The process:
I will wind the wire around a 1/4" mandrel into large coils about 1 foot long. It then look like a large spring. I will cut the ring individually with a pair of modified bolt cutters. The modification allows me to cut the rings so that there is an overlap. Then I will re-normalize the rings and begin the flattening process. That steel bar in the photo will be used in this step. With a tube just big enough to accomodate the bar I can place a ring at the bottom of the tube upon a steel surface and proceed to drop the bar upon the ring and flatten it. This will give a nice uniform flat ring. Then I will either punch a hole in the ring and use a cylindrical rivet or drift a hole and use a wedge rivet. The wedge rivet is more historically accurate, however.
So thats the crash course on rivited maille. I am so excited to start on this! Once I have a large enough piece of maille I plan on conducting some long range (50-100yards) armor penetrations test with my warbow :)
Thanks again for viewing! feel free to comment, ask a questin or two, and please let me know your reaction below!
Wow! That is awesome. That might be my next project.. would be pretty awesome. I thought that flat mail was made like regular mail and then flattened. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteHow long does it take you to make a square foot approximately?
By the way, are you on Paleo Planet by any chance?
ReplyDeleteHi Zach! Yes I am on Paleo Planet! My username is Dagonet.
ReplyDeleteI have made an entire butted maille shirt, known as a hauberk and all together it took around about 400-500 hours. It was my first maille project so i was quite slow. A 1x1 foot patch I could probably do in an afternoon 1 to 2 hours. However, this rivited stuff is really going to take awhile!
Wow, that's neat! 400 hours is a LOT. It is nice though because it's something you can do indoors without really dirtying the floor like bowmaking does.
ReplyDeleteMy username is Tagg
Yeah it is a great indoor project, and it really is a conversation starter! Friends and family will think it's the coolest thing since sliced bread.
ReplyDeleteHaha!
ReplyDeleteAn ambitious project! Should keep you busy too. Great stuff though, and an excellent enthusiasts blog. We are history!
ReplyDeleteGraham