To be very honest, given the survivorship bias I find any speculations over lenght of the sleeves sort of amusing. Namely, when taking into consideration the economy, behavioral, social an cultural aspects of the given area in given century. To the Gammertingen burial, Vogt (2006) says "kapuzenartig...

Very impressive, Jorge! On the piercing topic: what has been working for me well: making the piercing tip irregular in its cross-shape. In other words, never round perfectly, but something between elipse and square as I'm sharpening them with sharpening stone anyway. That intentional cross-section i...

Latest progress: ID ~6mm, wire ~1mm.

The steel is the weakest one I can buy in form of wire commercially, with carbon up to 0.03%. Closest US standard I guess is SAE 1006. In fact it's hard yet too much for me, so annealing required.

The rivets are cut by tongs or chisel from 0.8mm wire.

I made some progress on round rivets and punched rings too: one side: http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/7156/s6302538kh7.th.jpg another side: http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/3640/s6302539jh7.th.jpg What's great that whole hauberk ~AD 1100 would weight some 9kg if made from these rings... but har...

Really nice links, Julio. Compared to those in MRS Journal vol. 1 - Wallace collection), they look pretty close! Here are some pics of my today's session. Rings are freely flattened by two heavy hammers (one in static position, 2nd hitting 1st one). Drifting tool is using same modified nippers as pr...

Thank you very much, Konstantin - now I know I'm using drift . Basically from your description it looks like I took the same approach: hammer and/or piece of steel with drilled hole to hold the piercing drift. Only difference is masonry nails vs. pyramid (better say, rectangle) sharpened drilling bi...

J.Junco, Konstantin - can you please post picture(s) of your punching tool(s)? Over the weekend I attempted to convert my process to wedge rivets, using sharpened 2 mm HSS drill bit; however results are - umm - questionable. I got only some 20% success rate for making right hole and link waste is si...

The Vaclav mail shirt is made from both solid and riveted iron links. They have an ID of 5-6mm and are made from 0.75mm wire. The mantle is made from the same type of links as the shirt, but also has riveted links made of solid gold incorporated into it. Erik, have you examinated this mail? I must ...

I just hit links with a heavy hammer -- about 1,5 kilo -- to flatten them between the hammer and an anvil. I flatten cut links, overlap them, then flatten the overlaps more to finish flattening the entire link. Konstantin, so in other words, you cut then overlap. Do you have any pics related to thi...

Vladimir wrote:I don't have an oven like the one you describe. Would an ordinary electric oven do the job?

No idea. Perhaps yes, but no guarantee

Cat wrote:Boza, if the wife can't be there, and I AM the wife, how do I get it in the oven?

Umm, well... yes, I got it. Edited.

Vladimir, can you share what drives you to blacken it? Is it to reach natural look (look of drawn wire) or black, sexy and rust-proof layer? If it's #1, here is how I do maintain my byrnies: 1/ take agitator (not sure it's the right term - I mean the machine bricklayers use to prepare mortar). 2/ cl...

Thanks, Boza. I was looking pictures from that mail from years. Do you know more ? How do you mean :D Unfortunatelly only little is written about it, although this mail is shown at Prague Castle as part of permanent exhibition, examination or even making photos is not permitted (one of the most val...

Thanks, Konstantin. Actually, this is something I noted during my reading through an available web sources - almost all articles are about a) rings flattened at its all size, b) wedge-riveted. I can understand the a) as it makes it stronger against draw; and there are real examples available too. Bu...

Some pics of flattening: Pre-flattening pliers - modified standard concretors’ nippers with 2 bolts M5 size. http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/591/placataky3ez5.th.jpg Put the ring in... http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/8924/preflattenring1zj3.th.jpg Gently press... http://img150.imageshack.us/...

Could you post a pic of your punch? Punch is just 10 mm lenght of broken and sharpened HSS drill bit 0.9 mm. Then I have pliers where co-axial hole is drilled through both jaws. So I hold the ring in jaws, put the punching bit in and hit by hammer. Key here is to have punching bit sharpened , I'm u...

Why copper rivets? :oops: Well, I would like to see how you proceed, especially the flattening part. Thanks Oh, sorry for not explaining that before: reason is that at the moment I'm out of time to modify the punching tool for handling another diameter - and only wire I have with 0.9 mm is copper o...

Hi, first I do apologize if posting to wrong thread, search of this board has returned to me around 6 threads on "riveted maille" so I have choose the fresh one. Second, I would like to share some pictures of round riveted rings I did recently: [img]http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/8766/zelezne1mm...