Any crafty people or metal workers?

[Aggie_Ama]

For my bike bathroom I would like to use an old chain to make the towel ring for the hand towel. Anyone have any ideas how to make it stiff and stay in a circle? Some sort of glue or maybe wire?

[alpinerabbit]

You could have it welded stiff, or welded onto a metal ring.
Or how about attaching it to, or using an old chainring with a largish opening?

[CycleTherapy]

a fairly stiff gauge wire, woven through the links sounds like it would work.

[badgercat]

Cool idea! I'm assuming you'll degrease the old chain... unless you really want to give guests in your bathroom the full cycling experience.

a fairly stiff gauge wire, woven through the links sounds like it would work.

+1

Or, if you had some kind of rigid ring the shape/size you wanted, you could thread wire (or probably even something thinner, like fishing line?) through the "back" side of the chain, around the ring, through the next gap in the chain, so on and so forth, all the way around. Does that make sense? It might be a little trickier to make it look good, what with a ring AND wire going on, but if you had something rigid behind it, there would be less chance of accidentally bending your towel ring out of shape... although some kinks would just give it more character, right?

Or as alpinerabbit mentioned, if you have the means to get it welded that might be a good option too.

[wolfak]

At your hardware store, there should be a product called locktite, and there are formulae for ceramics, metals, etc. It's like crazy glue. I would think wiring your chain to your form, then locktite-ing the links could make a potentially awesome form, and then you could remove the form and wire, and minimize towel damage.