The Armour Archive

I recieved My riveted mail shirt from James Davis at Ancient Armory last week. As we all know, it was a good deal later that expected, but that was do to his suppliers, and James was caught in the middle of that. Frustrating as it was, I could not blame him for the holdups.
First the bummers: As many folks know, this order was supposed to be made with fully flattened rings and brass/bronze borders. For some reason it wasn`t. James is still trying to figure out what happened there and was very apologetic about that. He did offer to hold the shirt that came and make his suppliers get it right, but I opted to take it as is, and I am not sorry.
The only other bummer is that the neck hole is pretty big. I personaly prefer a small neck opening, so this is a bit of an issue for Me. We are working on how to deal with this, but I fear it will require Me to live with it or to add some links and rivet them closed. James did offer to send Me the links to do this so at least I won`t have to make them myself and they will all match.
Now the Woo-hoos: The shirt is made out of 17g wire in a 5/16id 4 on 1 weave flattened at the rivet point and with round rivets. It is mid-thigh at the hem and the sleeves are elbow length. The dimensions are exactly what I wanted, and the shirt is an excellent fit. It is lighter than expected and very comfortable to wear. After carefull examination, I have yet to find a single fault in the weave and the armpit is joined up very neatly. I have found a few missing rivets, a few bad rivets, and a (very) few rabbit eared links. All in all, less than two dozen, and most of the bad rivets are still structuraly sound, just not too neat.
These few missing and bad rivets will not effect the structural integrity of the garment at all as they are very spread out, and probably less than one percent of the total links in the shirt. The shirt is galvanized, but not overly shiny, which again is perfect for Me as I do not like really shiny mail.
Overall, it is a really nice garment and a definite step above any of the other riveted mail I have seen from India in this price range.
James is working with his suppliers to try to get them doing what they are supposed to, but communications and cultural differences are making it difficult. I am confident He will get them on track and get all the bugs worked out. The hard part, getting them to get the weave and riveting right is already there, it is merely a matter of fine tuning now.
I would, and do plan on, ordering from him again for all My riveted mail needs. I believe avantails are comming from him at some time in the futre, and I eagerly await them.
I believe I got an exelent value for the price paid (which was well below his normal prices), and I also believe that it would be a great value at normal prices. This is as I said a much better product than other Indian riveted mail in this price range.
Communications with James was consistant, and He was honest and forthcoming with every delay from his supplier. I have no complaints there.
To be honest, the only complaint I have on what I got is the size of the head hole, and that is being addresses for future orders.
I would definitly recomend him as a source for good affordable riveted mail, and as He works with his supplier, I expect the quality of the product to improve even more.
John

How much are talking about for one of these shirts?

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Baron Arland the Bastard
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/rivetedmaille

as above, how much. I can't make chainmail anymore, I am OCD-ish with the weave when I'm doing it myself, and it drives me mad.

I bielieve James is now charging $750.00 for a knee length full sleeved hauberk in 17g. wire with a 5/16id. weave. That is with a 46 or 52 in. chest. You will have to double check with him on that price, but I know it is in that range. As I said before, the shirts are well worth the price, and I plan on doing buisness with him more in the future.
John

I am charging $750 for the knee length, wrist length hauberks. John's shirt was the very first one made in this weave and has a few more bad rivets in it than the rest. The others have about half as many (about a dozen) and those are mainly just ugly rivets and are not structurally compromising. The neck holes are a little large but will be smaller in the future and I am taking steps to have them fix the dozen or so rivets that are not as good as the rest.

They were having some sort of problem with finding suppliers of blackened steel in 17 gauge but this has been resolved. so I am offering these in blackened now

I am also currently working with them on some fully flattened rings but will not be taking any public orders on these until they get them right. I will also be offering other pieces like aventails and chauses later on.
The weight on these are running about 28 pounds for the 52" girth with knee length and wrist length sleeves. We are also making these in 18 gauge wire. These should run about 20 to 22 pounds for the large size and will cost the same.

Here's the second review of the mail from Ancient Armoury.
First, James, I tried to post briefly Thurs. pm. as soon as I recieved the shirt but my post seems to be missing.
I am Extremely pleased with my shirt., Do to communications difficulties with the supplier, the piece was not exactly as hoped (see 1st post) but it is an exceptionally well put together shirt.
I had orederd 52" w/longsleeves and had hoped for the black, fully flattened rings. James contacted me and the full sleeved shirt was not in the first half of the order and gave me the option of 3/4 sleeves, which had arrived (I was trying to meet a certain timeframe). I took the shorter sleeves and recieved my shirt promptly. As far as I see, I've got maybe a dozen bad links of all types combined in the whole shirt and NONE of them are structually unsound. The head opening on my shirt might be a little large but I'm going to take 2"+/- off the sleeves and this will give me far more rings than I'll need for any fine tuning. My shirt is quite shiny but I was planning to strip and blue so I don't care at all. The 5/16ths 17 ga. links make a very dense shirt, and compared to several other shirts in my kingdom (from another source) the link shape is very good, no rabbit earred pull tab mail here!
Unless my tired old bones fail under the 22-23 lbs of additional weight, I'll probably be wearing this mail shirt for the rest of my fighting career (another 30+ years)
The quality of this shirt is the best I've seen by far for Indian mail (much better than several 16th century examples I've seen) and I feel that these shirts are easily worth what James is charging. I also plan on purchasing at least an aventail from Ancient Armoury in the future.

Baron Alail Horsefriend, KSCA, OL, etc.

P.S. James, you are welcome to use my words if you post endorsements on your page, or contact me and I'll give you something coherrent instead.