Disappearance of half-solid mail?

[Ernst]

From Design and Construction:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=162035&start=35

Speaking of maille anyone know a bit more about this? Received these pics yesterday from the curatorial dept at the Higgins museum and it dated to the 14th century Europe in their collections catalog. In looking I can’t really find any solid rings in here.

Ian, that's not at all surprising -- solid/riveted was never universal anyway, and all-riveted started getting more prevalent -- and still not universal even then -- in the fourteenth. Speculation's been rife about why the statistically demonstrable shift -- perhaps it was just less bother (thus expense) keeping up an inventory of only one kind of link to work with, rather than having to draw from two different manufactory sources, one being the wire mill and one being a battering mill plus something to punch links out of that mill's sheet. Scrap to deal with in that process too; unavoidable. Working from wire is practically no scrap at all. Even little tag ends of wire can be quickly flattened out into rivet ribbons, particularly for wedge riveting which also got really going in the fourteenth -- we think it was invented then, don't know who or really where exactly. Battering mills may have been making better money supplying plate armorers and other sheetmetal users, while the wire-mill boys were pleased to see more business coming around to them from the ringharnischers. One can come up with a lot of plausible scenarios as to what might have been a shift in the economics of the mail business in the fourteenth century -- none of it definitively documented. All we know is more mail got more riveted.

I'm not in disagreement with Konstantin as to what happened, nor am I certain that any of his suggestions as to the cause are invalid. The fact is that mail made of half riveted and half solid rings at been in use in Europe since Roman times, at least. Somewhere in the 14th century it seems to have been almost totally displaced with mail made of all riveted rings.

Why the change

Several possibilities have been suggested here. So I'd like some discussion and any evidence to support the theories.

[chef de chambre]

Wire making became easier, utilizing water-power to draw wire (circa 13th century). I think that pretty much sums it up, along with increased labour costs after the Black Death, making production more economical by that method.

Keep in mind that while the costs of some mail seem to have been driven down (costs are all over the place in continental sources), some are distinctly expensive, as I have seen in the Household accounts of the dukes of Burgundy. You find them picking up haubergeons and the like at B price en-masse at some sources, then y - as much for some plate armour for mail specifically mentioned as being of steel (d'acier, instead of fer) for gorgerins and 'breeches' and the like.

A part of this is probably attributable to a steadily growing supply of mail across the course of the High Middle Ages , which takes a while to wear out, and can be split up and repurposed, while new, purpose made mail for a customer increases in cost.

[Ernst]

Rudolph of Nuremberg is often cited as creating the process for drawing iron wire in 1306, but it's almost certain he only invented a better machine to do it, perhaps a water-mill as you suggest. So wire became cheaper than punched rings?

[chef de chambre]

Less labour intensive. The conversion of wire into links is a lot easier and less labour intensive than punching out washers out of sheet. As labour costs increase, they become cheaper to produce, which is the theory I am working with.

[Dan Howard]

Excellent subject. I'm inclined to agree with Bob. I can't think of anything else that could possibly explain the change.

[Ernst]

It seems to me that there would be a slight offset in the increased labor for riveting twice as many rings, but materials cost may have outweighed labor costs.

[Russ Mitchell]

Even outside of steel quality, size of links was also a cost factor. There's a later (17c) source in Hungary describing this. Bit links meant a cheap shirt, finished quickly, itty bitty links took way longer, much more expensive, both from the same guy. I don't have the primary source - a bud in Budapest I'm trying to track down does.

[Ernst]

Makes perfect sense to me, Russ. Three times as many links to weave and rivet increases labor cost x3, while likely reducing overall mass of material (though the extra drawing to make thinner wire might make thinner wire more costly). We often see mail haubergeons being sold at varying prices, but can't distinguish such differences as size of ring or quality of iron from the purchase records. Randall Storey has quite a bit of evidence concerning the price of mail, but I don't know if there's much for the price of wire. We might be able to extrapolate the labor cost to materials cost ratio.

[mordreth]

US Steel did an examination of rings from mail in the Metropolitan Museum in 1958
http://pia23.narod.ru/TMRS_PDF7.pdf
There is an indication that "non metallic inclusions" in a stamped ring would create a more fragile ring than riveting or welding the rings

[Ernst]

Silica stringers in the wrought iron are undoubtedly what's intended. In punched rings these run across the ring, while the riveted wire stringers run with the wire in a circle.

[Steve S.]

It seems hard to believe that there is less labor in punching out a washer than there is in making and riveting a ring, but I've not tried punching any rings. I think Erik has. I wonder what his take would be?

Making a ring requires:
Winding coils
Cutting rings.
Annealing
Flattening
Punching
Making rivets
Riveting

Punching rings requires a punch or maybe two.

But I agree that it had to be cost - it must have been cheaper for some reason to make fully-riveted shirts than half-riveted shirts.

But maybe it was aesthetics or function?

Dr. Allan Williams says that the reason plate armour flourishes in the 14th century is because economic conditions progressed to where you could make big enough bloomery hearths to get big enough blooms to make large pieces of sheet metal.

But maybe the sheet metal itself got more expensive as a result?

Steve

[Ernst]

Or did the metal change, making it harder to punch?

[Steve S.]

I would not think so - it's still iron blooms being wrought into low carbon steel. Unless somehow the bigger furnaces resulted in more carbon migration and thus a higher carbon steel that was somehow costly or too cumbersome to anneal before punching.

Steve

[Jason Grimes]

That's what I was thinking, lower raw material cost and less waste with making the links from wire vs. punched rings? There must have been some recycling of the waste back to the bloomeries otherwise there would be more mail waste finds in digs, you would think?

[Tostig]

What does it take to make the sheets for punching versus wherever you start when pulling wire? With punching too you have a lot of waste. The economies may have been further up stream in the process.

[Ernst]

As a side note, we might be able to find some inventory or purchase records which might give further evidence. There is a reference from ffoulkes, which appears earlier (1901) in Buttin, and shows up in some 19th century British periodicals: It wouldn't surprise me if Meyrick hadn't published it. The 1316 inventory of Louis X, le Hutin (the stubborn) has a numer of references to "half-nailed" and haute-nailed mail. For example, we have several horse armors:
un couverture de jazeran de fer.
Item un couverture de mailles rondes demy cloees;
....une testiere de haute clouere de maille ronde.

Ffoulkes suggests, following Buttin, that the difference is mail closed by one rivet or two. I suggest the difference is mail in which half the rings are riveted (nailed=clouer) and half solid, vs. mail which is all riveted. The description haute would seem to imply a higher quality for all riveted. Perhaps we can find some prices to tie to the descriptions.

[Mac]

Ernst,

I think that identifying mailles demi cloees as half riveted/half solid is an excellent interpretation. I never liked the "one rivet/ two rivet" thing, but had not gotten past that.

I wonder if the haute clouere of the mail might not be a rather literal reference to the height of the riveted closure, rather than a measure of overall quality.

Mac

[Dan Howard]

I think that identifying mailles demi cloees as half riveted/half solid is an excellent interpretation. I never liked the "one rivet/ two rivet" thing, but had not gotten past that.

Me too. Half riveted/half solid makes much more sense.

Regarding wastage. It is fairly clear that iron and steel cost less and less as the middle ages progressed. So the cost of raw materials was lower as a percentage of the total cost of the armour. So wastage would be less of a concern after they switched to all-riveted mail compared to previously. In other words, if they were concerned about wastage then they would never have made rings from punched links.

[Sean M]

Ffoulkes suggests, following Buttin, that the difference is mail closed by one rivet or two. I suggest the difference is mail in which half the rings are riveted (nailed=clouer) and half solid, vs. mail which is all riveted. The description haute would seem to imply a higher quality for all riveted. Perhaps we can find some prices to tie to the descriptions.

Thom Richardson's study of the inventories of the Tower of London show "‘item 120 aventails of good German and Lombard mail, half-riveted (Fr. demi enclous) and fully riveted (Fr. tut enclous)" in a list from 1337, and mail "with high nails" (Lat. de alta clavatura or Fr. de haute clouere)" in documents by his successors after 1344. He does not seem to cite any prices associated with these adjectives, although one purchase distinguished between steel mail and regular mail. See his article "Armour in England, 1325-1399," Jnl of Medieval History 37 (2011) pp. 304-320.

[Ernst]

Thanks Sean. I guess the alternate Latin phrasing proves Mac right, haute being quite literal as to height. Unfortunately the lack of pricing doesn't help us determine if cost was a deciding factor for the abandonment of punched rings. At least we see they were noting the difference between demi enclous half-riveted and tut enclous all riveted.

Ffoulkes lists the Louis X inventory as coming from Fr. 7855. I suspect there's no values in it either, but will do a bit more research.
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90604841

[Jason Grimes]

Regarding wastage. It is fairly clear that iron and steel cost less and less as the middle ages progressed. So the cost of raw materials was lower as a percentage of the total cost of the armour. So wastage would be less of a concern after they switched to all-riveted mail compared to previously. In other words, if they were concerned about wastage then they would never have made rings from punched links.

Thats true, hadn't thought of that. I guess my angle is that it might have been easier to recycle the wire waste than the punched. You might be able to just mix the bad links, etc. into the charge at the bloomery. I'm not sure you could do the same with the punched waste unless you cut it up first?

[Steve S.]

I asked Dr. Alan Williams his opinion on the whether the sheet metal got more expensive during the 14th century.

His response was, "It was not necessarily CHEAP steel but simply large pieces of steel." I infer this to mean there was no cost increase nor decrease.

He also says he is not aware of any metallurgical evidence to support punched rings. I remember when he announced this several years ago in London at an arms and armour study day at the Wallace. I have heard some pretty convincing evidence to the contrary since - I think it was someone preparing information for a PhD. I guess he still believes in welded only.

Steve

[Ernst]

Welding wire might have been used: I recall that Indian theta mail is made in this way, but most metalurgical analysis of European solid rings I've seen indicates punched rings. Arne Jouttijärvi's Early Iron being one example.
http://www.gnom.dk/projekter/ringbrynjehistorie.pdf

[Dan Howard]

I'm seen enough evidence to be convinced that punched links started to be used in the Roman period. In addition, David Simm extrapolated from Roman coin dies to make a set of punches for Roman mail using period tools.

[Steve S.]

Yup. I think it was Simm I was thinking of. Dr. Williams is still in the welded camp.

Steve

[Mac]

Someone refresh my memory. What is the evidence against the solid rings having been welded?

Mac

[Ernst]

Someone refresh my memory. What is the evidence against the solid rings having been welded?

Mac

Basically it's metalurgical sectioning showing the slag inclusions.
When wire is drawn, the silica stringers are pulled along the length of the wire, which is then coiled into a ring.

When rings are punched from sheet, the stringers run across the sheet or punched ring, although they are distorted by the punch.

A welded ring forged from wire would have slag inclusions running around the ring, like the riveted Gjermundbu drawing; or if made from strips cut "across the grain", like the Indian bar-link or theta mail, the slag would appear like stripes on a snake. I haven't seen any Euro solid rings which show similar metallurgy.

http://www.royalarmouries.org/what-we-d ... ental-mail

Results of analysis
At high magnification weld lines could be seen on either side of the central bar, showing that the link had been formed by twisting a “wire” in a figure of eight then welding this in place.

However, metallography showed that the non-metallic inclusions were not aligned lengthways, as would be expected from drawn wire, but across it suggesting that the wire had been formed by cutting thin strips from a sheet.
It would seem probable that some form of die or swage was used to maintain the uniformity of the links.

Significance
Metallographic examination provided clear evidence of how one link of one particular type of mail was manufactured. However, the remarkable achievement of producing immense numbers of such tiny (in this case 4mm maximum diameter) links, remains impressive.

On Roman Army Talk, Martijn Wijnhoven provides this list:

Because of the interest of various persons in a bibliographical list of articles concerning the study of making solid rings, I have decided to post this here instead of sending it through a PM.

The list is far from complete; nonetheless it was the best I could come up with in a matter of minutes. Some articles have the discussion of how solid rings were produced at their core; others just have a quick mention; and some only refer to the making of riveted rings. I also threw in an interesting article written in German for anybody that likes to know more about Roman mail in general.

With kind regards,

Martijn

Biek, L.
1963 Archaeology and the Microscope: the Scientific Examination of Archaeological Evidence. Lutterworth Press, London. (pages 162 and 163 show how punched rings could be made)

Bruce-Mitford, R.
1978 The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial. Vol. 2 Arms, Armour and Regalia. The British Museum Press, London.

Burgess, E. M.
1953a Further Research into the Construction of Mail Garments. The Antiquaries Journal: Being the Journal of The Society of Antiquaries of London XXXIII:193-202. (about construction techniques for weaving mail)
—
1953b The Mail-Maker´s Technique. The Antiquaries Journal: Being the Journal of The Society of Antiquaries of London XXXIII:48-55. (how riveted rings could be made)
—
1960 A Reply to Cyril Stanley Smith on Mail Making Methods. Technology and Culture:151-155.

Cosson, B. C. A. and W. Burges
1880 Catalogue of the Exhibition of Ancient Helmets and Examples of Mail. The Archaeological Journal XXXVII:454-494. (contains a section on making mail rings)

Edge, D. B. A.
The Construction and Metallurgy of Mail Armour in the Wallace Collection. (can be found on the internet)

Jouttijärvi, A.
1996 The Manufacture of Chain-Mail. In Early Iron: Netvaerk for Tidlig Jernteknologi, edited by H. Lyngstrøm, pp. 53-60, Copenhagen.

O´Connor, S. A.
1992a Catalogue of Scandinavian Mail. In The Anglian Helmet from 16-22 Coppergate, edited by D. Tweddle, pp. 1183-1187. The Archaeology of York. vol. 17: The Small Finds, nr. 8, P. V. Addyman, general editor. Council for British Archaeology, London.

—
1992b Conservation of the Helmet and Mail. In The Anglian Helmet from 16-22 Coppergate, edited by D. Tweddle, pp. 907-935. The Archaeology of York. vol. 17: The Small Finds, nr. 8, P. V. Addyman, general editor. Council for British Archaeology, London.

—
1992c The Mail Curtain. In The Anglian Helmet from 16-22 Coppergate, edited by D. Tweddle, pp. 999-1011. The Archaeology of York. vol. 17: The Small Finds, nr. 8, P. V. Addyman, general editor. Council for British Archaeology, London.

O´Connor, S. A. and P. Gardner
1992 Technology and Dating of the Mail. In The Anglian Helmet from 16-22 Coppergate, edited by D. Tweddle, pp. 1057-1081. The Archaeology of York. vol. 17: The Small Finds, nr. 8, P. V. Addyman, general editor. Council for British Archaeology, London.

Sim, D.
1997 Roman Chain-Mail: Experiments to Reproduce the Techniques of Manufacture. Britannia Vol. XXVIII:359-371.

Smith, C. S.
1960a Methods of Making Chain Mail (14th to 18th Centuries): A Metallographic Note. Technology and Culture Vol. I(1, Winter 1959/60):60-67.
—
1960b A Reply to Mr. Martin Burgess on Mail-Making Methods. Technology and Culture Vol I (3, Summer): 289-291.

Tweddle, D.
1992 The Anglian Helmet from 16-22 Coppergate. The Archaeology of York 17: The Small Finds, nr. 8. Council for British Archaeology, London. (includes an analysis of the mail neck guard, and gives a reconstruction of the solid rings through welding, see O´Connor, S. A.)


Vike, V.
2000 Ring Weave: a Metallographical Analysis of Ring Mail Material at the Oldsaksamlingen in Oslo. Universitetet i Oslo, Det Historisk-filosofisk fakultet-IAKK, Avdeling for konserveringsstudier, Semesteroppgave.

Vilella, J. R.
1958 Examination of Mail Armour Links from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. United States Steel Corporation.

Waurick, G.
1982 Die römische Kettenrüstung von Weiler-la-Tour. Hémecht: Zeitschrift für Luxemburger Geschichte (Revue d´Histoire Luxembourgeoise) Vol. 34:111-30. (Although it does not address the issue of riveted or punched rings, it is a really interesting article for anybody who likes Roman mail).

Williams, A. R.
1980 The Manufacture of Mail in Medieval Europe: a Technical Note. Gladius: etudes sur les armes ancienne, l’armement, l’art militaire et la vie culturelle en orient et occident Tomo XV:105-134.

[Eltz-Kempenich]

I admit that I know little on this topic, but I want to just throw something out there to maybe re-frame our thinking on the matter.

What advantage is there to welding rings over punching them? It seems to me that welding them would be considerably more time consuming than punching them, yet the evidence seems to suggest that welding was the practice. Why would this be so? Other than wastage, it seems to me that punching them would have every advantage over welding them. The only factor I can think of is the (cost of the drawn wire + labor to coil, cut and weld links) vs. (cost of sheet steel + labor punching). My intuition tells me that the former case would ultimately be more expensive than the latter, though I certainly can't prove it.

Then we must consider, what is the advantage of using solid rings at all vs. solid/riveted mail? Time, I think, is the best candidate. This in turn suggests that production time was of concern, but intuition then leads me to suspect that punched links, not solid ones would be the preference. Perhaps the answer to the bigger question at hand is that riveting all of the rings was simply faster than producing welded links, but slower than using punched rings (which was maybe the most expensive option); in turn, using all riveted links was cheaper than using punched or welded rings. Maybe the balance between cost and time of production was simply to use all riveted rings. It might be interesting to see what the sources tell us about how many mail makers were in production from the 13th-late 14th centuries and to see how large a volume they were turning out. Maybe it was the case that demand started to exceed supply as costs came down and they simply needed to up production speed?

Don't know, just kinda musing on the topic. It's interesting, but outside of my usual purview.

[Mac]

Ernst,

Thank you for the bibliography. I have read some of these articles years ago, and I should try to find the others.

I understand how the distribution of slag stringers with respect to the structure of the rings is an artifact of of the method of production. The articles I have read seem to point in the direction of a welded structure for the solid rings. I was hoping that someone would point out to me which studies in particular have evidence in favor of a punched method of production.

Mac

[Signo]

Punched rings while superior to our modern understanding, may not have been considered superior back then. Why? The answer maybe is in the same proof that punched rings exists : slag stringers. We consider those slag lines just.. lines, but they are the weakest points of the metal ring.
Drawing wires other than help refining the wire, allow to turn the remaining slag in a way that prevent rings to simply fall in pieces, a thing that may occur to punched rings. The problem with slag is that you can't easily discover such weak spots before someone try to push a spear in your guts, at that point is quite a bit late to complain with the smith.
About welded rings, again we consider our difficulty with this operation, and project this difficulty in a age while problably it was not so. Again the reason is slag, slag can be your enemy, but sometimes is your friend. Today we don't have to fight with slag while shaping metal, so we work with different materials and are used to threm, and we think that metal with slag must have been a pain to work with, and it is probably true, until you need slag to have the job done. We know that slag help with forge welding, but when we try to mimic this task we fail, thus we decide that welded rings are crap. We fail because we pretend to use modern and pure steel and have it behave like bloomery iron, and we fail because (probably) we never developed the right tools for the job. To heat a ring that weight less of a gram, a very little but hot flame will suffice, but we apply the same logic of blacksmithing: heat the piece over the fire, bring the piece over the anvil, do the job with hammer. Don't you think that you would need a tool that is at the same time hammer, anvil and forge to do the job? If I would need to make welded rings I know I would develop and build this tool, because it's probably the only way to make welded rings on a production scale. The same thinking can and should be applied to manpower, back then, when mail was fashionable, iron and steel were much more precious than an apprentice.

[Derian le Breton]

What does it take to make the sheets for punching versus wherever you start when pulling wire?

Until the rolling mill shows up in the late 16th century, a hammer, an anvil, a forge, and a lot of time.

-Derian.

[Dan Howard]

A few people have tried forge-welding links on an anvil. It is difficult because the anvil sucks out the heat too quickly. I think it was Steve who proposed a better way that involved using a pair of tongs to apply pressure while the link is kept in the furnace.

[Dan Howard]

Until the rolling mill shows up in the late 16th century, a hammer, an anvil, a forge, and a lot of time.

Dr Sim has presented a decent argument that the Romans had rolling mills.

[Steve S.]

A few people have tried forge-welding links on an anvil. It is difficult because the anvil sucks out the heat too quickly. I think it was Steve who suggested a better way that involved using a pair of tongs to perform the weld while the link is kept in the furnace.

I did find it much easier to get a weld using tongs to squeeze the join, but the end result looked nothing like period solid rings. I don't know how the heck they did it.

Steve

[wcallen]

I am not going to try to speculate about why a particular method was used instead of another in making mail at any particular time. I don't think I have enough information to say.

I don't have enough information to make educated comments on the welded vs. punched thing in general either.

I do have one piece of mail that appears to be punched based on the occurrence of "errors" in some of the "solid" rings. There are flat spots and (from memory only) I think some "flat" spots that look like the outside of the punch of the next ring over. The mail is wedge riveted alternating solid and riveted. You can see it here:

http://www.allenantiques.com/M-9.html

The attribution associated with it is probably as accurate as many - mostly a wild guess. But it does appear to be old, made from correct materials, the rivet overlaps and form of the rivets are correct and it definitely has alternating rows. In the close up picture you can see some of the "solid" rings have the odd flat spots.

If anyone coming down this weekend wants to get in on this game, I am happy to pull this piece out. We could even put it under Schreiber's microscope.....

Wade