Slitting Maille

[Cisco]

Hey guys, I just got a Knuut maille hauberk and he started the slit for me. I've shot him an some people I know with Knuut's shirts e-mails as well but I'd love advice on it.

How high should you cut the riding slit. I assume it should be the same front and back, yes?

I've heard to put the top of the slit below your crotch or you'll end up framing it and that just looks...odd...

Any other thoughts?

[Konstantin the Red]

It protects better if you don't take it quite all the way up to the ballsack, bluntly enough. A few rows down gives the desired coverage along with plenty of leg flexibility. When you have all the upper thigh freedom of movement you want, you need go no higher. The dread flap'n'slap effect is avoided too, though that's strictly at the hem of any shirt, and not a concern with a knee-length 'berk.

Just slitting is not the whole story, alas: a rectangle of Euro 4-1 weave does not hang straight; gravity pulls it into a tapered shape, always. This produces an incorrect -- and exposing -- inverted V gap in the 'berk. To compensate for this requires either right triangles of mail to be installed on either side of each slit in the skirt, or similarly expansion zones inserted. Yep, the hem must measure definitely bigger around than the lower-hip measurement at the top of the slit.

This has been long known -- since BotH wrote about it in the Eighties -- but very little practiced that I've heard of.

So, summing up, unless the triangles are already in there, left and right sides of the skirt are going to hang like \__/. The fix is skirt lefts and rights built like /__\. Just the slit, you'd have a gap front and back that looks like /\... Spaaaaarta. Ah. Ah. Oww...oogh.