Posted: 10/29/2005 1:27:56 AM EDT
| I wore chainmail to a party for around 4 hrs today and man did it start to get heavy. I don't know how people fought in all of that crap for long periods. I guess its different if your life is on the line. |
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Hi, Theories have been put forward that a harness was worn in conjunction with the mail to prevent its flowing around the wearer during combat. Another theory is that the chain mail was woven with leather strips that created a shape out of the mail that would conform to the wearer and provide something more useable. Look at pics of contemporary drawings that show this "banding" to the mail and that they show mail as conformal to the bodies shape. Esp the alternating "bands" in the drawings of the mail. They think it may have been leather interwoven in the mail. Dram 
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| And also, if you wear it regularly and train with it often, your body gets stronger due to the extra weight. The same thing goes for a helmet today. At first it will feel heavy but after a few weeks of wearing it, your neck muscles get stronger and it becomes less of an effort. |
Like most things, if you wear it long enough you'll build up muscle and won't notice it anymore. |
get some money and contact me. I know a metal smith who will do a great titanium liquid metal chain mail. He just calls it liquid because it's so tight together. He can do all sizes, but it's your money  get some real chainmail. I only have chain mail on my arms for my brigidier < i never spell that word right 
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| It was a butted chainmail shirt. It was 13/14 gauge galvanized steel wire. I made myself a few years back. After work and I just wanted to turn my damn mind off so I sat and made chainmail for a few hours each day over the course of a few months. I was just wearing a shirt under it so it was killing my shoulders. I guess you have to know how to wear it. I had never worn it for too long of a time until now. |
That's pretty cool there. |
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Its actually kind of easy. You just take a metal dowel and drill a hole in it. You have to make a wooden rig for the dowel to spin in. Then you take the wire and put it in the hole in the dowel, then take the drill and lock in onto the dowel and use that to turn it. The wire wraps around the dowel like a real tight spring and you just take metal shears and cut it into rings. Then hook the rings into a 4 in 1 pattern and bend them shut. I got some big hand muscles after chopping away at metal for a few months. I was the poster child for repetitve stress injury. Programming all day and then cutting metal after work. It was pretty cheap to make too. The wire was just some stuff I found at home depot. Came in 100 ft coils. I was going to go all crazy and buy a lot of wire online, but I figured I should keep it small for the first attempt. I toyed with buying a bandsaw to cut the rings and setup a jig for it, but I figured I was not that into chainmail to drop the money on that. Some guy that had that setup said he could produce like 1000 rings and hour or so. By hand I was maybe doing 50-100 although I am not sure. You could automate the production of the rings, but I never could figure out how to setup the coiler I made to wrap the wire right without me guiding it. I almost screwed myself up a few time by coiling my fingers into the thing when I was spinning the dowel at high speeds. Bending the rings together is blissful because you can just drink a beer and sort of space out, but coiling and cutting the wire just sucks. |