riveted mail

[Thaner]

I want to lose my mind making a hauberk, I've only really ever worked in large quantities with butted mail.

I have thumbed through the arcticles on arador armoury re: riveted mail. Tthe main hurdle at the moment is finding a good supply of wire (mild steel or spring) to work with, either in bulk OR small lots as I am not made of money (wife and 3 kids and a widowed mum take care of that)

any suggestions? or anyone that can recommend?

any suggestions much appreciated.

[Robbo]

Bed springs, older ones.

By the time you're done no one will ever know what they were originally.

[Thaner]

would rather get either wire by the roll/kg e.t.c or get pre cut links with overlaps already built in. There's a place in auck that does them. Will ask around here in the naki thou. Bit closer i suspect lol

[Chevalier]

[Freebooter]

[Thaner]

i would rather spend all the hours andhours making the stuff, quite a relaxing proceedure making bunchs of 4 into 1, and bed springs made my day too just quietly hehe, that would be a LOT of beds i would have to destroy.

Nick,the company is called CMI springs. 7a carmont pl. Mt wgtn. 09 5794089

[Robbo]

Never had the cash for armour...old bed springs were/are easy to find and free.

Course, then I helped other people make chain for themselves and never made any for me anyway :p

[Boyd]

[quentin]

Something to save you some effort..

Quite common historically for alternating rows to be solid washers punched from flat sheet. Basically a standard engineering washer. Narrow one tho.

Cuts the number of riveted link joins in half.

[Freebooter]

My all time favourite pair of mail gauntlets were of the alternating row variety.

Interestingly, the solid rows were of much thinner gauge steel than the split rows. To increase strength, these thinner, solid links were constructed with a slight angle to them. I'm sure there is a technical term for it, which escapes me, hence the drawing below. The rings were a trifle thicker, but not by much.

Darn good gauntlets. Shame that I no longer have them.

[Freebooter]

[Thaner]

mm i'm thinking it's gonna be easier to order the pre cut and overlapped links by the thousands rather than hand cut everything, i dont mind the flattening part, will gainfully employ (give them booze) to make a piston die type set up for flattening the buggers, now i'm debating what dimensions to go for, aspect ratios e.t.c wether i go authentic as possible ie: Gjermundbu viking mail which is of a particular dimension or follow others found that are in the region of 1.8 - 2.0mm thick diameter wire

[Zerker]

I've been looking into making riveted maille for awhile now, here's a few resources I've dug up.
http://home.scarlet.be/~klauwaer/malien/engels.html#boven
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1365303
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=103471&highlight=riveted+maille
last one is a very good read, especially the notes on historical internal diameter sizes.


as for wire you can use mig welding wire as suggested here:
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=92129&highlight=riveted+wire
be sure to not get the coated or flux core wire though (I've yet to find a source of uncoated mild steel mig wire, only seen coated or flux core so far)

also if you get pre cut overlapped rings you end up with a square overlap.
if you cut the coil at an angle you can get a serpent head overlap when flattened, as seen here:
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=97632&highlight=
yes those are round rivets not wedge, but the overlap can be riveted either way, Doug Confere is researching creating maille from a specific period where alternating punched and riveted rings are used, and round rivets were more common, according to his research of extant maille from the period.

hope this helps anyone looking at riveted maille.

Zerker

[adrianf]

http://www.mailleartisans.org/articles/articledisplay.cgi?key=9868

i found this site a while ago that makes it look pretty easy

[Freebooter]