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Cap'n Atli
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by Cap'n Atli »

I've seen fine mail like that in ladies purses from the 1920s and '30s. I'm under the impression that they were European, rather than American, but I suspect the mail may have been made in the Levant or southwest Asia. I've seen them show up, from time to time, in antique shops. I think Cap'n Ceecy (our skipper from North Dakota) has one; I'll have to ask her if she has further background.
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by Baron Conal »

Ernst wrote:There also appears to be some watershed around the rivet, which is not surprising on a German Bishop's Mantle.
Please elaborate.... I'm reading along trying to learn more.
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by worldantiques »

Baron Conal wrote:
Ernst wrote:There also appears to be some watershed around the rivet, which is not surprising on a German Bishop's Mantle.
Please elaborate.... I'm reading along trying to learn more.

Detailed view of the "watershed" effect on a wedge riveted link. On mail with a wedge shaped rivet the overlap is crimped together creating a peaked detail known as the ’watershed’. Many links in the 15th to 17th century have the watershed detail on the overlap . This detail is only created when wedge shaped rivets are used. By the 1500’s most European mail was made using the structurally superior wedge rivet and watershed detail on the overlap in lieu of the round rivet with a flat overlap.

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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by James Arlen Gillaspie »

I measured a number of the rings, most across the part of the rings without the rivet. It is complicated by the fact that they are usually a bit oblate in shape, not truly round, though I chose rings that were more round than others. These measurements are from the body of the piece, given in inches first and millimeters in parenthesis; .165 (4.19), .174 (4.43), .173 (4.4), .173 (4.41, must be due to +- range of the digital caliper), .167 (4.25), .180 (4.58), .172 (4.36), .174 (4.44), .172 (4.39), .173 (4.4), .172 (4.39). Then I did some across the rivet, .168 (4.28), .172 (4.38), .163 (4.15), .169 (4.31), and a last one across both axes, .168 (4.28) and .166 (4.21). Then I measured some of the thicker links on the top strip; .173 (4.4), .182 (4.63), .179 (4.55), and .184 (4.69). All are a significant bit bigger than 4mm. The ID is very close to .125" (3.19mm). I have tiny wrists.
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by Cap'n Atli »

From our Capt. in Minot, ND, with the micro-mail purse:

"Indeed, I may still have it, if it survived the flood. It should be in my jewelry armoire (how appropriate!). The links are attached to a German silver clasp, and I don't recall whether or not it is riveted, but it is extremely smooth and actually soft. I inherited it from my paternal grandmother, and we saw many similar items in Portabello Road (London) among the antiques and such. The size is an evening bag, perhaps 6"x5", roughly the size of my hand less the final knuckles, not including the thumb. (Bloody good guess, I think.) The clasp is not counted in this estimate."
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Post by James Arlen Gillaspie »

Such purses enjoyed a vogue back in the 20's. I think that AZON may have studied those old machines.
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Post by Mac »

I always take time to look at those mail purses when I see them at antique shops etc., and I own at least one of them. I am pretty sure that I have never seen one that was riveted.

Mac
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Post by Ckanite »

Mac wrote:I always take time to look at those mail purses when I see them at antique shops etc., and I own at least one of them. I am pretty sure that I have never seen one that was riveted.

Mac
Do they complement your eyes? Or are they just that fetching? :twisted: All joking aside Mac, is there any way that you could dig it out and post a few pics of it here for comparison?
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Post by Marshal »

*tsk* "It's a European shoulder bag!" :wink:
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Post by Mac »

A Google search for "mesh purse" will bring up images of them. https://www.google.com/search?q=mesh+pu ... B350%3B480 Some are mail, and others are Whiting and Davis' "Metal Mesh".

I'll post a pic of one from my Cabinet of Curiosities later today. My camera is out in the shop.

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Post by Mac »

Here is the one I could lay hands on. I bought it for a few bucks at a machinist's swap meet a couple of years ago. It was a sort of rescue purchase. I have nicer one that I bought decades ago, but I don't know where it is.

Image

Mac
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Post by Otto von Teich »

That's fine stuff, like a butchers glove...even finer. :shock: Riveting that would be a nightmare! :wink:
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Post by Ckanite »

I wonder if they had a faster was of weaving the lings together... I mean, even if you still had to flatten, pierce and rivet them all together there should be some sort of a faster way to do it. Even more so for links that small...
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Post by Paladin74 »

Wow. What period would maille like that have been prevalent? So I know which period to avoid trying to portray; I'd be too anxious, I'd just have to have it.
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Post by Ernst »

I don't think small rings in the range of 4mm external diameter were ever prevalent, but it was around. Thordeman notes rings that small recovered at Wisby alongside rings as large as 17mm.
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Ckanite wrote:I wonder if they had a faster was of weaving the lings together... I mean, even if you still had to flatten, pierce and rivet them all together there should be some sort of a faster way to do it. Even more so for links that small...
I have no proof that they did this, but Knut's "chaining" method really seems to make mail assembly pretty fast. And I am not by any means in practice. It has the advantage of working well with alternating solid/riveted, or with all riveted and you never have to open a ring, and you can use one pair of pliers. When I was doing it with the modern Indian 9mm flat stuff, I could assemble mail with no pairs of pliers. Another advantage is that it takes the "final assembly/tailoring" and puts it in one person's hand, and you can let someone else do the rest of the process. I know I have mentioned it somewhere before. Teaching it is sort of no fun. It is better learned in person. The basic concept is build a chain where half of the rings are closed and half still un-secured. Then you pop the un-secured ones onto the end of your existing mail, twist, twist and then to it again. 2 rows get added at once. Adding idle rings is just securing the ring to 1 or 3 of the previous row depending on which way you want to go. It works well working "down" or "up" the shirt. I don't like trying it on the ends of sleeves. I don't know if it is possible, or whether I just haven't figured out the twist yet. No biggie since I have had to do it twice in the last 2 decades.

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Post by Keegan Ingrassia »

I like the chaining method. I haven't tried it with riveted mail, though. Wade, with riveted mail being one-way, how difficult would it be to use the chain method and still end up with all the rivets facing the right way? Moreso an issue for wedge than pin riveted, I would guess.
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Post by Mac »

Wade,

Do you know of any online descriptions or tutorials on that "chaining" way of knitting mail? I am intrigued by the idea of not using any pliers. The old guys in the pictures do not have any needle nosed pliers on the bench, let alone in each hand.

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Post by Konstantin the Red »

That fine 20th-century stuff isn't riveted; part of the machine process is welding the links shut. Then I guess they tumble polish the final product.

Mesh purses were quite the rage in the 1920s I think. Somebody probably came up with the machinery about then, such as Whiting & Davis and AZON use today. I don't remember the price of the machines, but they were easily high enough to keep the riffraff out -- 300K or 3M, I forget which. Wire and power go in one side, long linear sheets of stainless or aluminum E4-1 come out the other. The aluminum is strictly fashion and a rather bigger link ID; the stainless is primarily in safety products from ambidextrous butchers' gloves to shark mail.
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by Konstantin the Red »

Mac, flattened links apparently snap nicely together like keyrings, at the overlaps. They don't have to get twisted open nor closed.
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Post by Mac »

I just did a little experiment in this "chaining" thing. It turns out that the rivet direction in the chain spirals around. That is if you hold the chain by one end and the first rivet points North, the next one points East, and the next points South, and the next points West, and so on. Who knew?!

Once you have a chain, you can use the other rings as "handles" to twist rings open or closed as you link it up to what you already have. That does not help, though, when you are making up the chain in the first place. I still need pliers to get them open enough to slip the closed rings on. The matter is complicated further by the punch burr on the inside of the overlap.

Mac
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Post by Mac »

Konstantin the Red wrote:Mac, flattened links apparently snap nicely together like keyrings, at the overlaps. They don't have to get twisted open nor closed.
K,

I'm using round wire, and only the overlaps are flat.

ImageImage

Mac
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Post by Ernst »

The chaining method also doesn't work on demi-riveted. With that, you have to weave strips of three, two rows of solids connected with a row of riveted in the middle.
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by Konstantin the Red »

I don't think the snap-together trick needs complete, all-round flattening -- just a fairish bit, like a quarter of the circumference. If the watersheds are already in, that'd drag some for sure. FMI, are those millimeters on the scale to the right side?

Hmm, with demi-clouée the links being woven on would have to snap over the full thickness of the link, unless the link were of thinner thickness through being beaten generally flatter all around it or punched of thinner sheet to begin with.

There does seem to have been such spread-out mail used if a single museum example I once saw in an exhibit is accurate. The mail itself was in as I recall remarkably good condition and seemed to have been hot-tinned; its riveted closures seemed to have been almost entirely buried in a coating of melted metal.
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Post by Mac »

Konstantin the Red wrote: FMI, are those millimeters on the scale to the right side?
Yes, they are. I guess I cropped the pics too much.

Mac
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by wcallen »

Ernst wrote:The chaining method also doesn't work on demi-riveted. With that, you have to weave strips of three, two rows of solids connected with a row of riveted in the middle.
Sure it does. The last time I did it I built my chain as half "open" -unrivited - and half already riveted. Knut would weld his every-other-one as he was building the chain (so you don't ever have to touch a hot link). So he was definitely chaining with every other link solid, which yields every other row solid. It just happens by accident.

The actual "can be worked without pliers" thing really depends on the links. Usually one pair is nice so you can get leverage to push the things together. I have done it with the flat modern stuff (easy) and almost fully hard round rings (3/8 and 5/16 ID) when I was welding. Strangely enough, a little hardness helps because the rings spring back closed and you don't have all of those dangly edges hanging out trying to let the piece fall apart as you go. Or you could rivet each ring as you put it on. Yuck. Pop a whole row on and hand it off to your rivet guy.

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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by wcallen »

Mac wrote:I just did a little experiment in this "chaining" thing. It turns out that the rivet direction in the chain spirals around. That is if you hold the chain by one end and the first rivet points North, the next one points East, and the next points South, and the next points West, and so on. Who knew?!

Once you have a chain, you can use the other rings as "handles" to twist rings open or closed as you link it up to what you already have. That does not help, though, when you are making up the chain in the first place. I still need pliers to get them open enough to slip the closed rings on. The matter is complicated further by the punch burr on the inside of the overlap.

Mac
The punch burr is an annoyance. I was playing (a long time ago) with round wire for welding so we just had to deal with the cut burrs, or with modern Indian rings and they are really punched (which is wrong) so there isn't a burr.

I do think that you were probably working with nearly dead soft links. That means you get to bend them open and then push them closed. If they had been demi-flattened they would have had a little more spring which makes the intermediate steps nicer. I do wonder about the punch burr though....

The method seems to show promise. I don't think that we have all the details to get it just right for riveted with "correct" rivets, overlaps and punching.

Wade
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by Ernst »

wcallen wrote:
Ernst wrote:The chaining method also doesn't work on demi-riveted. With that, you have to weave strips of three, two rows of solids connected with a row of riveted in the middle.
Sure it does. The last time I did it I built my chain as half "open" -unrivited - and half already riveted. Knut would weld his every-other-one as he was building the chain (so you don't ever have to touch a hot link). So he was definitely chaining with every other link solid, which yields every other row solid. It just happens by accident.
But you still have to weld or rivet the folded chain to the rest of the work. That would yield a solid, joined (welded or riveted), and joined. If you do it the other way you get a joined, solid, and joined strip, but you can't attach a solid to a joined end.

Schematically:

OCOCOCOCOCOCOCO

becomes
OOOOOOOO
CCCCCCC

or

CCCCCCC
OOOOOOOO

What you need with demi-riveted is

OOOOOOOO
CCCCCCC
OOOOOOOO

where you can attach the solid edge with riveted rings. If you have an edge of riveted rings, you get two rows of riveted rings, because you cant attach with solids.
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by wcallen »

Ernst,

You are thinking in 3's, chaining actually works in 4's.

Knut actually builds his mail (or did 2 decades ago) in a way that is a little goofy to me, but it works.
He builds two chains about a mile long with every other ring welded shut. So he has your "half solid, half riveted" test case.
He then joins two chains to form a 4 wide chain. Then he puts that together to make a shirt.

cococococococococo

becomes
oooooooooooo
cccccccccccc

and
oooooooooooo
cccccccccccc

which joins to become

oooooooooooooooo
cccccccccccccccc
oooooooooooooooo
cccccccccccccccc

He then welds (you could rivet) the lower oooooooo row to end up with

ooooooooooooooooo
ccccccccccccccccc
ccccccccccccccccc
ccccccccccccccccc

which can be attached to another one of these easily using the 0000's at the top.

So, at least the way he and I work, the "fabric" is logically always all closed. It may have started out as all riveted rings, or half solid and half riveted. Either works exactly the same way. You use the open rings on the "separate" chain to join to the edge of the closed rings on the fabric that you are extending. Since you are adding two rows at a time, you always add another solid at the bottom, so you are always ready for the next row of open (riveted) rings that will join to it.

I get bored trying to remember the double twist in opposite directions to join two chains, so I tend to only do that for the first starter row. Then I add a single chain to the bottom, adding two rows at a time. Knut's method adds 4 rows at a time. Normally you can get the expansions you need with one every 4 rows so it works out just fine. I think it allowed him to have his "less skilled" labor build the 4 wide chains and he did the tailoring. A nice division of labor.

Wade
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Re: Check out the micro-mail

Post by Ernst »

Clearly I misunderstood. What you are saying is that he doesn't permanently close the alternate rings in the chain until weaving them into the adjoining piece. To do this, the rings must be closed enough to not fall out of the chain, but be spread to weave into the adjoining piece. Correct?
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Post by wcallen »

Yes, a chain is composed (logically at least) of alternate "open" - not permanently secured - rings and "closed" - riveted or originally solid - rings. The alternate "open" ones are the ones that are used to secure the chain to the fabric.

In all of the cases I have seen work, there is some springy-ness to the rings so that you don't have to "open" then "close" them explicitly. You can "pop them onto" the others. They may not spring back all the way, but for this to be really viable they probably need to spring back enough that the gap is no longer large enough to allow the rings to fall apart.

Wade
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