How to Clean Stainless Steel Chain Mail (Chainmail)

One of the biggest advantages of using stainless steel rings to make chain mail is that it is easy to clean and polish, as well as being beautiful and durable. How you clean chain mail made of stainless steel depends on what type of object you've made and what, if any, other materials have been working in with the stainless steel rings.

In the case of a stainless steel mail shirt or other large solid piece of mail, throw it in the dishwasher--top rack--and run the dishwasher. The grime will come right off, just like it does off of your cooking utensils.

In the case of jewelry and smaller pieces like butchers' gloves, wash it with a liquid dish soap and baking soda paste, rubbing it between your hands for several seconds before rinsing it off and drying it.

Yet another method of cleaning small pieces is to place them in a home ultrasonic cleaner with the manufacturer's recommended cleaning agent (if any).

If you need to polish scratches out of small pieces of mail as well as clean it, nothing beats a rock tumbler. Simply place the item in the tumbler along with other stainless steel pieces or raw rings or stainless steel shotgun pellets (the tumbler should be about 1/2 to 2/3 full), close the lid, and run the tumbler without water or grit of any kind. Check the progress every hour or two by washing your piece in dish soap and water and drying it--keep tumbling until you get the scratches out and the dirt off. If you wish, you can use a tumbling medium such as baking soda or crushed walnut shells to speed up the cleaning process.

Note that most of these instructions are ONLY for pieces made of solid stainless steel. Other materials woven into the chain mail, such as other metals and beads, probably cannot withstand these cleaning methods and should be removed, in the case of leather laces, or the soap-and-water hand washing or ultrasonic cleaner method should be used.

There are no guarantees that these methods won't damage your chain mail, although I have used them all with success: use your best judgment before trusting your prized piece of mail to any particular cleaning method.