What I made here is what is known as a few things. In its appearance it could be mistaken for a Gunter's chain by some one who knows what they're looking at. This sort of chain is more-so a Ramsden chain.

Each link is a foot long and each of those aluminum tags represents 10 feet. Each 10 feet the tag takes on a shape to correspond with the number of feet it is away from the person holding either end. The middle tag is a circle and shows as 50 feet.

This chain is a surveyors chain. It is used to measure distance from hither and yon. The first time I heard of such a measuring tool was from a book written by Eric Sloane called Our Vanishing Landscape. Page 32 mentions the Fence-viewer's job and I shall type an excerpt word-for-word.
"The fence-viewer also had his deputies and assistants, two of which carried a Gunter's Chain for measuring acreage and fence mileage. A Gunter's Chain is a linked measuring-device sixty-six feet long, including handles on both ends. It was invented in 1620 by Edmund Gunter, an English mathematician: all road and land measurements since his day were shown on maps in "chains" or divisions of the chain."

Quite an interesting thing, really, but I myself didn't really want to have my links be 7.92 inches long. I went with Ramsden chain since it was 100 feet. The handles of my chain do not add into the actual length, only the chain itself.

This thing was a pain in the rear to make and I had only just finished the actual chain itself at the start of this month. The whole time after I was fumbling around with how I would make the handles and here they are. They are good swivels and as ugly as can be.
The chain itself was made from a bunch of friggen coat hangers a buddy of mine gave me from his job. The box was absolutely stuffed with wire coat hangers and I've been trying to use them for stuff.