How to Make A Copper Rain Chain

I had seen rain chains before so I ask my husband if he could make one to hang from our house's gutter.

They were originally from Japan. Japan has had them for 100's of years. Their used in Japanese gardens and down gutters.

You can now buy gutters that have rain chains attached to them. Their prettier than the old downspout.

I always keep a rain barrel under the gutter on the deck and add a few gold fish to it. The gold fish help keep the mosquitoes from breeding in the water. Actually it's just a big plastic pot from Walmart. We bring our fish in the house in the winter and put them in a big jar. The cats love seeing the fish come in. It gives the cats something to do just keeping an eye on the fish.

Rain Chains are expensive to buy but cheap to make.

I come up with the ideas and my husband carries them through for me.

You can make your rain chain any size you want. Below is the size we made ours.

Here are the items you will need.

¼ inch soft copper tubing

Fine copper wire (optional)

Flower frog. (optional)

One small piece of 2 inch PVC pipe

Pair of wirer cutters

Figure out the length you need from roof to the top of your barrel. We bought 25 ft. it comes in all different lengths.

Bend Copper tubing around a PVC pipe. Cut the copper tubing for circles’ and bend each circle together. Wrap thin copper wire around each and cut with wirer cutters. Their strong enough once bent. He tried solder copper together but it didn't work. The last picture shows where he tried the solder.

The picture below shows where he made a hook out of the tubing. The hook is for your gutter. Stick it through the gutter hole and then add the chain to it.

We added a flower frog to ours you don’t have to do that.

We love ours. Friends and family who come over are always trying to get my husband to make them one. He says when he gets done with all my projects he will make some for other people.

They are also very pretty in the winter when the ice comes down them.

You can make rain chains out of just about anything.

The lady on YouTube made her's out of teacups. I had the teacup video on here but I was getting a message of broken link. I don't know why the link was working when I checked it. You can find the video on YouTube. I finally gave up and just took it off.

You can have your rain chain come down into anything you want. Rocks are always pretty. How about an old rusted wheelbarrow. We had underground downspouts that ran into our pond. You could also have a rain chain run into a pond. If your doing it just for pretty designs this kind of thing will work. If your doing it to save rain water than you would need a barrel to collect in.

If you go on YouTube you will see many ideas. If you don't want to make one you can buy them. They run right around $100.00.

How to Make A Copper Rain Chain