The Armour Archive

Anywho, what is the general opinion on the effectiveness of rivited maille in SCA combat?

Maille is, obviously, a very flexible defense. It is essentially a fabric of metal. Because of this, it does not absorb the energy of blunt trauma very well when the maille lays directly over the impact area.

Where maille does much, much better is when it functions as a drape. When a baton gets caught up in a hanging drape of metal it has to life all the maille beneath it in order to push it towards the wearer's body.

I wear a maille haubergeon over a linen shirt and a quilted arming coat. It is almost knee length, which helps protect my thighs which are also protected by linen hose and gamboised cuisses.

Steve

As Fin said, ringmesh actually looks nice, but it does little to protect from blunt trauma.
However, it still maintains the advantage of its larger maille cousins: it acts as a radiator and cools you off very effectively! My first tourney that I wore my maille to, which was at the end of summer, I was shivering in midday from the breeze!

Looking at all the nice maille kits makes me sad.
Is butted maille a bad idea?
I have only one maille shirt, and it is butted

Butted maille had it's heyday about 10 years ago and earlier. After that, riveted maille came on the scene and it is now really the way to go for maille. It is more historically correct, and it is usually lighter.

Nothing wrong with using what you have, though.

Steve

Welcome and well come, Gunnstein.

There are two places in SCA harness where butted mail still shines fairly well: the camail and the fauld, where they are both the simplest engineering solution to parts that are difficult to both armor and give freedom of movement to. That these pieces are much smaller than a complete haburgeon of course saves a lot of weight.

Where its 5/8-the-weight weight savings comes from, riveted v. butted, is assuming 14ga SCA mail. Riveted mail is usually made of wire that is about 18 gauge, which is 5/8 the .080" diameter of 14 gauge.

And meantime, it is still some of the easiest armor that is goodlooking for a guy with a tiny tool budget to make, repair, or use.

Thanks for the help. My shirt has a big shiny brass cross on the front, which I'm planning to cover with a tabard or sleeveless tunic (and possibly wear a brigandine over chain but under tunic) so it will just be the sleeves showing anyway

Got chain. Wear it. Love it. It does a much better job of shedding blows than you might think.

I fight in chainmail, wool tunic, kidney belt and arm protection. It works well, but I'll add padding over the shoulders and collarbones.

One thing that really helps is if you can get your shirt tailored to you -- MUCH easier for butted, so the fact that you've got it in fact gives you a bit of an advantage. Well-fitting foundation garments (concealing whatever rigidity you need) with well-fitting mail over top of it is hugely different from a bulky garment and mail shirt bloused with a belt -- for starters, it can hang more or less comfortably from the shoulders while forcing the whole garment to move on impact, bleeding out that energy, whereas a bloused mail shirt bleeds off much less above the belt than it does below.