Good News! Starting a Rivited Maille Project!

Hello all and thanks for dropping by!  My birthday recently past and I was graced with some wonderful gifts one of which is some rebar tie wire.  To those of you medieval hobbyist out there this means one thing...RIVITED MAILLE! Yes, I have in my possession several hundred feet of blackened, annealed, 16ga steel rebar tie wire. 

Yes, it's beautiful but what it is to become will be even more spectacular.

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!

Warbow Armor Penetration!! With Pictures!

This is me drawing my warbow of #110@32"   It will penetrate 16ga steel plate from 10 yards, and can also penetrate two layers of chainmail with a filled box in between. Very powerful!

MORE PICTURES!!! Here is the 16ga steel plate I mentioned above. It was shot at using the #110@32" waarbow from a distance of 10-20 yards. For any skeptics, I plan on capturing some video of me doing this again in the spring and summer of 2011.  So stay tuned!


The front of the plate was the damage was done!





About the size of a mans torso.




A close up of the back. Notice how the steel seems to peel.





When the arrows hit it really warped the steel!




A bodkin in one of the holes for a reference.





Here is the chaimail hauberk I will use in my next test.




It is only butted maille, so please dont through a fit. I know, and agree that riveted maille is historical and better suited for testing purposes. However, I have none and not enough time or material to create it.

 Since I was shooting from such a close distance, it doesnt give us the greatest idea of what a warbow could do in battle.  Considering that English archers typically trained at no less than 240 yards we can infer that their enemies were typically at a similar distance.

The next time I do an armor penetration test there are a few things I am going to do different.  I am going to use a dense pillow, and place a chainmail hauberk and steel plate over it.  This will better simulate an armored opponent.  This setup will be placed at 100 yards, to give a better replication of battle conditions. 

Please, comment with any tips, concerns, question, etc.  This is a highly debated topic in the warbow community and any feedback is greatly appreciated.