The Armour Archive

Ok, I'm sure this has beenasked in one form or another a million times before, but I'll shoot anyway...

What would be and acceptable size/gauge for riveted maille?

Caveats:

1. The maille must stand up to SCA combat.

2. I'm going to eventually do both 14thc English and 9thc Saxon/Dane, so I'm not looking to get super specific.

The shirt I'm looking at has 18g flattened rings with an outside diameter of 14mm. It weighs 16 lbs. Does this sound like it would fit my needs?

Wes

PS
Thanks for answering the small slew of questions I've been posting lately!
I'll try to get back to the people who have PM'd me for one reason or another; it's hard to write anything thoughtful when you spend most of your time working or studying, as I'm sure many of you know.

The shirt will work fine. You might have to straighten a few rings every once and a while but no major dammage will happen.

Edward

I second MacTavish... the shirt should be fine for both of your depictions. Not historically perfect, but close enough that only those who are really obnoxious will tell you. Heck, most people are still greatly impressed just to see riveted mail!

18g wire seems to be about the heaviest gauge commonly used for historical mail. I'm a little curious about your link diameter though. It sounds a little big to me, but that depends on how flattened the links are. It should hold up fine to SCA combat, and not weight you down noticeably. I've read in several books (Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight to name one) that mail hauberks weighed in between 17-22 lbs on average.