The chain can be a little pricey. The first was from Ace Hardware and was .99 a '. Then we found some similar at Home Depot for .49 a '. Then I found a box of 20' of a little larger chain for $5.69. It worked just as well on the last set we did. I used just about 6' per set. (3 6" lengths on the top of the wood plate, 5 6" to hang tubes from the bottom of the plate, and 2 12" lengths to suspend the clapper and wind catcher) But it depends on the length of the tubes too. Our tubes were 12", 13", 14", 15", & 16". Some of the sets had the holes to string them from drilled way down, maybe 2-3" but the last two sets we did the holes close to the end. I don't know why we did the first ones so far down. Probably because directions we found online said to. I suspect that the reason the commercially produced sets use fishline or nylon cord is that it is so much cheaper to use. BUTTTTTT it is a real pain to string. The chain was so simple. The hardest part was determining the position of 5 tubes. Once we figured it, we put it on a paper template and just did the predrilling through the paper on the wood for the eye hooks. You'll need 12 eye screws and a key chain ring or S hook at the very top to hang it from.
So 3 6" lengths of chain attached together to the ring on one end and to 3 eye screws that are screwed into the 7" top plate. On the bottom of the plate you'll need 5 eye screws evenly placed around the outside about 1/2" in from the edge for the tubes and one in the very center to suspend the clapper. The clapper was about 2 1/2" across with two smaller eye screws in both sides of center. I say smaller because the longer ones wouldn't screw all the way in the 1 X without touching. The wind catcher was made out of some 1/4" oak that I had. But anything would work to catch the wind. I put a couple of coats of poly on the wood.
Any of these measurements could be adjusted depending on the size set you want. The conduit was $4.69 for a 10' length. We used 3/4". So if you wanted to get 2 sets from the 10' length, you'd have to make the tubes shorter, like maybe 9 7/8, 10 7/8, 11 7/8, 12 7/8, & 13 7/8. We cut the conduit with a hand pipe cutter made to cut steel pipe. It could be cut with a hack saw but will leave some sharp little burrs that have to be reamed out. We used a round file to smooth the cut edges so they wouldn't be so sharp.
There is a way to determine certain tones but I didn't care much. It sounded too complicated for me. If you are interested, just Google "make wind chimes" and you'll run across several sets of instructions.
