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chainmail-beg-art - 11/2/00

"Chainmaille Tutorial for Beginners" by Culann Mac Cruimeinn.

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Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 20:41:16 -0400

From: Zathras <zathras at raex.com>

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

Subject: Chainmaille Tutorial for Beginners

Ok, I got lucky and found the tutorial I wrote on maille. It was for the

armorer's NG so there's non SCAdian stuff in it. However it covers all

the basics that any beginner should need to get them started. I'm

posting to the group since I figure there's bound to be others that can

use this information besides those 2 that inquired. And yeah it's long,

but then so are all the whine/bitch n' moan threads I see here.

culann mac cruimeinn

chieftain of clann oi carrinuinn

-------

First let me introduce myself, so you have some idea of who's writting

all this drivel. I'm member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a

living history group that does the middle ages (pre 17th century). I'm a

member of their armorer's guild and hold the status of journeyman. What

that means is I've build a complete set of SCA combat armor. It doesn't

have to be pretty or especially good, just that it should work. In my

case the armor was a hauberk and chauses (maille leggings), leather

articulated arms and a barrel helm of 16 guage steel (our minimum legal

thickness). For the record, our master armorers have to produce museum

quality work to earn that status....the real spiffy stuff you see there.

Someday I'll try that, right now it's just a hobby and for fun. Enough

ego, to work.

A little history:

What we call chainmaille has been around for over 2000 years. The

Romans had it, the lorica hamata, though it appears they got it

originally from the Gauls/early Celts. The two cultures seem to have had

similar designs, ie a shirt with extra shoulder defenses. Who had them

first I don't know personally, but I suspect that Rome can get credit

for that inovation. Bronze was the material used during that early time,

to be replaced by iron in later times. Steel was reserved for the

weapons.

Getting started:

If you've never made chainmaille before this is the hardest part.

First off, a fair warning. Making maille is VERY labor/time intensive.

Especially until you get a rythem to what you're doing and figure out

shortcuts. Also don't work hour upon hour, day after day. There

something called carpel tunnel syndrome you'll be setting yourself up

for. It's a hobby, don't injure yourself. Fortunately tools are the

easiest part, 2 pair of pliers (I use needle nose), a good set of wire

cutters, and a metal rod the diameter you want to make the rings covers

most of what you'll need. Don't skimp on the cutters either, get a

really good pair like the ones that look like miniature bolt cutters.

It'll really save your hands. The pair I have now I got at Loewes.

Forget the ones you'll find at Sears, they're pure garbage for this.

Now that you have your tools, the next step is to get the wire and

start making the rings. But what kind of wire? That will depend on what

you plan to make and what it's going to be used for. If it's for SCA

type combat, you want steel wire. If it's just for show, you can use

aluminum, which will also save on the wieght. The best source for steel

wire is a farm supply store, for the galvenized electric fence wire. It

comes in 17 and 14 guage thickness's and 1/4 or 1/2 mile spools. And yes

you'll need that much for any sizeable project. For aluminum, the best

place I found is a welding supply store. The alloy you want is a TIG

welding wire/rod called "5356". It most useful sizes are 1/16" dia. or

3/32" dia., this is the equivelent of 16 and 11 guage. It'll either come

as a 3' rod in 1-5 pound bundles, or on a coil of about 15 pounds. Get

the coil if you can, it's alot less hassle when it comes to making the

rings. You can also get a really good steel wire there too,

unfortunately I'm not sure what it is yet. I was given some of this

stuff and all I know is it's a MIG welding rod and one of the "400"

series of chromium stainless steels. It's the best material I've used

yet, personally. It's strong, durable, and looks real good. I'll keep

you posted on that quest.

Now you have wire and tools, what size rings should you make? That is

mostly defined by the wire size, and partly by what you're making and

your skill level. Pretty/show pieces will use smaller rings. Beginners

should use larger rings while learning. Here's a little chart for the

practical ring sizes you can use with a specific wire size. I included

the welding rods in with this.

17 16 14 11

3/16" * *

1/4" * * *

5/16" * * * *

3/8" * *

1/2" * *

5/8" *

Consider the upper and lower sizes of rings for a wire size to be

useable, but as special cases. The smaller ones will make very tight

maille with close tolerances and the larger rings would be pushing the

envelope for adaquate strength.

Okay now you're ready to start making rings. Basically you're going to

wrap the wire around a metal rod to form a coil and then use your

cutters to cut out the individual rings from that. I personally have my

rods with either a slot or hole in one end that I can slip the wire into

to hold it while wrapping. I also use an electric drill to do all the

work of wrapping. The coils above are the easiest to deal with, you can

even guide the wire by hand. But BE CAREFUL when you come to the end of

the wire! That coil you're wrapping is under one hell of alot of tension

and that loose end will whip around and shred anything it hits,

ESPECIALLY you. When wrapping the 3' welding rods I use a piece of angle

iron with a hole drilled in it large enough for the rod. When the wire

wraps, it presses against the other side of the angle to hold it in

place. When it gets to the end and the tension lets fly, all it can beat

on is the angle iron. Alot less painful. Save your hands for caressing

the wenches that are impressed with you new armor, not pulling out your

wallet to pay some ugly old doctor for patching you back up.

When cutting the rings out, it's better to angle your cutters so the

cut isn't square. This way if in the process of building you don't close

a ring right, or wear and tear starts to pull it open, it's less likely

to slip passed the rings that it's attached to, to form a hole. Let the

metal moths work for their supper.

Okay this ends part one. By the time I get part two done, you should

all be ankle deep in loose rings and ready to start putting them

together. I'll try to cover how to put together 4-on-1, a 10th century

Norman pattern similar to the Japanese mailles (so you can do a cheat,

if you're making Jap), and maybe 6-on-1 for the brave. Assuming I get

brave enough to try to do sketches that make sense. Comments and

questions are welcome and encouraged. Hate mail and letter bombs must be

sent via my mundane ex-wife and former SCA lady.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now to work. The bigesst problem I've had in teaching is

getting people to visualize what they're doing so they can understand

WHAT they've done. That's compounded by this being long distance/and by

remote control. Once you can see it in your mind's eye it gets alot

easier. Perhaps the best way is to remember that chainmaille is a CHAIN,

where each link is alligned in a different direction than it's

nieghbors. ChainMAILLE is really just a bunch of chains connected

together. So how are they connected? I start with a basic unit that I

call a "subassembly". It's 5 rings, 4 of which are connected to 1

central ring like keys on a keychain. If you take that subassembly and

lay it on the table with 2 rings on each side of the central ring, it

should look somthing like this:

O O

Now if you take a 2nd subassembly and place it next to the 1st, like

below, you can see that if you took another ring at "X" and connected it

to the 4 rings near it you'd start to form a chain alternating 2 and 1

rings:

O O

Now let's take it one step further. If you lay 2 chains next to each

other, adding a ring at the "X" will join them together and you'll have

just made you first piece of chainmaille. If you don't see it, look at

the 2nd diagram where I lower cased the outer rings. Adding that ring at

"X" forms a chain just like what you've already made. The only

difference is it's already connected to other rings:

O O O O o O O o

O X O o X o

O O O O o O O o

O X O o X o

O O O O o O O o

O X O o X o

O O O O o O O o

And that's it. That's the whole process. All you do it keep repeating

it, making the piece bigger and bigger until you're done. Well there IS

a little more to it, but that I'll cover in lesson 3. This pattern, for

those who don't know, is called 4-on-1. Obviously because each ring is

attached to 4 others. There's a similar but more complex pattern called

6-on-1, where each ring attaches to 6 others. See 1st diagram below.

Unfortunately you can't take 2 chains of 6-no-1 and link them together.

You have to take and almost build it up ring by ring. See 2nd diagram

for the idea on how to proceed, the new rings having been added at the

"X"'s:

OOO OOOX

O OX

OOO OOOX

O O

OOO OOO

O O

OOO OOO

The advantage to 6-on-1 is that it makes a tighter piece of maille, so

it holds to it's shape and generally looks nicer. The disadvantage is

you're very likely to double your assembly time over a similar piece of

4-on-1. And due to it being more complex, it's usually not somehting for

the beginner.

There is another pattern I promised to talk on. It's a 10th century

Norman pattern. It's also similar to 11th century Japanese, at least

superficially. I don't know if it has an official name, most here call

it 8-on-2, I usually call it Norman Double Link. Let's go back to the

chain analogy to discribe it. If you hold up a chain, the rings tend to

be aligned 90 degrees from their neighbors. As in below:

Now if you join the rings of 2 chains together, you should get this:

O-O

| |

O-O

| |

O-O

| |

0-0

And so on. The pattern normally used only single rings, but there are

examples of the rings being doubled. Hence the name. The main advantages

to this pattern over 4-on-1 is that it's easier/simpler to build and FAR

more durable. In 4-on-1 it only take 2 rings to align at their open ends

to have them slip apart. The double link needs to have 4 ring do that,

far less likely. The disadvantage is that the double ring version again

take twice as long to make, and it doesn't flex as good and will fatigue

the body faster for that reason.

There's 2 things that separate the Norman from the Japanese. The first

is that the Norman uses 2 single rings where the Japanese version used a

single ring made wound twice around so it looks like the double link.

The other reason is the patterns vary. The Japanese used triagles and

hexagons alot rather than the Norman's rectangular

Okay, that's it for now. Next time I'll cover things like "floating"

links and other more advanced tricks to constructing maille. And I'll

try to get some patterns to sketched in with what maesurements are

needed to make a piece of armor for the person See you then.

>------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright. Everyone should have this growing hunk of metal cloth that

they're trying to figure how to turn into something useful. First off,

think of it as a piece of cloth. And think of it as a garment you're

making. A very DURABLE piece of clothing, but clothing none the less.

The advantage of mail is it's far more forgiving of mistakes, you can

mend that wrong cut and not leave a seam :)

How many rings wide/long must something be to be the right size? That

varies with the size of the link. But an easy way to find the number for

the width is to take the maille and lay it on a table and pull it taunt

so the rings are stretched to full expansion. Then take a ruler and

measure it, as below:

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

| |

|----------------- X -------------------|

Divide the number of rings by "X" and you'll know how many per

inch/centimeter/furlong. You then can figure out how many rings minimum

to make the size you need. Lets say the chest of the piece needs to be

40", and after measuring you find that the maille is about 3.5 per inch

when fully expanded. So you now know that you need to make the piece at

least 40 X 3.5 = 140 rings wide/dia. That minimal number is NOT the one

to use, for the maille will be stretched tight, not be flexible, and

suffer from rings pulling apart. It obviously must be looser. How loose?

Again that varies with what the piece is for and personal taste. As a

general rule I add 10% for a piece that needs to be form fitting, 15-20%

for loose fitting, and 25% if it's to be baggy. So the numbers for the

above would be 154, 161-168, and 175 respectively. Try to avoid odd

numbers though, because some things need symetry to work right, and

adding/omitting 1 ring rarely matters. With armor, tend towards the

loose/baggy since there's to be padding underneath to account for. A

show piece or for clothing should be form fitting (wish I had pics of

the mini-skirt I made for a model friend to show....but there IS the

bikini I also made her...sigh!).

For the length measures, again take the maille and lay it on the

table. Only this time pat it smooth, don't expand it. This way it'll be

on the table similar to the way it'll hang on the piece. When you

measure make sure to measure center to center on the rings or your

figures will be off. See below:

O O O O---

O O O |

O O O O X"

O O O |

O O O O---

What ever that measure is can be applied directly. Just multiply the

rings/inch by the length you want.

Some parts may have to be larger/smaller than others. Such in the

above mentioned miniskirt, the difference between the lady's waist and

hips ('cuse me....sigh!). But also on things like the top of a

coif/hood. Also on a coif/camaille or bishop's mantle that must flare

out over the shoulders. The smoothest appearing way to accomplish this

is with what's called "floating links". It's where you're adding in an

extra link to make the piece bigger. Let's go back to the

"sub-assemblies" that we used at the start. If you take one of them and

put 5 rather than 4 rings into them you've just added a floating link.

And when added to a peice the extra ring is there for knitting into the

next row and thus making the piece larger. See below:

O O O O O O O O O O

O O O O O O O

O O OOO O O OOO O O

How many floating rings and where varies with the piece. But in

general if you know the difference in the size, and over what length

it's to expand/contract, you can figure out how many rings are needed

and thus how many per row. This is getting into an area where each

armorer starts to figure out the best way that works for him/her. Wish I

could help more.....experiment and find your own unique approach.

There's another way of varying the size, especially if it needs to be

a LARGE varience. Dags. The triangular peices that you see on the bottom

of armor as decorative embellishments. Knitting these together can be

used to make the top of a coif, or for a mantle/bottom of a coif. Making

a dag is easy. It's a piece of maille that each row has fewer links than

the one above it. Here's one way to do it. First, make a piece that's

roughly triangular. And some sub-assemblies with only 3 rings instead of

the normal 4. See below:

O O O O O O O O O O O O

O O O O O O O O O O

O O O O O O O O O O O

O O O O O

O O O O O O

0 0 0 0 0

O O O O O O

O O

The sub-assemblies will fit into the spots shown below. I've lower

cased them to better show them, and the rings that will knit them in

place are marked as "x"'s. When done it'll look like the one to the

right.

o o O O O O O O O O O O o o O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

o x O O O O O O O O O x o O O O O O O O O O O O O O

o O O O O O O O O O O o O O O O O O O O O O O O

x x x O O O O O x x x O O O O O O O O O O O

o o O O O O O O o o O O O O O O O O O O

o x O O O O O x o O O O O O O O O O

o O O O O O O o O O O O O O O O

x x x O x x x O O O O O O O

o o O O o o O O O O O O

o x O x o O O O O O

o O O o O O O O

Then it's just a matter of knitting the sides of the triangles

together. This can be rather tricky til you get the hang of it. Knitting

6 dags together give you a hexagon that works well for a coif, or

anything that needs a circle. Though you CAN get away with only 5, just

double check your measures. Again, each armorer has his own way to do

things. And even though I left the points undone on the above examples,

I think you got the idea and could finish them yourselves. I will

mention one thing. You can do cut-outs in the mail using this method in

reverse. It lends itself to triangles, losenges, hexagons, etc. in

clothing/show armor. I put cut-outs all through my friend's mini-skirt

at her request...sigh!

There's only one thing I can think of that needs mentioned and then

this tutorial is pretty much done. When making a bernie/shirt you may

find it easier to build it as if it were a surcoat and then join the

sides later. Even if you don't, when you go to merge the front and back

you'll get an annoying surprise. The rows don't match up. You'll have

the situation like the left and will have to add rings as in the right.

O O O O O O O O

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 O O O x O O O O

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

O O O O x x x x O O O O

And that's about it for the basics. The only thing yet to post is a

paper I put together for a class I taught years back that shows the

basic measures for various armors. I'll be posting it separately because

I'm still arguing with my scanner. Right now it looks to be working out

to 150k for each of the 2 pages, so if your modem is slow you may have a

wait to download. All the feedback I've seen so far I have to consider

positive, glad that I could help and hope this thread doesn't stop with

the tutorial.

Chuck Delaney/culann mac cruimeinn

The Lecher

lunatic

egomaniac

Celt/all the above

From: medievalbk at aol.com (Medievalbk)

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

Subject: Re: Chainmaille Tutorial for Beginners

Date: 06 Sep 2000 22:25:26 GMT

> This is getting into an area where each

> armorer starts to figure out the best way that works for him/her. Wish I

> could help more.....experiment and find your own unique approach...........

> There's only one thing I can think of that needs mentioned and then

> this tutorial is pretty much done. When making a bernie/shirt you may

> find it easier to build it as if it were a surcoat and then join the

> sides later. Even if you don't, when you go to merge the front and back

> you'll get an annoying surprise. The rows don't match up.

Build the suit ON the body. Start with two 3 foot long 6 inch wide strips on

the shoulders. Notice that the rings do not hang straight down. [If you can

find an early SCA "Tube" shirt--attach two straps to a tube, you'll see the

entire lower front hanging/stressed off of one central neck ring. DO NOT DO

THIS.]

Connect at the elbow level front and back. This is where the body flexes the

least. Leave the sides open.

Build 4 two to three foot long 4-1-4 chains.

Wear an old T-shirt you can mark-up.

Build outwards to the start of the t-shirt sleeve. Attach the 4 chains with a

3-1 top to the shoulder where the chains will rest on the body and not hang in

the air.

Now raise your arm as high as it will go, and mark how wide the gap is on the

t-shirt. Fill this in with rows ending with 3-1 at the top when needed. Always

checking with the arm raised.

If the front and back do not match up, remember a Z pattern of 3-1 to both

sides of a strip will shorten the row.

Vilyehm the Merchant

Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 12:02:46 -0400

From: Zathras <zathras at raex.com>

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

Subject: Re: Chainmaille Tutorial. Thanks for catching my goof!

Medievalbk wrote:

> Build the suit ON the body. Start with two 3 foot long 6 inch wide strips on

> the shoulders. Notice that the rings do not hang straight down. [If you can

> find an early SCA "Tube" shirt--attach two straps to a tube, you'll see the

> entire lower front hanging/stressed off of one central neck ring. DO NOT DO

> THIS.]

> Connect at the elbow level front and back. This is where the body flexes the

> least. Leave the sides open.

> Build 4 two to three foot long 4-1-4 chains.

> Wear an old T-shirt you can mark-up.

> Build outwards to the start of the t-shirt sleeve. Attach the 4 chains with a

> 3-1 top to the shoulder where the chains will rest on the body and not hang in

> the air.

> Now raise your arm as high as it will go, and mark how wide the gap is on the

> t-shirt. Fill this in with rows ending with 3-1 at the top when needed.

> Always checking with the arm raised.

> If the front and back do not match up, remember a Z pattern of 3-1 to both

> sides of a strip will shorten the row.

> Vilyehm the Merchant

M'Lord Vilyehm,

Call me dense but I couldn't follow your method. I guess because you use

differing terms for your descripitions. However I'd like to puzzle it through if you could assist, my method isn't the only way and it's nice to have extra ideas to pass along that may work the better for others.

Also after looking over the part you brought up from the tutorial I see I made an error in my description of how to make a shirt. The "surcoat" method I find very workable but I omitted to mention that added panels of mail would be needed under the arms. Attaching the "surcoat" sides without that will cause undue stresses in the piece and not make it fit right. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

culann mac cruimeinn

chieftain of clann oi carrinuinn