.
posted by The otter lady at 9:09 AM on September 28, 2021 [4 favorites]

You could split the other end and clamp them onto a (very cheap) sweater, at whatever density makes it look scale-like.
posted by tchemgrrl at 9:10 AM on September 28, 2021

Bubble wrap with a bubbly tab through each air pouch. Small, medium and large size air pockets for a custom fit. Reversed air packs with a silver tint or transparent. This would put a layer of protection between the metal and your loved so it can safely be worn. Also, they can share the inspirational tidings with their patrons.
posted by effluvia at 9:18 AM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

Scale mail is a thing, it's what you're describing with the sewing-on of the tabs. Scale mail tends to use much larger 'scales' though. Sewing them on a shirt wouldn't be more tedious than turning them into chain mail though.

You could mix your tabs with regular ring chain mail - if you use the small hole which attaches to the can, add two wire rings to it one on the left and one on the right, you should be able to integrate it into a regular chainmail weave. (caveat: I'm no chainmail expert)
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:20 AM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think you're on the right path with stringing them into strands and layering the strands. I'd use something like carpet thread though, fishing line is pretty annoying to work with. Maybe figure out a few basic lengths you'll need (upper/lower arm diameter, 1/2 chest diameter), and make batches of them while watching movies/listening to music. Secure every few tabs to the base garment with needle/thread, et voila. I think a basic precept of this type of work is "this will take time." But splitting work into mindless prep and exciting final assembly has always worked well for me.

Avery does make micro tags but you'd be making a hair shirt, would be *amazingly* uncomfy.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 9:29 AM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

If you're in a hurry, I'd be tempted to get a thrift store vest/coat and use hot glue to attach them, in overlapping, offset rows. If you put a small tab of glue on only on one end, they might even jingle.
posted by eotvos at 9:55 AM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Partially open the 'collar side' flat closed end, making it a flap to preserve the phrases (in a 'hanging chad' fashion). Maybe a mini-hole punch for scrapbooking, if you don't fully depress it, will open the three sides.

Snip the other, fully-open end for threading behind the flap you've created.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:55 AM on September 28, 2021

Yeah gluing them to a strip of cloth or ribbon and then layering them so you can't see the glue would be faster than knots-- line of glue across strap, quick add line of tabs, repeat and then layer when dry. You can use the different colors to make neat patterns!
posted by The otter lady at 10:24 AM on September 28, 2021

You can make "proper" chainmail out of these plus an equal number of jump rings if you want, but fair warning, proper chainmail is a huge amount of work to make. You would select an appropriate wire thickness and ring size and buy light-weight pre-cut aluminum rings from a vendor (example). Then to weave the maille you would follow instructions for making 4-in-1 maille using alternating solid punched rings, where your soda tabs are the solid rings. It will be a bit fiddly because your tabs aren't perfect rings, they have that extra material at one side. And yeah, it will take a lot of work.

The basic concept of making half-solid maille goes back to the middle ages, the idea is that horizontal rows alternate open-solid-open-solid. Look at this image and note how the bright rings are solid, but the darker rings were open (they have been riveted shut, but you won't need to bother with that for costume-grade chainmail).
posted by agentofselection at 10:50 AM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

I make jewelry sized chain mail as a hobby. I think your two best options are scale mail, as suggested above, or Japanese mail.

For scale mail tutorials, The Ring Lord has some good videos. The company also sells mail supplies, including rings and pliers. I source most of my material from them. They are also responsive to questions.

For Japanese mail, this 4-in-1 tutorial has very clear pictures of how to create it. The irregular shape of the pull tabs might make that difficult, though.
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:58 AM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

I don't really have any suggestions but I do want to say this is the best idea I've ever heard in my life, I hope you have loads of fun.
posted by Occula at 12:12 PM on September 28, 2021 [6 favorites]

Two things, to address issues with various methods folks mentioned above.

1. If you choose a method where it would help to have a second tiny hole in each tab, behold the bottle-cap punch. I just bought one for a different project involving many years' worth of saved bottle caps.

2. For anything where you would have to hand-clamp hundreds of rings, consider getting tiny split rings in bulk. That's my go-to approach, because it's both easier and I feel like more secure (since jump rings can pull apart easily if they don't overlap at all). In terms of size, 12 mm ones are easier to work with; my link is for 8 mm ones, because I bought that size for a recent jewelry project. But you can easily get this type of jewelry finding in bulk on Etsy, either way.
posted by limeonaire at 1:55 PM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Here's more info on using split rings for chain mail, if you do choose to go that route.
posted by limeonaire at 2:07 PM on September 28, 2021

I would expect sewing them onto a garment with a single stitch each to be easier than knotting them onto string with anything like even spacing. Place a tab, up through the hole, down over the top of the hole, pretty soon you'll be able to come up through the next hole in the same stitch.

Athos' baldric was only ornamented in front, iirc, and yours can be too.
posted by clew at 2:17 PM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]

The way that came to my mind was like making a Latch Hook Rug - YouTube and seeing if I could think of a way to latch the tabs on the back of the grid fabric. There's also this thing that we used to do with rope, you make a small loop on one end, put your hand through the loop, grab a bit of the rest of the rope and pull it back through to make another loop (going through the first loop). Then you just continue making a new loop through the previous loop. You could do that with some string, push a loop up through the tab, push a loop up through the next tab, thread that one through the previous loop, and continue on to the next tab . If you do this right, once halloween is over you could just grab the right end of the string and pull the whole thing out and have you tabs back.

I think both of these are also just variations on crochet. You just need some string/yarn and maybe the crochet needle/hook to make things go easier.
posted by zengargoyle at 5:06 PM on September 28, 2021

There's a thing called a Speedy Stitcher that's basically a big sewing machine needle on a handle. Most of the YouTube demos are on heavy canvas or leather but it would work just as well to stitch them onto on a thinner material garment. I think that pushing the needle/loops from the back side, sliding your tab over the awl needle and running your “bobbin” thread through the loop to secure the tabs on the front side might be easiest.
posted by brachiopod at 8:11 PM on September 28, 2021

Any chance it would work to staple them to a base made of cloth? You'd need to find staples that would go over the wider place at the opposite side of the tag with the word on it. And you'd need to work on a hard surface that would not accept the staples - something like stone or metal that you wouldn't damage by scratching it with the points of the staples.

My first instinct would definitely be to use a staple gun on a stiff kind of fabric. A big and mean enough staple would also go through the flimsy metal of the tab which would mean you wouldn't need to be quite as accurate when stapling as off by three millimetres placing the staple wouldn't matter.

I would also get chainmail-look fabric to use for sections that would be difficult to cover, such as the armpits - a grey knit fabric that shows the knit would work for this, as would a shimmering metallic.

To save trouble only do the shoulders, front and arms of the chainmail and also provide your kiddo with a dramatic cloak that could be pushed back off the shoulders as a cape to reveal the mail in all its iridescent glory.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:13 AM on September 29, 2021

Response by poster: So this came out pretty rad.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:47 PM on October 30, 2021 [4 favorites]

I was just thinking of this today! Don’t leave us in suspense—what was the winning technique?
posted by tchemgrrl at 1:52 PM on October 30, 2021

Response by poster: Went old school. Comrade Doll sewed them on by hand, one by one. I made the accessories by hot gluing box parts and tabs to various things: an old Wolverine mask with the ears cut off, a piece of wood cut in the shape of a sword, etc.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:54 PM on October 30, 2021 [1 favorite]