Hi all,
Thanks for the comments on my behalf, Erik, etc. However, let's not overblow the situation.
Here, for posterity, is "The story about how wedge-riveted maille came to India."
I moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1998, and moved into an apartment. Prior to this time I had been dabling in making plate armour (nothing fancy - just coats of plates), but now being an apartment dweller, I really could not do plate armour anymore. So, I returned to what I had initially drawn me to the SCA - maille.
By this time I had already learned that butted maille was an anachronism that was virtually never used for real armour. I had read the Complete Anachronist by Gordon Osterstrom (Master Knut) and discounted most of it as being way too complicated. Only much later did I come to realize how on-target his writing was.
I turned to the Internet in search of "how to" information on how to make riveted maille, and found there was none. There was eventually one online article about a guy who had turned a flattening tool out of an axle shaft, but that was it. I dug around and eventually turned up the series of articles by Dr. Cyril Stanely Smith and E.M. Burgess - these, and Gordon's C.A., were the basis of much of my work.
I spent countless hours experimenting with ways to flatten the rings and punch them. For example, initially, I held each ring to the anvil face with a penny (to spare my fingers), and flattened the overlaps by hand - before overlapping. I then punched each overlap (again, separately) with a homemade punch that punched round holes. I used sewing pins as the rivets. I made one coif with this method, which I gave to Michael Moltan, who lives, I believe, in Valdosta.
I also spent countless hours experimenting with different punches. You name it, I tried using it for a punch. Everything from dental pics, to ice picks, to awls, to drill bits, to tile drill bits, I tried it. I tried punching into wood, plastic, pennies, hammer heads, you name it. In retrospect, this was an absurd waste of time because, as a professional mechanical designer, I knew how modern hole punches worked, I just didn't believe that was how it would work for maille.
Shortly I discovered a fellow in my local SCA Group, John Johnson, owned an authentic piece of maille. I looked at it, and discovered that it was a "wedge riveted" piece of maille. Now I was inspired to try my hand at this style of maille, as, at the time, published works seemed to indicate round rivets were more of an Eastern construct while wedge-rivets were more European, and I wanted to be more European with my maille, since the SCA, my home for things medieval, concentrates mostly on Western European culture.
Again, after lots of trial and error, and lots of discussion, both on the Internet, over the phone, and in person, with folks like Erik Schmid, and having watched Mr. Simon Metcalf at the Victoria & Albert museum in London on Television, and later in person, I devised a way to make wedge-riveted maille. Some of you may remember my extensive how-to essays that used to be on my web site. They remain still in a lesser form over on the Arador Armour Library.
http://www.arador.com/construction/rivetindex.html
At this point I had no intentions of making riveted maille for sale. At the most, I figured I would make a piece or two to sell as custom works. Even then I could appreciate that with the labor involved there was no way I could produce maille in any real quantity as a hobby.
My goal, instead, was to come up with a technique, a process, that anyone could follow, so that everyone could make riveted maille. I am a mechanical designer by trade, and my job is to design things that are functional, but also that can be cost effectively manufactured. This was the approach I took with coming up with a way to reproduce authentic-looking wedge-riveted maille. I never expected to be able to sell this stuff. Instead, I wanted to create a process that anyone who was interested, with little regard for skill level, could replicate. Hence my extensive photo-essays on how to make it.
It was not long before I discovered that if the rings were pre-overlapped, they became much easier to flatten. This, of course, had the added benefit that such rings, cut with the overlap built-in, are merely very small springs, and, as such, can be easily manufactured by any spring manufacturer, which saves all the time of winding and cutting your own rings. I ordered 50,000 such rings from Newcomb Spring in Atlanta, and made a coif. Then, in 2000 I began my own riveted maille shirt:
http://www.forth-armoury.com/photo_gall ... ogress.htm
Sometime around this time I had heard rumors from some SCA friends about other SCA friends of theirs who wanted to take my product and have it produced overseas. And, by coincidence, very shortly thereafter I received an email solicitation from an overseas manufacturer of medieval armour, including maille. They also claimed to be able to do custom work, so I figured, "Well, someone is going to teach them how to do it, it might as well be me since I invented the process, and I can make a few bucks off of it before it gets copied all over the place." So I began a dialog with this manufacturer, and I sent them tooling, samples, and complete instructions, and off they went. The end result looks like this:
[img]http://www.cloudnet.com/~erikdschmid/forth-mail.jpg[/img]
Now at the time my sole arrangment with my supplier was that I had exclusive rights within the U.S. for 1 year. I figured that was about how long the ride would last before others got on the bandwagon. Also I felt the need to offer some consideration to the manufacturer because my volumes were low and any manufacturer needs to have high volumes in order to make it cost effective for them. I just didn't have the capital (cash) to buy lots of maille up front, plus I didn't want to risk a huge investment because I didn't know if the stuff would sell or not.
In retrospect, I should not have made such a bargain. Further, I should have patented the manufacturing process. Yes, maille is an ancient thing, but the process I had come up with to make
this version is, in my opinion, sufficiently novel that I believe I very likely could have acquired a process patent on the technique. I have experience with patents through my work and I am listed on some 6 or 7 of them.
I did not pursue patenting for a few reasons. First of all, I had already publically disclosed the process, through my online tutorials. Secondly, and most importantly, patenting is extremely expensive. You are looking at several thousand dollars to get a patent - and you need a patent in every country where you want to protect your design/process. Then you need to have the funds to be able to defend your patent should people infringe upon it, otherwise you wasted your money getting the patent.
The bottom line is, I knew, at the outset, that copying of armour-related designs was rampant among Indian manufacturers, and it would only be a matter of time before another manufacturer picked up the process and it would become a commodity, just like all past renditions of maille have become.
In addition to my 1-year exclusivity arrangement, I also agreed to allow my supplier to sell outside of the US through other distributors they could find, and I set him up with Andy Goddard in the UK. I don't think Andy ever really seriously undertook selling the product. For a while, Forth Armoury was the only place you could commercially get wedge-riveted maille, excepting the hand-crafted stuff like Erik and a few others make, of course.
Around a year or so ago, I guess, I became aware of a nearly identical style of maille being sold through Von Sussen:
[img]http://www.cloudnet.com/~erikdschmid/sussen-mail.jpg[/img]
I have no idea who Von Sussen buys their maille from. Also around this time I began to receive solicitations from a few other Indian armour makers who claimed to sell "flattened, wedge-riveted" maille, and so I had them send samples. Some of these were better than others. There is, after all, a learning curve to this stuff. One thing I noticed is that their prices were considerably cheaper than what my original supplier was selling to me. One of these suppliers was Indian Handicrafts & Textiles, and I bought my last shipment from them. The prices were low enough that I was able to sell all-riveted garments for what I had previously only been able to sell alternating-row maille for. I could tell from the product that it was virtually identical to the maille I was receiving from my original supplier. It seems that the maille may be a bit heavier than my original maille, and it is possible that they are using slightly thicker wire, and the rings seemed to be flattened a bit more than my stuff, but other than that, the tooling marks and the manufacturing process is virtually indistinguishable:
[img]http://www.cloudnet.com/~erikdschmid/he-mail.jpg[/img]
Just as I was about to place my second order with this new supplier (Indian Handicrafts & Textiles), they informed me that they would now only sell to Get Dressed for Battle in the UK, and, as we see from Historic Enterprises' web site, "We are proud to be the exclusive US dealer for GDFB Riveted Maille." So that manufacturer, it seems, is now only selling through GDFB and Historic Enterprises. I still have my original manufacturer, of course, but unless he can get his prices inline with what others are now charging for this maille I cannot stay competitive. I am, of course, working that angle with my original manufacturer.
I have no idea how the other manufacturers who are now producing this style of maille actually came to the manufacturing process they use. My tutorial has been freely available online for years now, and it is entirely possible that they discovered it there. The process, once understood, is pretty simple, and it is even possible that multiple people happened onto the same manufacturing process. However, it is well known that there are
several manufacturers of arms and armour in India that carry the same goods. My understanding, from some of my correspondence with these manufacturers, is that they all (or some) belong to "syndicates", and likely they share production of the same products. I know for certain that several manufacturers have sent me identical product catalogs. I suspect, for several reasons, that my initial supplier held onto the design for a while, but eventually either sold off or outsourced the production of the maille he was selling to me. One of these reasons is the fact that my original supplier became slower and slower fulfilling orders. I still have one open order over a year old with them.
So that is the story of how wedge-riveted maille came to India.
Bear in mind that I hold no grudges against anyone in this saga. Things have turned out
exactly as I expected they would from the beginning. Just as expected, the maille has been picked up by a variety of manufacturers, and will likely soon become a commodity, they way butted maille has. When you see it in the Museum Replicas catalog you'll know the cat is completely out of the bag.
As I said in a previous thread, and I meant it very literally, the biggest personal satisfaction I get out of all of this is that I designed a manufacturing process that, in my humble opinion, has revolutionized what is commercially available concerning maille armour. That brings me enormous pride. I feel very confident that if I hadn't developed this technique and taught the Indians how to do it we would still be getting pop-top looking maille like this:
[img]http://www.forth-armoury.com/Product_Catalog/competition/competition3.jpg[/img]
The fact is, it has never been very profitable. There has always been a tremendous amount of work on my end once I received it from the manufacturer. This stuff comes in very grungy. Black with dirt and oil, and rust. I've invested in equipment to polish and clean the maille before shipping to customers, and each shipment costs money in time and polishing media/cleaners/electricity to get them in a condition that I consider acceptable to sell to someone. I want people to open their box and exclaim with joy at their awesome product - not shrink back in revulsion about some nasty clump of greasy maille they don't want to touch with their hands. I have been pushing my manufacturers for galvanized and/or stainless steel maille to work towards a product that I can receive in a more "ready-to-ship" state, but this has been very slow in coming.
Again, ladies and gents, business is business. Everyone looks out for their own interests, as businesses should. The Indians are, and retailers are. A product has become, or is becoming, widely commercially available, and retailers are buying it and selling it. There is nothing wrong with that. Business is business.
Steve
. seriously though, don't argue it's not good for the archives Mojo.