On July 21, 2003, David made a simple European 4 in 1 pouch. He wrote this article to share his experience. To make a pouch very similar to the one David made, you will need 651 1/4", .063" rings, and about 31 3/16" rings of the same wire thickness. However, you can use all 1/4" rings and the pouch will still be good. You will also need some string or leather lacing and a toggle-like device which will open and close the pouch.
The article that follows is divided into easy to follow steps, so grab your pliers and rings, and let's get started!
Firstly, David made a small sheet of European 4 in 1 that is 15 rows wide by 31 columns long.
Next he sewed up the sides to make a continuous sheet.
Now was the time to start forming this sheet of chainmail into a pouch. So David did a row using some contractions. One ring would go through 3, the next two would each go through 2, and the next through 3, until the row was complete.
Unfortunately David did not plan this pouch too well mathematically. When you get to the end of the row, so you will have one spot where the rings go through 3, then 2, then 3. This row contains 23 rings.
On the next row, David simply used a 3-2-3-2-etc. algorithm, where every other ring was a contraction ring. Again, at the end of this row, there is an inconsistent spot where the pattern goes 3-2-3-3-2-3. This row contains 15 rings. The coffee mug shows this in detail:
Every ring on the row that is next added is a contraction ring except one. There are 8 rings in this row.
The next ring to be added finishes off the bottom. It goes through all 8 rings in the previous row. It is the most challenging ring to close.
What you now have is this:
David wasn't satisfied with the height of the pouch, so he added four more rows of 31 rings each to the top.
The next row is one of 3/16" rings. David decided copper would add a nice touch to the pouch, so that is the metal he used.
On the next row, David used 1/4" copper rings and skipped every other connection that would otherwise be present in a European 4 in 1 row. This helps the pouch to be pulled closed without there being too much of a hole in the top.
Next David fed a strand of leather lacing through each of the rings in the last row, and used a pull cord toggle which was to act as the pouch opening/closing device.
Now the pouch is complete.
This article explained how to create a simple European 4 in 1 pouch. You can make the pouch for which this article was written a different size by increasing the size of the sheet that is made in step 1. If you do this however, you might need to add a few more contraction rows in the bottom of the pouch. It will take a small amount of experimentation to get it right.