Was maille cleaned using sand and vinegar?

[Ckanite]

I could see any of those minus the crank... maybe

[Mac]

I could see any of those minus the crank... maybe

I think the crank is OK, so long as it has little quatrefoils at the bends.



Mac

[Mac]

... and some more cranked sharpening stones.

Romance of Alexander.


The Utrecht Psalter



While I was looking for those, I found this early 16th C (?) itinerant knife sharpener. The treadle won't work for a mail tumbler, but I thought folks might like to see him anyway.



Mac

[worldantiques]

A 20-35 pound hauberk doesn't take up a lot of space: Think shoebox size.

Here is a perfect example, this is a very old and very rusty 20+ lb hauberk in a 12''x12''x5.5'' box, it has been sitting in someones house for several decades, somehow I need to remove the rust in order to photograph and identify it. I am not looking forward to rolling it around in a barrel, I have been contemplating trying the electro rust removal method which I have heard was used sucessfully on a large number of very rusty Indian armors from the Bikaner Armory that were sold in the 70s. Does anyone have any alternate modern non-destructive rust removal methods?

[Ckanite]

Just throw it in the back of your car for a week. The movement between the rings would scrub off all the rust.

[Ernst]

Electrolysis with anti-freeze or some such. Time consuming, but safe to the artifact. But you already know that.
http://www.metaldetectingworld.com/elec ... oval.shtml

The best alternate might be a vibratory tumbler with mild media.

[Mac]

Has anyone tried Evaporust on mail? http://www.harborfreight.com/1-gallon-e ... 96433.html

In my limited experience with it, I have found it to work pretty well. There is one caveat, and that is to make sure the object you are de-rusting is completely submerged in the solution. The stuff will etch slightly at the waterline.

Mac

[RandallMoffett]

I know people who have but I have not. I am thinking about it as my one shirt is getting rather rusty.

Thanks for the tip with entire submersion.

RPM

[Glen K]

Butter churns?

Oh, Ernst.

But yes, sorta... turning/rolling/agitating something on a barrel, based on the quote, would mechanically speaking be the same thing. Referencing the "horse" part specifically made me think of these, and the three different types of movement. The other one would be the simple fixed barrel on a rocking structure, but these would certainly give more action for the invested energy.

[Mac]

Before we leave the subject of cranks and whether they were used in the middle ages, let me present a few examples of the "wheel of fortune" motif. In most images, the allegorical figure of Fortuna just grabs the spokes of the wheel in order to raise men up and cast them down, but in about a quarter of them there is a crank provided for her convenience.







Now... If we can only find the "Barrel of Fortune", we'd have a smoking gun.

Mac

[worldantiques]

Electrolysis with anti-freeze or some such. Time consuming, but safe to the artifact. But you already know that.
http://www.metaldetectingworld.com/elec ... oval.shtml

I believe washing soda or baking soda is the most commonly used additive for the electrolyte.

[worldantiques]

Has anyone tried Evaporust on mail? http://www.harborfreight.com/1-gallon-e ... 96433.html

In my limited experience with it, I have found it to work pretty well. There is one caveat, and that is to make sure the object you are de-rusting is completely submerged in the solution. The stuff will etch slightly at the waterline.

Mac

I have looking into several different supposedly non-harmful rust removers, here is one persons Evaporust method.
https://sites.google.com/site/griffinro ... /chainmail

Here is the results from another similar product called Envro-safe which seems to be a type of Rust 911. http://www.rust911.com/rust911-ultra-co ... 0-gallons/

http://www.rust911.com/testimonials/

There are several alternatives to Evaporust on the market, all of which claim to be pH neutral and non toxic. If you need a lot of this stuff for a big project, it can get quite expensive. After reading various user reviews on automotive as well as tool related forums, I chose to go with "Enviro-Safe", which comes as a 10x concentrate, to be diluted into working concentrations with water by the end user (hence it's a bit cheaper than the other formulations, which are all supplied at 1X). Below is the result after a rusty coat of mail had been soaked in a solution of Enviro-Safe for 72 hours (the images on the right are color photos, not black and white):

Gene T

[Harry Marinakis]

Tumbling

I have a scuba tank tumbler, which is a roller machine that spins scuba tanks at about 60 RPM to remove rust. You fill the scuba tank with a ceramic tumbling media and then tumble it for about 15-30 minutes to remove rust from inside of the tank. (I do a lot of scuba equipment inspection and repair.)

I tumbled my mail using a lapidary tumbling drum filled with a very clean sand. Given its diameter, the lapidary drum spins at about 30-40 RPM. Hours and hours on the tumbler and the rust was still there. I tumbled for so long that I thought I was gonna burn out the motor.

The technique of tumbling did not work very well.

Fluid Film & Evapo-Rust

Fluid Film beats all other rust inhibitors hand down. No comparison. I have been using it for years.

If you develop rust on your mail:

1. Thoroughly clean the mail with a grease solvent
2. Soak the mail in Evapo-Rust overnight
3. Quickly blow dry with a heat gun at low heat
4. Spray with Fluid-Film

Evapo-Rust is water based, so the mail has to be completely degreased for it to work.

Degreased mail will rust very quickly when exposed to water - in a matter of minutes. The Evapo-Rust seems to do a pretty good job of preventing flash rust during the drying process. I also dip my mail into a solution of rust inhibitor before blowing it dry. I got the rust inhibitor at a scuba shop, used to prevent the inside of steel scuba tanks from forming flash rust during the drying process.

Evapo-Rust is DA CHIT!

[RandallMoffett]

I will have to look into a rust inhibitor as well. Thanks for your comments Harry!

Must be interesting to see that scuba tank cleaner go. Does it clunk around a great deal?

RPM

[Harry Marinakis]

Does it clunk around a great deal?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JogwDpXUg2c

[J. Salazar]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I think I can help out with a bit of experimentation. I recently made a patch of mail with a considerable amount of scale on it. I will be buying some wheat bran this week and tumbling it, I'll be happy to post the results.

Here's the before...

[Dan Howard]

You need a control piece. Tumble one piece with bran and another piece with nothing. It is possible that the rings abrading against each other will clean just as well as bran or sand or anything else.

[Ernst]

Bran also contains a high amount of oil, so it may also be useful as a preservative as well as a mild abrasive.

[Mac]

One of the items I acquired from the the estate of the Late Will McLean is a small cement mixer full of bran that he used to use to keep his mail clean. While this does not really tell us much about medieval practice, it does offer a modern way to uses a traditional medium. The mixer is one of these guys from Horrible Freight.....




...and the bran came from a local feed store. All in all, it represents less than $175 for the whole cleaning system. I would bet that you could score a used mixer on Craig's list that would drive the investment cost down below $100.

Mac

[worldantiques]

A 20-35 pound hauberk doesn't take up a lot of space: Think shoebox size.

Here is a perfect example, this is a very old and very rusty 20+ lb hauberk in a 12''x12''x5.5'' box, it has been sitting in someones house for several decades, somehow I need to remove the rust in order to photograph and identify it. I am not looking forward to rolling it around in a barrel, I have been contemplating trying the electro rust removal method which I have heard was used sucessfully on a large number of very rusty Indian armors from the Bikaner Armory that were sold in the 70s. Does anyone have any alternate modern non-destructive rust removal methods?

Results, from not being able to see any details at all, now you can see alternating rows of riveted and solid links. I used a computer power supply, wire, scrap metal for electrode, 5 gal plastic bucket, electrolyte.

[Sean M]

Doing a “compare and contrast” would be even better, but just trying and writing down how this compares to other polishing methods would be interesting! Because I travel so much and spend so much time buried in books, I am better at finding different ideas than trying them out.

I wonder how often the used bran ended up being fed to fowl or swine? Medieval mail was not contaminated with petrolium products like our mail often is.

[J. Salazar]

Hold the phone, demi-riveted construction with round-sectioned links with wedge rivets? Am I seeing that correctly?

[J. Salazar]

You need a control piece. Tumble one piece with bran and another piece with nothing. It is possible that the rings abrading against each other will clean just as well as bran or sand or anything else.

Here were some patches that were carried around in my pocket for various amounts of time. The left patch spent about 10 days in my pocket, the second about 5, and the last spent none. I'm aware of how unscientific this is, just thought it would be interesting to share. Mail does seem to undergo a great amount of self-polishing, even in relatively small amounts of time.



Here is a larger version...

http://i.imgur.com/JjL8yxx.jpg

[worldantiques]

Hold the phone, demi-riveted construction with round-sectioned links with wedge rivets? Am I seeing that correctly?

I will take some additional close up images soon. I have a feeling that this may be Circassian riveted mail and at least some examples of Circassian mail seem to have been wedge riveted, I will post some examples as well. Since at least some Circassians were part of the Ottoman Empire it is possible that they incorporated both wedge riveting and solid links in their work. Early European wedge riveted mail in known to have both wedge riveting and solid links but the construction of this hauberk leads me to think that it is Circassian.

Here is a similar looking example.

This Mail shirt is Ottoman, 18C. probably made in Circassia area. Heavy, about 13 Kg, 38 inches long, 42 wide (extended sleeves). Heavy gauge steel rings with alternating rows arrangement: One riveted rings and one forge welded rings. This arrangement of rings is attributed to Circassia, and these mails were sold all over the middle east. This mail was found in the old city of Acre and was on display for several years in the Maritime Museum in Haifa, Israel.

[J. Salazar]

I had no idea wedge rivets were used outside of Europe! Thanks for posting.

I'm not surprised by the demi-riveted construction and wedge rivet combination as much, it is the round-sectioned riveted links with wedge rivets that surprised me, I'm used to seeing flat-sectioned wedge riveted links.

What surprises me is the very robust appearance of the lapped joint. From the small amount of tinkering I've done with flat sectioned links, I've noticed that you end up with a lapped section that is twice the thickness of the rest of the ring (before this area is riveted and deformed.) This is because I can't think of any other way to make flat sectioned rings other than flattening the links BEFORE they are lapped manually. Round sectioned links present a bit more of a problem, as they have to be lapped first, and THEN they are flattened to a small degree. My rings have an overlap that is only about 50 percent thicker than the cross section of the ring as a result.

What this means is that flat sectioned rings have much more material that can be deformed into the final shape. I'm surprised that such highly convex appearance can be achieved with round sectioned riveted links.

[worldantiques]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I think I can help out with a bit of experimentation. I recently made a patch of mail with a considerable amount of scale on it. I will be buying some wheat bran this week and tumbling it, I'll be happy to post the results.

Here's the before...

Jorge, I really like the look of your mail.

[Dan Howard]

Here were some patches that were carried around in my pocket for various amounts of time. The left patch spent about 10 days in my pocket, the second about 5, and the last spent none. I'm aware of how unscientific this is, just thought it would be interesting to share. Mail does seem to undergo a great amount of self-polishing, even in relatively small amounts of time.

I have a jar of links that are bright orange with surface rust. When I use them in mail, they are polished nice and shiny by the time I complete a single row.

[J. Salazar]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I think I can help out with a bit of experimentation. I recently made a patch of mail with a considerable amount of scale on it. I will be buying some wheat bran this week and tumbling it, I'll be happy to post the results.

Here's the before...

Jorge, I really like the look of your mail.

Thank you sir, that makes my day. I'm still not happy with the solid links though. I'm working towards making a swage in order to round off the edges.

Dan, just curious, are your rings flat or round sectioned? I have the feeling that round sectioned would would make a lot more contact with each other than flat.

I just ordered some wheat bran btw. I found some oat bran at my local health food store but I wasn't sure it would work.

[Glen K]

Bran also contains a high amount of oil, so it may also be useful as a preservative as well as a mild abrasive.

I think Tom Biliter uses walnut hulls, to good effect.

[Dan Howard]

Dan, just curious, are your rings flat or round sectioned? I have the feeling that round sectioned would would make a lot more contact with each other than flat.

They are flat - a jar of mild steel washers. I don't think it really matters whether they are flat or round. The amount of abrasion that occurs will take the rust off any kind of link fairly quickly. I suspect that smaller links will polish more quickly than large links.

[worldantiques]

I had no idea wedge rivets were used outside of Europe! Thanks for posting.

I'm not surprised by the demi-riveted construction and wedge rivet combination as much, it is the round-sectioned riveted links with wedge rivets that surprised me, I'm used to seeing flat-sectioned wedge riveted links.

There is no absolute proof that the mail is actually non-European, more research needs to be done. The Met has some Caucasian / Circassian helmets with wedge riveted mail and there is an Ottoman arm guard with wedge riveted mail that I have seen, some of these have watershed but I am not sure if any are demi riveted, of course these could have been using European mail but there is Russian wedge riveted mail and wedge riveting could have spread farther than originally thought.

Here is an example of European demi-riveted mail.

[Sean M]

The Canso d'Antioca (c. 1170-1250? It kept being edited and adapted to different forms of French or Occitan) ed. Suzanne Duparc-Quioc and tr. Edgington and Sweetenham. This is a story about the First Crusade which claims to be recorded by a pilgrim, it definitely sticks close to history as we know it while adding plausible details (and an army of friendly cannibals but you know, you have to take the bad with the good).

Et si ont lor haubers et froiés et rollés, 7545
Lor elmes esclarcis, lor escus enarmés,
Lor espees forbies et lor hels adoubés

They translate this as "They rolled their hauberks in sand barrels, polished their headgear, took up their shields, burnished their swords and put on their helmets." I don't see any reference to sand. Edgington and Sweetenham seem like 'aggressive' translators who reword things to say what they think they mean.

The verb froer often means "to break, smash, destroy." It looks to me like a simple and literal translation is something like "They tumbled and rolled their hauberks." What say you?