TitaniumMithril

i don't do a lot of scale-work, but for chain, i just fill a dish tub with water and a very little amount of soap and dip the piece in and out of the tub for a few minutes. then fill with clean water and dip again (repeat this step if you keep getting more bubbles). i'll then throw it in an old pillow case and put it in the dryer. with anodized scales, you may just want to put it in an old towel and hand tumble it dry so they don't scratch. others may have more experience.

mailleartisans is a very good resource: http://www.mailleartisans.org/weaves/weavearsearch.php

there are many, many posts here about things like this if you want to dig into it, but the basic answer is the same as you'd charge for anything: material cost + (working hours * hourly pay). all you have to decide is how much you want to pay yourself.

blue dawn (or equivalent) dish soap is the standard.

welcome ahilynn, for the shirt, you can use theringlord's calculator here: http://theringlord.com/cart/shopcontent.asp?type=Euro4in1ShirtCalculator i don't have experience making pants, but if you use the above calculator to get a number for a long-sleeve-t-shirt-sized shirt, i'd probably order the same amount more for the pants (so essentially two times what it calculates for the shirt to do both). maybe someone else here can give you a better number on that, though.

perfect! i assumed they were archived somewhere, but forgot about this site. thanks zlosk!

that does have the bladeturner image without any explanation. probably enough for a veteran or if you paired it up with konstantin's tutorial on m.a.i.l.

neither of the original sites seem to be up anymore. has no one cross-posted it to a new site because the information is potentially copywritten, or is it just no one ever thought to snag the info before it went down? if the latter, i have heavily edited versions of both of the patterns (with what i considered "beginner" information removed) i could upload...

you are absolutely correct that you "could just up the ring size as long as i matched the AR for the larger rings." unfortunately that may mean making your own rings or sending asking if theringlord will custom make you some. AR is just "inner diameter":"wire diameter". so if you want your pendant to be 3x bigger than your earrings, you'll probably need 3x bigger rings, or 3/4" and 9/16" ID. to keep the AR at 4.0, you'd need the wire diameter to be 1/4 the ID, or 3/16" (about 6 gauge) and 9/64" (about 9 gauge) respectively. hope you're using aluminum and huge pliers! :-)

if this is for a useful belt (e.g. is keeping your pants up or hanging things from) i would not use anything weaker than ss for 20 gauge rings, unless you can weld them. what do you mean by "no longer available"? afaik, 20ga 5/32" ti is still available in saw cut. were you trying to get the machine cut that got phased out last year? if the saw cut is really out of stock too, you could switch the ring and do ss for the small rings and aluminum (or whatever) for the bigger links, but that would still not be super strong...

that would make more sense, but electromagnetic fields are not the same thing as radiation pollution in any stretch of the imagination.

i don't even know where to start with this.... but no, 20 gauge aluminum butted rings in any weave are not sturdy enough for any use beyond holding their own weight. maybe what you're looking for is a pressurized room with 1 foot thick cement floor, walls, and ceiling lined with lead sheeting. or a tinfoil hat.

yeah, the trick is to reduce the image size to a point where it still has all the detail you want without adding any "transition" pixels that add colors you can't get. you can use photoshop and choose a specific palate of colors that it can use. just get your digital artist housemate to do it! ;-)

how big is the original digital image? the one you posted is only 346x960 or 332,160 pixels/links. if it really is "a few million" and you're using 16 ga 1/4" links - that's at least $32,100, and unless you're working on it 40 hours a week, i think your estimation of 4 years is wildly optimistic. if it is really "only" about 330,000 links then you'd "only" be looking at about $3500 and 4 years might be more realistic, working a couple hours/day.

don't despair - it's not terribly hard to open up vertical lines in the shirt to add expansions. in fact, you'd probably do it a few times even if it was in your plans to begin with as it is difficult to judge exactly where each should be. the shoulder blades, waist, hips, etc. are all going to sit in slightly different places with each link size, material, and person.