Maille


Maille
First off, is it mail, maille, or chainmail? Digging into the history will find you buried in controversy. Since mail already refers to a material made of chain, I find the term chainmail to be redundant. I prefer Maille and use that term throughout this website. So, how did I become interested in making maille? The fall of 2005 found me at the Renaissance Fair in northern California with my wife and kids, an annual outing for our family. As usual they were bugging me about not being in costume. They have been in costume for years. While munching on a turkey leg and drinking a tasty adult malt beverage I decided to use the rest if the day to select a costume. After some thought I decided there was no reason to select a peasant as my character. Being either a noble or a knight quickly sorted to the top of the list. Since I have always thought that maille would be fun to make, the knight won. After some web research, I found a few maille user groups and decided on the specifications for my hauberk, or maille shirt. I picked 16 gauge stainless steel as the material and 1/4" ID. All the advice I could find strongly recommended not to make my first project a big one. Not easily deterred, I ordered 20 pounds of wire. I used a piece of 1/4" cold rolled steel as a mandrel and wound my first coil using a cordless drill. Next up was building a jig for cutting the coil into individual rings. By the time the jig was ready my order for and arbor and jewelers slitting saw blades had arrived. The picture below shows the completed setup.
	The coil is fed into the jig from the left and is pulled through by the can on the right with a cord that runs through the coil. As the saw cuts each ring free it drops on the cord for easy collection. Stainless is hard and has to be cut at very low RPMs or the saw blades self destruct. A fresh new blade would average about 20 minutes to cut a 32" coil into about 540 rings. Something not shown in this picture is the drip feed for the cutting fluid that both cools and lubricates the blade. It greatly extends the life of the blades which is important since they cost about $5 each and only last for a few coils before they are too dull to use.
	This is a close up of the blade cutting rings.
I started weaving my hauberk on our annual Boy Scout House Boat trip in November of 2005. The shirt was essentially done in September of 2006. I figure it was about 8 months of work although a number of other projects ate time. Finished it weighs 25 pounds and contains around 24,000 rings.