The Armour Archive

Greetings to you all and thank you for this excellent resource. I've been reading for weeks with a smile and can't believe I never found this forum before.

Long/Short I'm an SCA fighter who recently contracted chainmail fever and I've made several prototypes for a fighting haubergon upper out of 14G 5/16, 16G 1/4, and 14G 3/8, all butted. My designs are tested and work well and I'm ready to start on the final shirt with good material but I've hit a snag. I prefer the tighter weaves of the 14G 5/16 but the material I want (spring stainless steel) makes winding my own rings not worth the cost of just buying them, but my source doesn't carry the spring tempered in 5/16 only 3/8.

I've read that the 3/8 is pretty much the SCA standard but weight aside, does the smaller AR's provide something more than a better look? Authenticity isn't a big issue with me, I just want functional, protective armor and I'd like it to look awesome if I could. Am I nuts even wanting spring tempered? Would 1/4 hard work just fine? Thanks.

Welcome to the Archive.

I ain't the maile expert but I will say most shirts are to heavy for me to wear.
I would use lighter wire and bigger rings myself.

Use a padded gambeson underneath and make the shirt on the big side.
They are so hard to remove if they are tight.

I am sure the maile folks can give better facts and figures.
Have fun and welcome again.

Hal

PS: We like pics.

thunderbolt wrote:Long/Short I'm an SCA fighter who recently contracted chainmail fever and I've made several prototypes for a fighting haubergon upper out of 14G 5/16, 16G 1/4, and 14G 3/8, all butted.

The Big Three of SCA butted-link sizes, a/k/a link stats among the mailling types over on MAIL and The Ring Lord.

[Do] the smaller AR's provide something more than a better look? Authenticity isn't a big issue with me, I just want functional, protective armor and I'd like it to look awesome if I could. Am I nuts even wanting spring tempered? Would 1/4 hard work just fine? Thanks.

Quarter hard or harder would work just fine. Spring temper is helpful, being more resistant, but it can still get the moths. It is not perfect. The Final Solution to ze KettenProblem is riveted mail, 18ga 5/16"ID. 5/8 the weight of 14ga butted of the same link size, because .048" is just shy of five-eighths the wire diameter of .080" for fifteen times the strength even of spring, at the price of four times the man-hours weaving it. (Psst -- a good choice for the second, more damn-that's-hardcore shirt.) A 3/8" link is unusually large for historical mail, whose diameter frequency distribution peaks about 1/4" to 5/16". 16gaSWG@1/4" is pretty near the historical look, with a good link aspect ratio of about 4.2 -- most butted shirts work quite well in an AR range of 4 to 6. And they'll still take maintenance. Butted links in 18ga bend open too easily; you couldn't keep ahead of the maintenance.

Old mailshirt article of mine...

...and the estimable Trevor Barker. The two together should be very helpful -- my article was poor stuff on body tailoring; use Trevor's instead.

Using spring temper stainless allows you to get away with 16ga. 5/16" rings. I get a lot of my custom rings from Jesse at Vodvarka Springs. The Ring Lord's rings and yours are going to be a bit larger than the nominal size. This means that the AR ends up being a bit higher than you'd normally want. The rings I've gotten from Jesse have been within about 0.005" in diameter of the nominal size. He also uses full hard rather than 3/4 hard (which, I believe, is what TRL uses). The only problem with Vodvarka Springs is that they usually have a minimum order (like 25lb. or around there), but you shouldn't have a problem meeting that with enough rings for a shirt.

-Ben

Thanks for the advice. Some great things to think about. I talked to TRL and they said they would run a special batch for me if needed and I'm looking into other sources so I can have pick it seems. That's some sweet chain Ben, how do you weld? Resistance? Next step for me is to learn how to weld.

I said that authenticity wasn't as important to me but I spent sometime in Paris in March and spent a day in the Musee de l'Armee and all their amazing pieces were of small wire, no bigger than maybe 16G, and tightly woven. I was fascinated and wanted to replicate them but found even with my gammby the 16G - 1/4" took no bite out of the rattan. (I know cutting not blunt defense) The 14G seems to work much better, the bruises still show up but I can't remember how they happened. Not very interested in riveted mail yet but would love to eventually weld. I see it as "modern butted."

Anybody wanna tell Thunderbolt their experiences of getting hit in flattened-link mail? Best he hear it firsthand, I think.

That's some sweet chain Ben, how do you weld? Resistance? Next step for me is to learn how to weld.

I use a modified spot welder. I'd say that the next step is to weave more butted first. I made butted maille for several years before jumping to welded, and even then it took about a year of trial and error.

I said that authenticity wasn't as important to me but I spent sometime in Paris in March and spent a day in the Musee de l'Armee and all their amazing pieces were of small wire, no bigger than maybe 16G, and tightly woven. I was fascinated and wanted to replicate them but found even with my gammby the 16G - 1/4" took no bite out of the rattan. (I know cutting not blunt defense) The 14G seems to work much better, the bruises still show up but I can't remember how they happened. Not very interested in riveted mail yet but would love to eventually weld. I see it as "modern butted."

You'll find that most maille wasn't very thick: it didn't need to be (there are exceptions of course). Smaller links were used and they were almost always fastened shut. You're right, maille isn't all that great at absorbing a hit, but that's not what it was intended for and funny shaped bruises weren't the concern. A good gambeson does help quite a bit though. It gives room for the maille to move, allowing the weight to take the blow. Where maille excels in SCA combat is where it has freedom to swing: the groin and the neck. If you don't give it room to move it can't save you from bruises.

-BEn

Honestly, if you want mail for SCA combat, I would get a part time job(or figure out how to earn a lil extra) and save up the money to buy any of the commercially available riveted mild steel products.

Note this is speaking from having been making butted mail for SCA and Larps for 20 years. For Larp the extra weight isn't a major concern and the mail holds up almost indefinetly. But for SCA the weight and repairs just sucks the life out of you.

Flattened, riveted mail is way lighter,
and way more protective(no gambeson required)
than any round wire, butted mail.
And the prices keep coming down.

-Graedwyn

Konstantin the Red wrote:Anybody wanna tell Thunderbolt their experiences of getting hit in flattened-link mail? Best he hear it firsthand, I think.

I am not a big guy and fight in a flat, stainless hauberk from Master Knuut. In some areas it provided protection, not so much across the hips.
If you aren't prepared to get some bruises, this isn't the hobby for you.

Uric

And the best part is you look like a waffle afterwards

Bruises don't bother me much. It's the deep bone shots and tissue pinches I don't like. But the more I get back into fighting (took a 6 year break) the less those happen and the 14G seems to protect very well.

I've always been a DIY'er and while buying a full riveted/welded flat ring shirt isn't repugnant to me, I like the challenge of making it myself and right now my skill level and available materials keep me in round wire. That said, does anyone know where I can get pre-made flatwire rings?

On another question for all you who fight in chain, how heavy is it now and what is too heavy? Just curious.

Vodvarka has 0.09" x something flat wire, but flat wire isn't all that great for butted. Butted rings are basically single coil springs, and good butted maille rings are stiff springs. However, while flat rings are great in radial stiffness (think of how hard it is to coil), flat rings are far easier to bend open or closed. If you can fasten the ring closed, it's better, but the rings I've messed around with wouldn't hold up to much without welding.

-Ben

Um. I flatten the links afterwards -- as raw-links. Coiling round wire is zero trouble once I remember to slant the mandrel for feeding my wire through my hands-free powerwinding feed gizmo, the business end of which is an eyescrew sunk in a bit of scrap wood. The wire needs to feed down the path of least resistance or it will coil over or spaghetti-ball. Not hard to fix; you claw these apart yanking with a pair of pliers, but pretty tedious by about the third time around.

Once my round wire links are cut into a heap of steel Cheerios, I smack 'em with a heavy hammer on an anvil, working in small batches of up to a dozen, that being about as many as the anvil top has room for, sweeping each finished batch into a yoghurt container placed at the heel of the anvil for the purpose. A lot of the flattened links go down the hardy and pritchel holes. A few hits squashes each link nicely, particularly flattening the link ends for overlapping. The other half of the circumference doesn't necessarily need that much attention. Overlapping and final flattening happens next, producing a fairly complete generall flattening of the link.

http://www.mailleartisans.org/gallery/g ... hp?key=900

Image isn't a jpg, so can't figure out how to import it here; just click the link.

Nice winding rig Konstantin. I wind my own coils as well but I like the eyescrew idea, very clever. Going to have to remember that. So you just cold pound your rings flat? No heat or anything? Tons of questions but I'll have to get an anvil first.

Doesn't need heat; just 3-4lb hammer. I've a 3-lb, but think I could go heavier and need fewer swats per link. A lighter hammer will do it but will take a lot longer because you have to hit the links more times.

Couple tips: don't swing the hammer, choke up on it next to the head, lift and drop like a piledriver. Swinging for these many thousands of hits will just kill your wristbones.

In the second flattening, the final flattening after overlapping, don't push the hammer hard, make the blow controlled. If you try and pound the hammer down fast and hard, your overlaps won't flatten out properly but will tend to go triangular cross sections you couldn't rivet through easily -- a defect I call "double doorstop" for it is like two wedge door stops stacked upon each other slope to slope. The metal needs those few hundredths of a second to spread out nice and flat to a cross section like =. The rest of the link usually receives some more flattening overall as well. A fairly thick wire to start with spreads out pretty wide in the final product.

Heat comes later, to normalize the link for piercing from the workhardening, so you can use piercing drifts to make the holes in the overlaps without busting the noses off those drifts, whether round or screwdriver shaped for round rivets or wedge rivets. Cook 'em red, cool in air.

Here's some pics of what I have so far (sorry for the bad camera):




The belt is part of my old kit and will be redone to keep my kidneys safe but you can get the idea of what I'm shooting for. I'm going to add leather pauldrons to the final kit as well. Almost 6 weeks of fighting in it, 2 practices a week, and no signs of damage at all.

I try and steer people away from using the Bladeturner mail shirt pattern, and towards Trevor Barker's Butted Mail: A Mailmakers' Guide instead, as better tailored and more historical. The BT can give trouble raising your arm above horizontal once the sleeves are in -- which after all is really the point of making a shirt in that shoulder section at all.