The Armour Archive

Ok so I would really want to construct some chainmail for re-enactment combat I am based in the UK so it will be with blunted metal swords spears and axe's not to forget that the arrows will be using birding blunts. What thinkness wire should I use?

All the tutorials I have come across say 16 American Wire Gauge now converted in to metric thats 1.6mm however that seems a little thin on the thin side but then Im not sure about 2mm as that might be a little thick, anyone who has made some chain could you let me know what size wire you used and if your based in the UK where I could get some online kinda cheap. So far I have found 321m for about £31.

Are you riviting or just butting? (or welding, brazing, etc)

Thomas

I have sold a few pieces to USA reinactors 2mm wire with an ID of 9.5mm
To be honest you might be better off investing in some rivited chainmail from Pakistan.

no riveting just yet I'm going to hopefully do that one day but at the moment it will just the ring mail. I was thinking of trying to get the inner diameter around about 6mm as I was told be another re-enactor who also makes chain that this would be more comfortable when all put together and being worn then a bigger ID ring because its better load dispersion?

I do not plan on using this first shirt on the field but I will most likely be using it down at the training nights though.

For that size ring diamiter you will probibly want to use 1.6mm wire.
The smaller wire/ring size makes for a bit more labor but a lighter hauburk with better flex and a denser weave.
about 2.5lbs per square foot or 2988 rings per square foot.

Thankyou all for your help now I just hope my local DIY store has 1.6mm steel wire and a 6mm metal dowel.

Welcome and well come -- again -- to the Archive, Sneblot. May your stay with us be long and profit you much!

If you're smacking it with rebated steel at any force level you might prefer mechanically fastened links, i.e., riveted. 1.6mm is actually pretty heavy gauge for riveted, historical-modeled mail. More typical wire diameter is 1.2mm or so -- again, riveted. 1.2mm wouldn't stand up well without rivets. Your diameter/gauge conversion was actually correct for Standard Wire Gauge, rather than American Wire Gauge, which is a system for electrical, nonferrous wire, and it gauges out skinnier.* Standard is for steel wire -- that isn't music wire, anyway... oy. Simpler to stick with actual wire diameter, really.

Rather than "dowel," which is wooden, I'd ask the clerk for "rod stock/round stock." Even, I think, in the UK.

Which group are you going with? There are several reenactor/steel groups in the UK.

Uh, "ring mail"?? Search the site on that term for our consensus about "ring mail." If you're trying for living-history level authenticity, that phrase will be among the first to go by the board, believe me.

*SWG diameters can be fairly well matched with AWG wires sized two gauge numbers lower, e.g., 16 gauge SWG steel wire can be pretty closely matched with 14 gauge AWG.

hi,
which part of the country are you in?

I was thinking I will go with 1.5mm as its the closest I could find to 1.5mm. So I'm going to order that and get a 6mm metal rod from somewhere. As my local DIY shop was not well stocked at all. I mean it looks well stocked but when I got in there I found that it was mainly hover bags and house hold supplys. Yet it says DIY/Hardware on the shop sign damn it.

I'm hoping to join the Dogs of War, there is another group but at the moment the name escapes me, but I need to build some plate armour first. I already train with a local Viking re-enactment group named the Lathrals. They are part of the Vikings Society.

You may want to do some investigating here also:

http://www.mailleartisans.org/

Sneblot wrote:I mean it looks well stocked but when I got in there I found that it was mainly hover bags and house hold supplys. Yet it says DIY/Hardware on the shop sign damn it.

I'm glad to see this is a global epidemic, and not a local trend. The rest of the world can suffer with me.

Thanks for all the help guys and gals hope to get you some pictures Im going to start a blog to fund my armour making hopfully so you can check it out there. However its not the bog in my sig thats my design blog I have as I am a product design student. Just in case any one went on it and was like hey this isn't to do with armour he lied liar. or something like that. But once I have the blog I will change the link.

When curling your own rings over a rod you might consider going to 5 or 5.5 mm rod for the spring as thee is some tension in it. My 6mm rings ended up more 6.5mm with a 5 mm rod. I did 1.0mm wire for gauntlets, but also tried 1.8mm. The latter wire was mucht too thick for 6mm ID, it was nearly a plate, no space in between, would be great for a standard, though.

Cheers for the heads up Carnifex- I'll keep that in mind Im going to buy some 1.5 mm now actually right after I have posted this message. Its 200m in length I hope thats long enough.

Ok just brought some standard steel wire from farm care uk 1.5mm diameter length 200m for £15.98 including P&P just if people are wanting to find some cheap wire and your based in the UK. Hope I can put this here thought it might be able to help some people out. If I shouldn't of then feel free to remove my post.

To make a shirt you are likely looking more at 1000m-1500m by the time the last link is closed. Depends on if you have a haburgeon or a hauberk in mind, and how much of a sleeve, and if there's an integral coif.

I never went by length, but by weight: about 25 pounds of wire, so 12 kilos or so for a 117cm chest size.

How much springback you get depends entirely on how stiff your steel wire actually is. Black annealed rebar tie-wire is soft like lead. It's poor stuff for butted links, but quite the bee's knees in 1.5mm for riveted 7mm and larger. (6mm is a bit tight, which will produce a dense weave.) Galvanized may come stiffer, through having been worked in the wire drawing but left unannealed. It varies, though. Don't rivet galvanized without stripping away the zinc chemically, as riveted mail needs to get heated to red at one or two points in its manufacture.

Aerospace metals can give rather astonishing results, and not necessarily convenient ones either: titanium wire is plenty expensive (really!) and workhardens faster and more thoroughly than aluminum in the mere coiling. It springs back so much that to hit your desired link diameter you have to coil around an undersized mandrel. It's bizarre stuff to work.

DIY no good? Time to attack your Yellow Pages, or whatever color the business listings are in the UK. You are looking for shops that either supply steel or weld steel, for whatever purpose. These people will have rod stock. A secondary less direct inquiry will be with any shop that sells welding supplies to the trade. They are likely to know where the people who buy their acetylene and their MIG welder feed-wire get the steel stock that they weld things together from.

Yes, MIG wire can be used for mail making, but watch out for its tendency to snap if bent too sharply. It's made stiff and springy, comes in numerous alloys both low- to medium-carbon and stainless, and with some properly done fiddling, can be an excellent bulk feedstock for wire.

The go-to guy for a historical shirt pattern is the estimable Trevor Barker: Butted Mail: A Mailmakers' Guide

What we mostly do on our side of the pond is to find someplace like a lumberyard which sells wire in bulk to people who buy it in real quantity -- generally it's sold by weight. Another place to look is any place that supplies fence-building materials. For wire fences or fences with wire in them, they too sell in bulk.

You will find many references on-site to Price's plate armor book: Techniques Of Medieval Armour Reproduction: the Fourteenth Century. When, or before, you want to seriously hammer on some metal, get your copy of TOMAR, read it, follow it. The first thing an armor pounder needs is knowledge, and there's more of that packed between those two covers than anything cheaper anywhere else, by anyone else.

The Dogs Of War -- they don't seem to do guests; you have to sign on to read. It needs the "the," or else you get an online gaming site... that features a very nice pic of Carrie Fisher and her stunt double in their Princess Leia brass bikinis, catching some sun during a break in filming ROTJ. Fanboys, alert!
http://www.dowuk.co.uk/news.php

Vikings Society -- these guys? http://www.vikingsonline.org.uk/

Lathrals wasn't yielding any web presence.

The wire is meant for fence so it should work fine I hope I am kinda expecting it to have alittle bit a spring back thats why Im going for a 5.5mm rod just to take up the slack. I do have the book in question and I will be referring to it during most if not all of the construction of this mail.

Yer sorry about that I meant to add 'The' to the groups name but I kinda drop that for some reason. It is that group Im not suprised they don't have a website I should really bang something together. Humm me smells a weekend project.

Hey there Sneblot! Welcome to the forums!
Mind if I ask where abouts you're from in the UK? If you're anywhere near myself (North-East England), I'll be happy to lend you my advice, my tools and my workshop, limited though they may be. If not, I'm sure some other armourers will be able to offer assistance.

A little bone to pick though, before I leave you in peace, be careful of your use of the phrases 'chain mail' and 'Ring mail'. Ring mail is a completely different type of armour, chain mail is a Victorian bastardisation of the word 'maille' or 'mail'. Most people here won't mind you calling it chain mail, but, since you're joining a living history group, I'd suggest you start calling it maille quickly before you get laughed at.

If the local DIY shop you're refering to is B&Q, watch their prices and goods. My first pieces were made from B&Q galvanised 14ga wire, they weighed a ton, there was barely any flex, and my wallet dropped about the same weight as my armour gained! As some people here already suggested, buy in bulk. Lots of wire means lots of projects, spare links, or play things. Smaller quantities just cost lots.

Good luck in the armouring world!
- Qwertypolk

Hey Qwertypolk I'm live in Nottingham so I'm not sure how close you are but thank you for your very kind offer. I have purchased my wire from an online store which only sold up to 200m of the stuff for about 16 quid all in but from now on I will follow yours and others advice and buy in bulk. I will also start calling it maille in future so I am not laughed at

You live around 2 hours car journey from me, I'm just north of Hull, near Bridlington. My offer stands if you're able to get yourself here.

If you're making maille, I have a mandrel available, and I'm sure that, together, we could knock up some tools for riveting the links, if it takes your fancy.
In terms of plate armour manufacture, I've got just about every tool I could want, save a raising stake.

Edit: Unless you count experience as a tool.. then I'm sorely lacking

I personally always write it mail, finding "maille" neither English nor French, but something wet between them. An elderly Englysshe spellynge is maile.

Googling a term would be another matter, of course.

Thanks Konstantin, I'd always assumed maille was the French spelling, though I can see why that may also be a modern bastardisation, to get around the post mail. Will do some research into that later!

Mod. Fr. mailles, pronounced about like "my-yuh." Cote-de-mailles, brayette-de-mailles, étandarde-de-mailles [?], etcetera. Never found out what the French term for a voider is.

Qwertypolk thank you for your most generous offer I might take you up on that in the future I'm planning on making some plate for myself soon but I lack anything to hit metal against so I will defiantly take you up on your offer in the near future. As for the term maille I have looked it up abit and it seems that it stands for 'to knit' in french but it originates from the latin word macula which means 'mesh of net'. Not sure if this helps.

Oh yes; that is well known. Network to knitting to mail -- the progression makes some sort of sense. See also Dark Ages kennings such as "war-knittings," as in a sword called "ruin of war-knittings," and the non-knitting imagery such as "coat of kings."

"Byrnie," now primarily used among armor students for a short, vestlike mail shirt, sleeveless or nearly so, and nothing else, seems to have originally simply meant "armor," as a B-R-N root for armor can be discerned in languages all across northern Europe -- and a long way back down the centuries, too.

"Hauberk" may be of later derivation, again a word pretty widely distributed across northern Europe wherever Germanic-group tongues were spoken, viz., Old German heals-beorg which meant "neck guard/protection." Make of that one what you can; it still gives me pause for a head-scratch. Necks? This passed down through among others the Normans who brought it to English as haubert, hauberc and a few centuries later when mail was retreating as plate grew there came also its French diminutive hauberjon.

So one arrives at the generi-shirt, the "haburgeon." Mid thigh, short sleeves, latter fourteenth, and perhaps constructed a little more lightly all over than the full-dress 13th-c. hauberk might have been.

But from the fifteenth century, we still have complete mailshirts, now looking a bit like a wooly-pully: shorter at the waist but long sleeved. These may have seen knightly use under earlier-fifteenth plate but were also entirely practical as infantry protection all on its own. And armored infantry were getting more and more common.

Interesting how the terminology was so literal. Nowadays we see the names as names, and nothing else.

Konstantin the Red wrote:"Byrnie," now primarily used among armor students for a short, vestlike mail shirt, sleeveless or nearly so, and nothing else, seems to have originally simply meant "armor," as a B-R-N root for armor can be discerned in languages all across northern Europe

I think the Russian bronya also comes from the same root.

Qwertypolk wrote:Interesting how the terminology was so literal.

It wasn't. Now it is to make it easier for classification. In the past, terms were very interchangable and spelling was optional.

'Byrine' meaning armour, I'd call that literal, no?

Becareful with your wire.
Usualy the smaller diamiter spools work well but lately the local farm shop started carrying high tensile wire for horses and other big animals its not a good option for chainmail the coil was about 60cm across. The regular stuff is about 30cm or so.

Usualy when you get to the end the tail can whip around a bit.
depending on how you have your rooling mechanizim setup haveing you hand caught in the coil can be quite bad.
I would also advise using safty glasses when cutting If your cutter break apart the bits can fly around and metal in your eyes can be unpleasant.
another question is how are you going to cut the rings from your coil?

Aye, the best way around the whipping is to ensure you use a manual mandrel

l l
l--------l----l
l______l -

If you can make sense of that, that's how it goes. You effectively have a U of wood, a long bottom and two sides, drill a hole in the two sides and put a piece of bar stock through the hole. Bend the bar stock to make a turning handle at one side, and drill a hole on the bar, just inside the U. Put your wire in the hole, and turn the handle while holding the wire. Et voila, a manual mandrel.

Avoid thick wire, I made the mistake of using 14ga as I said earlier, it's heavy, it moves like crap, and it's hard to cut with anything but a hacksaw (not to mention trying to bend them with pliers...)

I'll try to get a picture of my rather simple mandrel later today for you.

A major tip though, as losthelm said, wear safety glasses! Even though with a manual mandrel whipping is unlikely, it's still possible, it's still possible when cutting the links, it's still possible when weaving the links. Beware of freak accidents! Safety first, as they say!


Edit: Bugger, HTML code keeps messing with the formatting of my bad attempt at a mandrel. Ignore it for now, I'll get a picture later!

I am using a pair of mole grips and a thick piano string to wind the wire around now I have go hold of the wire itself I don't think I'am going to use it for a full shirt as its not very good stuff to soft. So I'am going to make a laptop case out of it and then get some more on a larger order of possibly welding wire as I have read that you can use that and also Konstantin has mentioned it in this thread.

Sorry it took so long, was a little busy.

Here (Amongst other things) is a picture of my mandrel. It's rather basic, probably as basic as you can get, but it works fine.

It's as simple as putting the wire through the hole in the bar and turning the handle to make springs, then cutting the springs to make links. The body of the mandrel is simply three pieces of chipboard screwed together. Doesn't matter too much that the base is uneven, as it goes in a vice to secure it while I make springs.

And for those of you who dabble in plate armour, yup, that is my dishing stump it's all stood on

Dan Howard wrote:I think the Russian bronya also comes from the same root.

It does. (I speak Russian, though none too well any more.)