DIY Ceramic Rain Chain

I went to Japan. It was fascinating for many reasons, but old architecture left the biggest impression.

When I got home, I wanted to make some sort of rain chain like the ones I’d seen hanging from the massive temple halls down to tiny, beautiful shrines.
But what material to use, and what design?

Whether a mad coincidence or through the alignments of the stars and planets, this happened.

I went to a market and a shop back at home and a shop was selling 2nd-hand Japanese ceramics. They had a set of 20 matching blue bowls and I was instantly sold! So were the bowls.

There’s no reason you need to use blue bowls like me. I just thought they were perfect because blue is a watery colour and the bowls seemed a perfect size (more on that later).

The funny thing is, I couldn’t immediately figure out how to make the thing (there was no way I was going to try drilling holes in the delicate bowls). So the project got delayed, then forgotten.

Three years later I found the bowls in storage and at the same time our rain gutter was repaired. It was time!

Well, here’s how I made mine...

Materials Used Up

*20 blue ceramic bowls

*roughly 10m (30 ft) of galvanized steel wire

Tools and Other Materials

*pliers with wire cutter

*angle grinder with ceramic/glass cutting blade

*electric drill with concrete bit and wood/plastic bit

*PPE (gloves, earplugs, safety goggles, good dust mask)

*piece of paper

*wooden board

*about 20 nails (any size)

*scissors

*pencil

*ruler

*hammer

As I said in the introduction, I had put the bowls away for a couple of years and forgotten about them.

I didn't mention that I already cut the bottoms off! Well, I didn't think about making this an Instructable until later, so that's why I don't have photos.

I simply chose a fairly arbitrary height and used my angle grinder with a thin ceramic-cutting blade to cut the bottom off one bowl. It worked, using a lot of water for lubrication. Oil might be better, but I thought that would be too messy. You can try it.

Each bottom took about 1 minute to cut off. In 20 minutes I had 20 finished bowls. Not bad.

And of course WEAR PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT!!!

Ceramic dust is dangerous to inhale (look up silicosis) so wear a REAL dust mask. Protective eyewear is a must, and gloves will protect your hands from that angle grinder. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

As for the rain chain design, I had about a 2.6m drop from my gutter into the ground below. I figured I needed to space the 20 bowls out over the first 2.4m and leave some 0.2m at the end for some clearance from the ground.

This works out nicely to 0.12m between bowls, so i needed to design some way to space them that far apart.

Enter the wire.

I sure as heck didn't want to drill the bowls, so I thought about it and came up with a way to bend and cross 2 wires so they could hook through the cut off bottoms of a bowl. The idea was to be sort of bell-shaped in profile.

After bending 1 pair of wires by hand and testing them out, I was actually really happy with the design and so it was time for mass-production.

In order to keep the thing looking like a chain with identical (OK, let's say "similar") links, I decided to make a bending mould.

First I traced the profile of the original wire design onto a folded paper. Then I unfolded it and cut it out to get a symmetrical model. I traced this outline onto an old board I had laying around. I then hammered nails around this outline to use to bend wire around.

You'll notice that some bends go around the nails and some don't. It was just trial and error to see the best way to bend a wire. I think I ended up taking out a couple of nails that made things too fiddly.

After things seemed ready, I un-bent 1 of the 2 original wires and pulled it straight(ish) to see how long each wire needed to be. I used a ruler to measure out the first one and cut it, then cut 39 more the same size.

(The dog didn't help - he's so lazy!)

Then it was time for the bending.

This was probably the most boring part of the project. I recommend putting on a good movie or some cool tunes and just working through it at your own pace.

By the way, I used a wire that was not very stiff and that made it easy to bend - but I was worried about the whole project failing. Luckily, it didn't!

It doesn't matter if you heard it from Drake or the Grand Funk Railroad. Either way, it's time to get it together!

This is the hard part, because there's a way to fit the wires together just so. The first bowl is easier - I just squeezed the wires together and stuck them up through the bottom of the bowl. They form a cross, with one under the other. Then I just bent the ends of the wire back pretty firmly against the outside of the bowl. Some were long and I trimmed them later.

So the first bowl is the top bowl.

From there, we're building the chain down. All the following bowls are harder because you have to hook the wires over the bottom of the previous bowl's wires. The also need to cross, so you end up with a cross crossed by a cross.

Easy, right?

It takes a bit of practice, but guess what - you get 20 bowls to perfect your technique on!

SPECIAL NOTE: My bowls are really thin porcelain. I was worried about them breaking or chipping as I made the chain, so I worked over a blanket. I really recommend you do this on a blanket, carpet, or other soft surface so you don't send yourself back to square 1!

So now I had a chain of 20 bowls.

Attaching it to the guttering was easy. I just drilled through the plastic collar for attaching the downspout, threaded 2 crossed wires through the holes AND through the top wire loop for the first bowl, then twisted the ends of the crossed wires so they couldn't come loose.

If you don't have a nice PVC downspout collar to drill through, here's another idea.

Take 2 lengths of strong metal rod or wood and place them over the hole in your gutter's drain, crossed. That should give you a hard point to hang the chain from, which of course you would have to thread through the 2 crossed pieces. Since your chain has 2 loops on a cross, threading 1 of the 2 cross-pieces through each loop will ensure that they can't fold back on themselves.

That's it, you've hung your rain chain from your drain!

Now that the chain is hung, what about the bottom?

I was worried about wind, but really this thing is heavy and full of holes, so even a really strong storm won't make it swing. In other words, you CAN bolt it or otherwise tie it down to the ground, but it's probably not really necessary.

At my place we like to collect and use rainwater for plants, so we put a big ceramic jar at the bottom and just let the chain sit inside of that. It makes a nice sound when the rain is light.

Now for a few Dos and Don'ts...

Do
-get creative. I wanted all the bowls to be the same, but there's really no reason why they have to be. You can use mismatched bowls if you want - it will probably look awesome! Go ahead and copy my design if you want, or you can think of your own way to wire the bowls up.

-clear out the gutter frequently. If you don't leaves can get stuck in the chain and make it look dirty and also cause a lot of splashing. We have bamboo. Lovely plant, but the leaves get everywhere. It's a constant battle, but one must suffer for beauty!

Don't

-hang a ceramic rain chain someplace where it will get banged and collided with as it could break and ruin all your hard work.

-make the same mistake as I made and make your holes too small. I cut off the bottoms of the bowls leaving about 0.05m (2 inch) diameter holes. Well, I live in Thailand where the rainy season isn't joking around. I assumed that if the rain got really hard, the bowls would fill up and the overflow would run smoothly down the outsides of the bowls as well as out the bottoms. Not so much. When it absolutely gushes here, we get a fair amount of splashing. In lighter rain, though, it's perfect. I would make bigger holes if I were to do it again.

Now go on - if I can do it, so can you. I set the bar pretty low by taking about 3 years to complete this project, so no pressure!