Today I have another sample I made for the A&S competition project I’ll blog about soon. This time I gave spool knitting with wire a try.
It’s possible that instead of the looping done by the Trichinopoly technique, that some of the extant Viking Age finds typically called Trichinopoly are actually made by spool knitting. Since I’ve never done spool knitting before, I thought I’d give it a try and compare the results.
First off, since it was a first attempt, I am sure that there’s a great deal of technique that could be improved upon. Nonetheless I wanted to try the technique, not master it for my sample, so I am not terribly concerned about the little flaws in the finished result.
“Knitting” the chain on the jig was very challenging, and in fact the chain is the length it is because my wires broke as I was trying to work with them. All the same I likely wouldn’t have “knit” up much more than this anyways.
The finished length when I was done working with the wire (24 gauge coloured copper wire) was 14 cm long, and about as wide as most of the Viking Knit I have made up on my normal dowel.
The chain before the draw plate was very ugly – lumpy and oddly shaped.

The spool-knit wire, after going through the largest hole in my draw plate (approx 9 mm diameter) is 22 cm long
Once through the draw plate though, the chain improved significantly.
I pulled it through the largest hole in my draw plate, (approx. 9 mm diameter) and the resulting chain is 22 cm long. The chain has it’s flaws, as a result of the new technique for me I’m sure more than anything else, but other than that, the resulting chain looks very similar to my finished Trichinopoly chain.
Stay tuned… I’ll have at least one more sample post for you, before the “big reveal” of my A&S competition work.