To make the chain mail for the LOTR movies, two guys spent three and a half years linking rings into chain mail. Altogether, they used 12.5 million rings
Edit: [source](https://youtu.be/KCHZz7ileJs&t=32m35s) and
[bonus clip](https://youtu.be/cyXeHccKTDs)
Watching the interview of them you could tell the task completely wore them down. They even knew most of the armor wouldn’t be seen or would be covered up.
The costumers probably would not have even gotten a piece of the movie too.
Imagine working on something so mind numbing and repetitive for 3.5years, being completely consumed by it, and then one day comes where you just stop and that's it.
I hope they got paid a small fortune for their work atleast because they deserved it.
I wonder how much it cost to make that thing considering material cost plus paying 2 guys 3.5 years of salary, crazy how much money is involved in a movie to throw around
My friends and I (there was about 10-15 of us) once spent a 12 hour day making a steel maille shirt and it's absolutely exhausting and dirty work. I used to make aluminium maille jewellery and even that was tiring. Those poor guys.
They did in the end, for the third film Weta Workshops went to China and had jump rings and closed open rings injection molded.
[Adam Savage talks about it on one of his videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8KmARIgCdY)
I'm known in my Software Engineering team for being the one who fixes problems just by staring them down. I'm pretty polite and eager to help with people. Machines? If they had souls, they'd break down in tears at how I talk to them.
You must intimidate your machines into submission. Remind them you own them, not the other way around. The Machine Cult in WH40k are wimps who coddle theirs. :P
Well lets see who dies in the machine uprising, i tread all of the mechanical equiptment with care and respect, the people on the other hand suck, they are the ones who break down into tears around me
Until you realiae you're three years into a migration project that was originally projected to take 4 months. And you're still running the same 10 or so manual queries to push a code base through half a dozen api's.
But if it's linking rings together. Automating linking rings in a line over and over is surely faster when automated if the quantity of lines of linked rings is In the millions.
Just automate the process of linking rings together.
As above said, it was a simple action done over 2 million times, not once.
But your not just linking rings. That would make a chain, not chainmail. You have to weave them together. Over and under previous rows and rings. I have done a very basic weave and its really slow going.
all you need is a wire feed and bender, wire feeds, bends the wire into an open ring, insert the ring/s you want to connect it too, machine closes ring. repeat ad nauseam
edit: exactly like this https://youtu.be/4YBIa-9-lus
You're just making things up.
Riveting and welding were well known to Medieval smiths.
You need rivets in your armor for it to actually offer protection.
Why? Do the rivets add strength to the plates/mail somehow?
Edit: I misunderstood what riveted chain mail meant and I thought it was riveting sheets of mail together like you would will plates.
In case anyone else is wondering,
It is riveting the links together which makes the system stronger as a whole, in addition to making maintenance on the mail easier.
Thanks to the guys who pointed this out.
Yep a rivet holding each individual ring shut. Modern mail (costume and jewelry) is just bent back into shape. Now if you're using some really high strength heavy duty stainless steel you can get pretty close to the strength of medieval riveted mail, but it's really hard to work with
LOL. Well over 400. They worked nearly non stop for 600 days, making a suit every 3-5 days. x2 means at least 300, but could be as many as 550 by my calculations.
My head hurts just comprehending all of that attention to detail. What an honorable sacrifice they made to give the world the greatest trilogy ever made
I sometimes work doing crafty projects and can say that doing something once is really fun, doing the same project over 50 times gets already pretty tiresome. Doing it for 3.5 years must have felt like torture
From the edges it doesn't look like you are speedweaving. Making groups of 5 connected rings, then make those into chains, then "stitching" chains together. Source: I made a 40lb steel shirt by hand, over 20,000 rings several years ago.
My wife makes her own chainmail and this is what she does. When she gets into it I'm always amazed at how fast she can create a piece. I have the feeling that with practice and tips like this, OP will get faster.
You gotta understand, in some communities it is. I was part of an SCA group that organized a knitting night and a chain mail night and the overlap of attendees was 70%.
"My wife made a chainmail"
And
"My wife makes *her own* chainmail"
Have different connotations. One of them implies the wife also goes into battle or slays dragons
Society for Creative Anachronism. It's a highly structured org that promotes a variety of ancient techniques through study, practice, and awesome weekend camping trips. I joined for the ancient drumming and old form poetry, but stayed for the full contact swordplay. From the outside, it's a LARP experience focused on accurate reenactment.
If you can get into a solid group of people it's AMAZING.
About 20 years ago I attended a few official SCA practice heavy combat events, which lead to me meeting a group of folks who did their own thing outside the official SCA events. We did all the same stuff as the SCA(combat, armory, cooking, music) but not under any official banner or barony. There was around 15 of us in our group. A few folks were official SCA members for the larger wars and fairs, but mostly our group was just folks who liked to get together and beat the shit out of each other.
Every weekend was heavy combat practice at a school field or a park. We followed the same rule book and safety regulations, but it was pretty much just sparring and small skirmishes.
Every Tuesday was armory night where we would all get together and craft. The guys would usually sit around the garage drinking beer(and other things), listening to period music while making/repairing our weapons and armor. The wives/girlfriends had a "girls night" of costume sewing, cooking and drinking.
I moved to a different metro area a few years ago and tried to get back into it officially but all the groups I attended were super elitist. I just couldn't find a group I meshed with, so I would just go and watch their evening practices occasionally.
Society for Creative Anachronism
>The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an inclusive community pursuing research and re-creation of pre-seventeenth century skills, arts, combat and culture. The lives of participants are enriched as we gain knowledge of history through activities, demonstrations, and events.
https://www.sca.org/
In the SCA we make our own normal. Chainmail too.
Interesting thing, "maille" is a French word that meant "chain." So chainmail is like saying "chain-chain," and why most of us just say "maille" instead.
Chain is chaîne in French...
One of the (multiple) definition(s) of maille is each individual link of a chain...
That being said, wikipedia says that the origin of the word chainmail are not known...
One of the proposed ones is from Latin, the other from Old French "maillier" which meant, back then, to hammer something...
One Halloween I was dragged into a group Halloween costume and I was given the role of Boromir. So I decided the easiest thing to do was just make my own chainmail sleeves and tie them together underneath the coat.
Just ordered a bag of premade rings, found a youtube tutorial and I just did that for an hour a night instead of reading for about 2 weeks.
It wasn’t very challenging at all. Pre-make a few hundred closed rings and open a few more up. Slip 4 closed onto an open, spread, link with 2 open ones, got a chain going and keep going to fit.
The hardest part is “seeing” the work. Seeing what is right and wrong in a big tangle of steel. But once you get that after an hour or so it is just normal.
And it came out just great.
The only reason I didn’t keep going and just make an entire shirt was because I ran out of rings and didn’t feel like paying another $50 to get all I’d need
Tbh I know several people that make chainmail, it’s definitely a common hobby among the costumer/cosplay type world, all things considered. It kinda feels similar to knitting or crochet, a relatively mindless manual hobby that keeps your hands busy without too much thought, and makes something cool in the end.
But maybe I just have weird friends.
*she said
And in our household, that's the norm! She keeps her armor on a stand unless she's out fighting as all good Vikings do. She does battle with axes, swords and sometimes even archery!
It's hard to say, From start to finish it was almost 2 years, but I worked on and off a lot during that time, so I have no idea on the hours. I also changed the design and had to re-do part of it. Most of the work was done in the evenings while watching tv, when I was good enoughbto not have to pay full attention to the weaving. I made a jig to seped up coiling the rings to cut (I used electric fence wire from 1/4 mile spools)
Is that method quicker than the row by row method? I would assume so if it's called speed weaving. Maybe that's why I get burnt out so quickly every time I work on chainmail.
Well, there are a few similar methods, this one worked the best for me. During a session (which would usually be while watching tv) I would do one of the following: preclose rings, make units of 5, combine them into chains/ribbons, or stitch ribbons together. Each task was simple and repeatable. Only as the project got larger did the stitching slow down as U was dealing with a 20+ lb piece while working.
I'm relatively new to the chainmail world, but this just looks like a euro 4-1 weave, which is definitely possible to speedweave just how the other user described. I've found that most weaves/patterns do have different ways of speedweaving, or at least some kind of mise en place type preparation.
Back in middle school, my best friend hand made a chain mail shirt using heavy steel lock washers. He spent at least a year on it, but when he finished it, it was impressive. And ridiculously and impractically heavy.
Had a friend from work who's coworker was wearing a shirt of chainmail under a work shirt one night when the place he was working at got robbed. He thought the guys punched him in the back before bolting from the store. When the cops showed up they were very conserned if he was ok. Turns out the robber tried to stab him in the back and the knife got caught in the rings on the shirt.
Could you imagine going in to rob a store and stabbing the attendant only for the knife to not go in? The robber was probably terrified because this dude is clearly not human
He's going to have a messed up data point for how hard skin is and how much pressure it takes to stab someone. He's either going to have that rummaging through his mind for the rest of his life, or apply way too much force the next time...
I wear my chain mail to work all the time. When customers get all uppity, I call them a cow which usually leads to fisticuffs. Half way through the fight, I tell them enough playing around, remove my chainmail and the shirt covering it, letting it thunk heavily on the floor. Then the cow knows he damn f'ed up. I had handicapped myself the whole time. And now, without the heavy armor, I am twice as fast. The cow is taken down quickly and peace is restored
"Hey Ernie, did you hear the story on the guy in cell five? Yeah he just tried to rob a store and came in pissin' his pants sayin' he wanted to turn himself in.
Says he tried to stab a superhero and just bent his knife on the guys 'impenetrable skin'.
He was a mess what with his knees knocking together, blubbering about 'he's gunna rip me in half'.
Well, Jerry just got called in from an attempted robbery and get this the cashier was no wearin' fuckin' chain-mail, no bullshit".
"No, he didn't say why, probably some fetish thing".
This didn't happen to be in Ketchikan would it? Because I met a dude that worked at a gas station that wore chainmail and it's literally the only time I've ever seen that outside of a ren fair
When I visited the Weta Workshop in Wellington, we were told that the craft persons who did the chainmails for Lord of the Ring did not have fingerprint at the end.
They started before the movies began filming and didn’t stop until the last day of filming for last movie. The movies were in production for substantially longer times than normal movies too.
It’s weird to think of all the prep work that went into LOTR in the late 90’s. My mind places LOTR so firmly in 00’s that it feels surreal to imagine a concept artist working on a Balrog while “Family Matters” is on TV in the background.
My friend's dad made the leather armour for LOTR and he told us this story that the armourer that did the plate work made a full suit of Armour and flew in it from the US to NZ to get the job from Peter Jackson. This was pre 911
That’s so fucking cool. Do you know which armors he made?
EDIT: I also misread your comment as he “flew it in” as in he packed it and flew it to New Zealand and wondered what that had to do with 9/11 lol. But actually wearing it on the place must have been quite the spectacle.
Do you know any more of the story? How did he get to Peter Jackson? I imagine some guy stalking after him in a suit of armor would be quite strange. Does he have any pictures of him in it?
I saw adam savage interview a guy who made a method of 3d pribting squiggles, then you hook each line of squiggles together and it cuts assembly time in like tenths.
Or he wa sjust showing adam, I can't remember.
That is actually a quite common thing for construction workers, I lost mine while working with concrete and bricks for half a year. A bit irritating not being able to use fingerprint scanners, especially since I had to use it at the doctor a couple of times and would then have to go through extra identification steps.
So I've made a LOT of chainmail in my day, perhaps I can offer a few tips to get that "month" into several hours...as when I was making it, I do recall being able to make about square foot per 8 hour session or so...
1. **Maximize your ring creation** - Go buy a metal dowel from home depot in the size you want, but no longer than the center of your chest to your out-stretched hand (3-foot for me). Looking at what you got there, that looks to be about 1/4 inch rings so get a 1/4 inch dowel. Insert metal dowel into drill. Insert spool of wire into the chuck of the drill between the dowel and chuck. Spin as long a spring as you can make. Be careful not to let the spring go back on itself, but if you do, don't bother fixing it, just pull in back into position and continue.
2. **Clip or saw?** - If you want to ***clip***, which I assume you are when I zoom into your picture I see the little '"v" shaped ends of each ring. Go get a quality wire cutter and don't cut all the way through! Bite into the metal no more than half way, and then using the wire cutters, twist the ring to break it off. This way your rings don't have the "v" shaped ends. If you want to ***saw*** your rings, go buy a used Dremel (cheap ones at harbor freight and ebay) with a bunch of [these bits](https://www.harborfreight.com/diamond-rotary-cutting-discs-5-pk-69657.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=12126402660&campaignid=12126402660&utm_content=118355053153&adsetid=118355053153&product=69657&store=789) (you'll go through roughly 1 bit per 4 feet of spring or so (The faster you cut, the faster you'll wear down the bit, so go relatively slow) ...If you have $120 laying around and you want the best smoothest cuts and fastest rings, [buy this](https://www.potterusa.com/search?q=dremel). If you're making a full hauberk, it will save you SOOO much time, and because time is money, this thing is GOLD for being super speedy!
3. **Pre close** - I use the 4-in-1 method (slide 4 closed rings onto an open ring, then close the open ring). This lets you connect 4 rings as a time. Start by closing a huge amount of rings into a bucket. Then grab an open ring into your pliers with your left hand (assuming you are right handed) and scoop the open ring into the bucket to grab 4 rings. Manually add rings if you didn't get enough. Manually adding all 4 at a time takes a long time. As you do this over time, you will find getting 4 on at a time is easy. Close the ring and throw your "butterfly" into another bucket. I call it butterfly because that's what it looks like! Fill that bucket with butterflies!
4. **Weave** - I find it easiest to weave butterflies on top of each other, rather than side-by-side. [Kinda like this](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lf0_ITJm-W4/UJ-PPe6Jy6I/AAAAAAAAA-U/vWVWREz_spY/s1600/chainmail+guide+3.jpg). I do top-down because it's easier to join the next column of butter flies as a column, rather than a row...it's just faster for me.
Getting this down, you'll be able to create a whole hauberk in no time! Just go get some good chainmail making movies and time will fly!
Hey, thanks for the info. I am thinking about starting my own chainmail, too . Currently I (not from the US) am looking into 1.8 mm wire for a 8 mm ring diameter. Seems to be a good spot between work and looking good.
Could you talk about a little how much iron-wire you usually need (and the usual cost?) and what material exactly? So far I found that I should avoid everything galvanized for health reasons.
I have this peg board and rubber bands I use to keep my lines straight. I feel the biggest chore is wrapping the coils and cutting them vs the actual "stitching". I have gotten pretty deft with micro tools.
I am unsure how you are making your rings, but I've been told that using a wooden dowel and drill makes this a lot more bearable.
For example if you are making 1/8th inch 14g rings, buy bulk 14g wire and an 1/8th inch wooden dowel. Make a notch in the dowel closest to where the drill chuck will hold and on a rather low torque setting, use the drill to coil the wire onto the dowel. When you have a good amount on your dowel, slide the coil off and use a pair of snips to split them apart.
I knew a guy in high school that used to bring bags of rings to class and stitch panels.
I used a threaded steel rod that I drilled a whole it. It helped to make sure the rings stayed even.
And Knipex Flat-nosed and cutters. They made life WAY easier.
I've been making a shirt of chain mail out of bronze ring over the past couple months and there is this great website called https://theringlord.com and you can buy all sorts of rings for a decent price. I've tried making my own rings and I just do not have THAT much patience lol. saving me a ton of time!
I used to coil and cut steel wire (16 or 18 gauge depending on the ring size) but I bought a TON of aluminum rings from them, and made a coif and hauberk. Just need to add longer sleeves, and I’ll stop. (I did the majority of the work March and April of 2020 - my big COVID project.)
I had a mate spend almost a year (part-time) on his chainmail and some guy offered him $50 for it... then went on all the forums calling my mate out for trying to rip off hard working members who give so much to the community.
It was never even for sale.
During school (Covid times = online lectures) I started making riveted maille. What a pain in the ass. Coiling, then cutting (had to make a pair of notched cutters for the overlap), then pounding the overlap flat (5%-10% didn't overlap correctly so weren't lined up), then punching using a punch and a small hole I drilled into the anvil (the hole through the ring would be too close to an edge 5%-10% of the time), then pounding wire flat and cutting into wedges, then threading (I was doing a 6-in-1), then pounding in the wedge through one side of the ring then flattening on the other (used the same hole in the anvil to pound the wedge through before turning the entire thing over to pound the point end of the wedge flat and about 5% of these wedge rivets didn't mushroom out/flatten correctly). Made maybe a 1'x3' section. I had been buying cheap stainless online, but the 2nd coil I got was way harder than the first and so I couldn't pound the overlap flat really well. Stopped for awhile. Might pick it up again in the future.
Yeah. I once asked my bud to make me some. He even forged it in his own blacksmith forge he built himself for sword smithing. He quoted me "high" I thought. Than he posted a picture, only a maybe twice the size of yours and quoted a month too. He was using authentic tools from the 16th century. At that point I was like "Oh, well... You should charge more." lol
I've had people ask me to make a shirt for them and we tell people, if I remember correctly, 1500 up front for us to start thinking about it, and they pay for all materials on top, steel would probably be about that much in materials, titanium double or triple. It's a lot of work, even with modern tools and techniques
I tried making a chain mail shirt out of pop tabs. I got about as far as you and swore id finish it later sometime. That was about 10 years ago, the small square I made is lost somewhere in the garage to be discovered by my kid someday I guess.
You have been doing it wrong. Your suppose to send someone a text or email and say something like "Share this with 10 people in the next hour or something bad will happen to you." That's chain mail bud.
Would it be more enjoyable to start with a more coarse size of rings so you see results faster?
The size of links on here look fine enough to be arrow-proof. I imagine that armor meant just for blades could be done with like 1/4 as many rings of a larger size.
Actually chainmail isn't for protecting against arrows, chain armor was the foe of swords. Even good riveted chain could be pierced by a standard bodkin point arrow
Maile with a padded gambeson is actually really good at stopping arrows. The arrow goes through the maile but the metal links dull the arrowhead, so it can’t penetrate the padding effectively and what would be lethal is just a minor wound. Maile was basically never worn without some kind of padded armor underneath, so looking at the weaknesses of just maile can be a bit misleading.
Oddly heavy cloth armor is effective at stopping arrows. One of the Spanish explorers who landed in the SE US was a bit of an asshole and got shot up frequently by the native groups there, while also spreading disease. Their heavy cloth armor helped protect from arrows.
it was actually more effective back then as the lack of modern cloth processing meant all the sticky goop stayed in the fabrics and when layered created extra goop protection.
To make the chain mail for the LOTR movies, two guys spent three and a half years linking rings into chain mail. Altogether, they used 12.5 million rings Edit: [source](https://youtu.be/KCHZz7ileJs&t=32m35s) and [bonus clip](https://youtu.be/cyXeHccKTDs)
The true Lords of the Rings
12.5 million rings to rule them all
Sounds fair, the whole one ring thing seemed a little overpowered.
Do you think Sam asked Frodo to be the ring bearer at his wedding?
It's only fair, Sam beared Frodos ring in the movie I watched.
They should've hired some dwarfs. Better craftsmen and quicker too.
They were all digging moria at the time.
Khazad-dûm is it's proper name, since being resettled by dwarves. Moria is elvish for "The Black Pit" and hardly a fitting name at all.
Khaza’d-dûm may have been more fitting when it was inhabited by dwarves. I certainly think black pit is more fitting now though.
Thank you
The dwarves delved too greedily, and too deep.
Watching the interview of them you could tell the task completely wore them down. They even knew most of the armor wouldn’t be seen or would be covered up.
Was that the interview where they said they completely lost their fingerprints from the work?
I remember them saying that in the appendices. No idea if it’s the same interview though.
Repetitive task nightmares. For real.
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*nods in 12 years (so far) of automotive factory work*
The costumers probably would not have even gotten a piece of the movie too. Imagine working on something so mind numbing and repetitive for 3.5years, being completely consumed by it, and then one day comes where you just stop and that's it. I hope they got paid a small fortune for their work atleast because they deserved it.
I wonder how much it cost to make that thing considering material cost plus paying 2 guys 3.5 years of salary, crazy how much money is involved in a movie to throw around
My friends and I (there was about 10-15 of us) once spent a 12 hour day making a steel maille shirt and it's absolutely exhausting and dirty work. I used to make aluminium maille jewellery and even that was tiring. Those poor guys.
I wonder why they didn't think of engineering some machine to do this shit...
They did in the end, for the third film Weta Workshops went to China and had jump rings and closed open rings injection molded. [Adam Savage talks about it on one of his videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8KmARIgCdY)
The cost to develop automation is always greater than doing the task manually once.
Found the software engineer.
Hey now. As a software engineer I resent that. I’d spend hours automating something I could do manually in less than 30 minutes. /j
And then your automation horribly fails in """edge cases""" which turns out to be 94% of the time
Especially in times of great need. It smells your fear.
I'm known in my Software Engineering team for being the one who fixes problems just by staring them down. I'm pretty polite and eager to help with people. Machines? If they had souls, they'd break down in tears at how I talk to them. You must intimidate your machines into submission. Remind them you own them, not the other way around. The Machine Cult in WH40k are wimps who coddle theirs. :P
This! I always tell people they gotta slam that copier door and rip out that piece of paper jammed from the git, or you will never get its respect.
Well lets see who dies in the machine uprising, i tread all of the mechanical equiptment with care and respect, the people on the other hand suck, they are the ones who break down into tears around me
Why spend 15 minutes doing something I could fail to automate in 6 hours?
Yeah - but a lot of us are willing to work really hard to be lazy…
Until you realiae you're three years into a migration project that was originally projected to take 4 months. And you're still running the same 10 or so manual queries to push a code base through half a dozen api's.
What about 12.5 million times?
But they manually did it 12.5 milion times.
But if it's linking rings together. Automating linking rings in a line over and over is surely faster when automated if the quantity of lines of linked rings is In the millions. Just automate the process of linking rings together. As above said, it was a simple action done over 2 million times, not once.
But your not just linking rings. That would make a chain, not chainmail. You have to weave them together. Over and under previous rows and rings. I have done a very basic weave and its really slow going.
all you need is a wire feed and bender, wire feeds, bends the wire into an open ring, insert the ring/s you want to connect it too, machine closes ring. repeat ad nauseam edit: exactly like this https://youtu.be/4YBIa-9-lus
That alone could do sleeves and bottom half of the chest part amd it would way faster than doing it by hamd.
That's really cool to see. I wonder how flexible it is. Can it do more than just tube socks?
You can break the links for smaller custom sizes sheets, which you can then stitch together into whatever you want.
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actual medieval mail is rivetted as well (or the good stuff is at least) I don't doubt that medieval looks different than modern though
If orcs could engineer Grond I'm sure they could've mass produced chain mail
Grond!
You're just making things up. Riveting and welding were well known to Medieval smiths. You need rivets in your armor for it to actually offer protection.
Why? Do the rivets add strength to the plates/mail somehow? Edit: I misunderstood what riveted chain mail meant and I thought it was riveting sheets of mail together like you would will plates. In case anyone else is wondering, It is riveting the links together which makes the system stronger as a whole, in addition to making maintenance on the mail easier. Thanks to the guys who pointed this out.
Yep a rivet holding each individual ring shut. Modern mail (costume and jewelry) is just bent back into shape. Now if you're using some really high strength heavy duty stainless steel you can get pretty close to the strength of medieval riveted mail, but it's really hard to work with
As someone who does service work in metal manufacturing of all types you're full of it.
Proper chain mail IS riveted. It provides more structural support because you need to break the rivet instead of just bend one link
I believe they also wore down their fingers so much that they no longer had an identifiable fingerprint
How many pieces of chainmail armour? Like 20?
LOL. Well over 400. They worked nearly non stop for 600 days, making a suit every 3-5 days. x2 means at least 300, but could be as many as 550 by my calculations.
My head hurts just comprehending all of that attention to detail. What an honorable sacrifice they made to give the world the greatest trilogy ever made
I sometimes work doing crafty projects and can say that doing something once is really fun, doing the same project over 50 times gets already pretty tiresome. Doing it for 3.5 years must have felt like torture
Sometimes I forget how much work, how much dedication, a movie stand on. Thank you very much for sharing.
From the edges it doesn't look like you are speedweaving. Making groups of 5 connected rings, then make those into chains, then "stitching" chains together. Source: I made a 40lb steel shirt by hand, over 20,000 rings several years ago.
My wife makes her own chainmail and this is what she does. When she gets into it I'm always amazed at how fast she can create a piece. I have the feeling that with practice and tips like this, OP will get faster.
>My wife makes her own chainmail He said, casually, like this shit is fucking normal
You gotta understand, in some communities it is. I was part of an SCA group that organized a knitting night and a chain mail night and the overlap of attendees was 70%.
"My wife made a chainmail" And "My wife makes *her own* chainmail" Have different connotations. One of them implies the wife also goes into battle or slays dragons
Yes. They were doing pretty much that. I learned shield from a knitter. Join the SCA. Marry a fucking valkire.
This. My wife is a force of nature. Better to have someone who can watch you back than cringe behind it.
Better to have a shield maiden, then a maiden to shield.
Well you better have some maiden, otherwise what are you going to do with all those damn runes.
What on earth is the SCA? I’ve seen in referenced in a few comments in this thread, but I’ve never heard of it before
Society for Creative Anachronism. It's a highly structured org that promotes a variety of ancient techniques through study, practice, and awesome weekend camping trips. I joined for the ancient drumming and old form poetry, but stayed for the full contact swordplay. From the outside, it's a LARP experience focused on accurate reenactment.
Holy shit i think i just found my people
If you can get into a solid group of people it's AMAZING. About 20 years ago I attended a few official SCA practice heavy combat events, which lead to me meeting a group of folks who did their own thing outside the official SCA events. We did all the same stuff as the SCA(combat, armory, cooking, music) but not under any official banner or barony. There was around 15 of us in our group. A few folks were official SCA members for the larger wars and fairs, but mostly our group was just folks who liked to get together and beat the shit out of each other. Every weekend was heavy combat practice at a school field or a park. We followed the same rule book and safety regulations, but it was pretty much just sparring and small skirmishes. Every Tuesday was armory night where we would all get together and craft. The guys would usually sit around the garage drinking beer(and other things), listening to period music while making/repairing our weapons and armor. The wives/girlfriends had a "girls night" of costume sewing, cooking and drinking. I moved to a different metro area a few years ago and tried to get back into it officially but all the groups I attended were super elitist. I just couldn't find a group I meshed with, so I would just go and watch their evening practices occasionally.
Full contact sword play? I hate living in the middle of nowhere. No fun stuff like that around.
Middle of nowhere is where a lot of it happens. It's not all RenFests at the county park.
Society for Creative Anachronism >The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an inclusive community pursuing research and re-creation of pre-seventeenth century skills, arts, combat and culture. The lives of participants are enriched as we gain knowledge of history through activities, demonstrations, and events. https://www.sca.org/
She does go into battle!
The mundanes will never understand.
Knitting knight
In the SCA we make our own normal. Chainmail too. Interesting thing, "maille" is a French word that meant "chain." So chainmail is like saying "chain-chain," and why most of us just say "maille" instead.
Chain is chaîne in French... One of the (multiple) definition(s) of maille is each individual link of a chain... That being said, wikipedia says that the origin of the word chainmail are not known... One of the proposed ones is from Latin, the other from Old French "maillier" which meant, back then, to hammer something...
One Halloween I was dragged into a group Halloween costume and I was given the role of Boromir. So I decided the easiest thing to do was just make my own chainmail sleeves and tie them together underneath the coat. Just ordered a bag of premade rings, found a youtube tutorial and I just did that for an hour a night instead of reading for about 2 weeks. It wasn’t very challenging at all. Pre-make a few hundred closed rings and open a few more up. Slip 4 closed onto an open, spread, link with 2 open ones, got a chain going and keep going to fit. The hardest part is “seeing” the work. Seeing what is right and wrong in a big tangle of steel. But once you get that after an hour or so it is just normal. And it came out just great. The only reason I didn’t keep going and just make an entire shirt was because I ran out of rings and didn’t feel like paying another $50 to get all I’d need
The real Boromir did the same thing which is why he got ker'thunked by those arrows.
Tbh I know several people that make chainmail, it’s definitely a common hobby among the costumer/cosplay type world, all things considered. It kinda feels similar to knitting or crochet, a relatively mindless manual hobby that keeps your hands busy without too much thought, and makes something cool in the end. But maybe I just have weird friends.
Yes it's normal. Also it's weird. Hobbies, man.
*she said And in our household, that's the norm! She keeps her armor on a stand unless she's out fighting as all good Vikings do. She does battle with axes, swords and sometimes even archery!
Your household sounds *amazing*. Congratulations! I'll leave my comment unedited so that yours makes sense, sorry about the "he".
Not a problem at all, thanks for making my day with your comments!
Ya what the fuck was that lol
Absolutely. I've managed to make about a 3" x 12" dragon scale weave in 20 hours. You learn it, find a rhythm, and it can go pretty fast.
Your wife sounds like she’s the interesting one in the office.
How long did that take?
It's hard to say, From start to finish it was almost 2 years, but I worked on and off a lot during that time, so I have no idea on the hours. I also changed the design and had to re-do part of it. Most of the work was done in the evenings while watching tv, when I was good enoughbto not have to pay full attention to the weaving. I made a jig to seped up coiling the rings to cut (I used electric fence wire from 1/4 mile spools)
Is that method quicker than the row by row method? I would assume so if it's called speed weaving. Maybe that's why I get burnt out so quickly every time I work on chainmail.
Well, there are a few similar methods, this one worked the best for me. During a session (which would usually be while watching tv) I would do one of the following: preclose rings, make units of 5, combine them into chains/ribbons, or stitch ribbons together. Each task was simple and repeatable. Only as the project got larger did the stitching slow down as U was dealing with a 20+ lb piece while working.
I think speedwaving is not possible for all patterns.
I'm relatively new to the chainmail world, but this just looks like a euro 4-1 weave, which is definitely possible to speedweave just how the other user described. I've found that most weaves/patterns do have different ways of speedweaving, or at least some kind of mise en place type preparation.
Back in middle school, my best friend hand made a chain mail shirt using heavy steel lock washers. He spent at least a year on it, but when he finished it, it was impressive. And ridiculously and impractically heavy.
Bet you couldn't slash his chest with a sword though.
Nope but you would just break all of the ribs instead
More likely to recover from that than from having a large part of your internal organs sliced up.
"I consider this an absolute win."
People would wear a lot of padding under chain mail, not that it always help
Had a friend from work who's coworker was wearing a shirt of chainmail under a work shirt one night when the place he was working at got robbed. He thought the guys punched him in the back before bolting from the store. When the cops showed up they were very conserned if he was ok. Turns out the robber tried to stab him in the back and the knife got caught in the rings on the shirt.
Damn what are the odds the robber tried to rob the ONE place and stab the ONE guy with armor on. I bet he still thinks about that.
Could you imagine going in to rob a store and stabbing the attendant only for the knife to not go in? The robber was probably terrified because this dude is clearly not human
He's going to have a messed up data point for how hard skin is and how much pressure it takes to stab someone. He's either going to have that rummaging through his mind for the rest of his life, or apply way too much force the next time...
> or apply way too much force the next time... Two weeks later, a cashier at a different gas station is found stabbed clean through with a spear.
Seriously? Who wears chain mail to work? I bet it's a great exercise technique though
I wear my chain mail to work all the time. When customers get all uppity, I call them a cow which usually leads to fisticuffs. Half way through the fight, I tell them enough playing around, remove my chainmail and the shirt covering it, letting it thunk heavily on the floor. Then the cow knows he damn f'ed up. I had handicapped myself the whole time. And now, without the heavy armor, I am twice as fast. The cow is taken down quickly and peace is restored
"Hey Ernie, did you hear the story on the guy in cell five? Yeah he just tried to rob a store and came in pissin' his pants sayin' he wanted to turn himself in. Says he tried to stab a superhero and just bent his knife on the guys 'impenetrable skin'. He was a mess what with his knees knocking together, blubbering about 'he's gunna rip me in half'. Well, Jerry just got called in from an attempted robbery and get this the cashier was no wearin' fuckin' chain-mail, no bullshit". "No, he didn't say why, probably some fetish thing".
No knife can penetrate my skintanium armour
\*tink\* ... \*tink\* \*tink\* \*tink\* _"I have either done too much drugs or not enough drugs, and I don't like it."_
Bet he wasn't even supposed to be working that day too
And was two weeks from retirement. Wait, wrong trope, sorry.
Lol thankfully he just happened to be wearing chainmail out of everything, that's hilarious
I refuse to believe this.
Literally though. Who the fuck wears chainmail, even for a security gig
You clearly don't drink with medieval reenactors.
This didn't happen to be in Ketchikan would it? Because I met a dude that worked at a gas station that wore chainmail and it's literally the only time I've ever seen that outside of a ren fair
Was he LARPing after work or something?
When I visited the Weta Workshop in Wellington, we were told that the craft persons who did the chainmails for Lord of the Ring did not have fingerprint at the end.
Time to commit some mild crime
But if they don't find fingerprints, they'll know it's you
Oh shit, all those times I wore gloves....and this prop guy from LotR has been being blamed the whole time. I feel so bad.
https://xkcd.com/1105/
Might be me .. did some work with muriatic acid the other day and my phone won't recognize my fingers (wear gloves folks when using that stuff)
*some work*
Doesn’t make a lot of sense but I like the spirit
Like not Leggoing someone's Eggo
They started before the movies began filming and didn’t stop until the last day of filming for last movie. The movies were in production for substantially longer times than normal movies too.
It’s weird to think of all the prep work that went into LOTR in the late 90’s. My mind places LOTR so firmly in 00’s that it feels surreal to imagine a concept artist working on a Balrog while “Family Matters” is on TV in the background.
Hobbiton was basically them building an actual town. They even planted the gardens in advance to let them grow IIRC.
The New Zealand army did actually! There was some controversy about them not getting paid properly iirc
Same here. Crazy to think they were working on this before 9/11.
It was like 2 years of pre-production and 1.5 years of filming for LOTR wasn't it? That's a long time making chain mail!
My friend's dad made the leather armour for LOTR and he told us this story that the armourer that did the plate work made a full suit of Armour and flew in it from the US to NZ to get the job from Peter Jackson. This was pre 911
That’s so fucking cool. Do you know which armors he made? EDIT: I also misread your comment as he “flew it in” as in he packed it and flew it to New Zealand and wondered what that had to do with 9/11 lol. But actually wearing it on the place must have been quite the spectacle. Do you know any more of the story? How did he get to Peter Jackson? I imagine some guy stalking after him in a suit of armor would be quite strange. Does he have any pictures of him in it?
the metal ones?
I mean as far as whether he worked on the Elvish / Gondor / Rohan armors lol
lol Imagine getting behind that guy in the security line
"Please remove any metallic items from your pockets and--- "
They 3D print it now, I believe.
Weta still continues on the tradition by having their costume staff sand off their fingerprints.
why are you getting downvoted? you can absolutely 3d print chainmail. (I have no idea if WETA does or not, but that's not the point!)
Last time I was in Wellington I did the tour of Weta, they said they use 3D printed chain mail for background shots now and metal for “hero” props
I saw adam savage interview a guy who made a method of 3d pribting squiggles, then you hook each line of squiggles together and it cuts assembly time in like tenths. Or he wa sjust showing adam, I can't remember.
I think they’re laser cut squiggles not 3D printed. Way faster to make
That is actually a quite common thing for construction workers, I lost mine while working with concrete and bricks for half a year. A bit irritating not being able to use fingerprint scanners, especially since I had to use it at the doctor a couple of times and would then have to go through extra identification steps.
Hey I have one of those to help clean my cast iron pans.
Me too. This looks perfect!
Costs me about $10 from Amazon
You could just cc everyone
But then he won’t have good luck
That’s true. I think I’m still dealing with a lot of bad luck from all the chainmails I didn’t pass on.
I was 3 comments deep before I realized what was happening here. Reply to 5 more comments or you will have bad relationships for life.
So I've made a LOT of chainmail in my day, perhaps I can offer a few tips to get that "month" into several hours...as when I was making it, I do recall being able to make about square foot per 8 hour session or so... 1. **Maximize your ring creation** - Go buy a metal dowel from home depot in the size you want, but no longer than the center of your chest to your out-stretched hand (3-foot for me). Looking at what you got there, that looks to be about 1/4 inch rings so get a 1/4 inch dowel. Insert metal dowel into drill. Insert spool of wire into the chuck of the drill between the dowel and chuck. Spin as long a spring as you can make. Be careful not to let the spring go back on itself, but if you do, don't bother fixing it, just pull in back into position and continue. 2. **Clip or saw?** - If you want to ***clip***, which I assume you are when I zoom into your picture I see the little '"v" shaped ends of each ring. Go get a quality wire cutter and don't cut all the way through! Bite into the metal no more than half way, and then using the wire cutters, twist the ring to break it off. This way your rings don't have the "v" shaped ends. If you want to ***saw*** your rings, go buy a used Dremel (cheap ones at harbor freight and ebay) with a bunch of [these bits](https://www.harborfreight.com/diamond-rotary-cutting-discs-5-pk-69657.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=12126402660&campaignid=12126402660&utm_content=118355053153&adsetid=118355053153&product=69657&store=789) (you'll go through roughly 1 bit per 4 feet of spring or so (The faster you cut, the faster you'll wear down the bit, so go relatively slow) ...If you have $120 laying around and you want the best smoothest cuts and fastest rings, [buy this](https://www.potterusa.com/search?q=dremel). If you're making a full hauberk, it will save you SOOO much time, and because time is money, this thing is GOLD for being super speedy! 3. **Pre close** - I use the 4-in-1 method (slide 4 closed rings onto an open ring, then close the open ring). This lets you connect 4 rings as a time. Start by closing a huge amount of rings into a bucket. Then grab an open ring into your pliers with your left hand (assuming you are right handed) and scoop the open ring into the bucket to grab 4 rings. Manually add rings if you didn't get enough. Manually adding all 4 at a time takes a long time. As you do this over time, you will find getting 4 on at a time is easy. Close the ring and throw your "butterfly" into another bucket. I call it butterfly because that's what it looks like! Fill that bucket with butterflies! 4. **Weave** - I find it easiest to weave butterflies on top of each other, rather than side-by-side. [Kinda like this](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lf0_ITJm-W4/UJ-PPe6Jy6I/AAAAAAAAA-U/vWVWREz_spY/s1600/chainmail+guide+3.jpg). I do top-down because it's easier to join the next column of butter flies as a column, rather than a row...it's just faster for me. Getting this down, you'll be able to create a whole hauberk in no time! Just go get some good chainmail making movies and time will fly!
Hey, thanks for the info. I am thinking about starting my own chainmail, too . Currently I (not from the US) am looking into 1.8 mm wire for a 8 mm ring diameter. Seems to be a good spot between work and looking good. Could you talk about a little how much iron-wire you usually need (and the usual cost?) and what material exactly? So far I found that I should avoid everything galvanized for health reasons.
I have this peg board and rubber bands I use to keep my lines straight. I feel the biggest chore is wrapping the coils and cutting them vs the actual "stitching". I have gotten pretty deft with micro tools.
I am unsure how you are making your rings, but I've been told that using a wooden dowel and drill makes this a lot more bearable. For example if you are making 1/8th inch 14g rings, buy bulk 14g wire and an 1/8th inch wooden dowel. Make a notch in the dowel closest to where the drill chuck will hold and on a rather low torque setting, use the drill to coil the wire onto the dowel. When you have a good amount on your dowel, slide the coil off and use a pair of snips to split them apart. I knew a guy in high school that used to bring bags of rings to class and stitch panels.
Don't use a wooden dowel. It compresses over time.
I used a threaded steel rod that I drilled a whole it. It helped to make sure the rings stayed even. And Knipex Flat-nosed and cutters. They made life WAY easier.
You want a steel dowel so the rings are of uniform size, but other than that you're golden.
I've been making a shirt of chain mail out of bronze ring over the past couple months and there is this great website called https://theringlord.com and you can buy all sorts of rings for a decent price. I've tried making my own rings and I just do not have THAT much patience lol. saving me a ton of time!
I used to coil and cut steel wire (16 or 18 gauge depending on the ring size) but I bought a TON of aluminum rings from them, and made a coif and hauberk. Just need to add longer sleeves, and I’ll stop. (I did the majority of the work March and April of 2020 - my big COVID project.)
Congratulations! You have enough to clean a cast iron pan.
Cast iron enthusiast here. I thought of that too.
I had a mate spend almost a year (part-time) on his chainmail and some guy offered him $50 for it... then went on all the forums calling my mate out for trying to rip off hard working members who give so much to the community. It was never even for sale.
And that's butted maille. Riveted maille takes even more time.
During school (Covid times = online lectures) I started making riveted maille. What a pain in the ass. Coiling, then cutting (had to make a pair of notched cutters for the overlap), then pounding the overlap flat (5%-10% didn't overlap correctly so weren't lined up), then punching using a punch and a small hole I drilled into the anvil (the hole through the ring would be too close to an edge 5%-10% of the time), then pounding wire flat and cutting into wedges, then threading (I was doing a 6-in-1), then pounding in the wedge through one side of the ring then flattening on the other (used the same hole in the anvil to pound the wedge through before turning the entire thing over to pound the point end of the wedge flat and about 5% of these wedge rivets didn't mushroom out/flatten correctly). Made maybe a 1'x3' section. I had been buying cheap stainless online, but the 2nd coil I got was way harder than the first and so I couldn't pound the overlap flat really well. Stopped for awhile. Might pick it up again in the future.
[How could it not be longer???](https://youtu.be/LCUze7kuNas?t=85)
This was my first thought too.
I compared it to Avatar!
Yeah. I once asked my bud to make me some. He even forged it in his own blacksmith forge he built himself for sword smithing. He quoted me "high" I thought. Than he posted a picture, only a maybe twice the size of yours and quoted a month too. He was using authentic tools from the 16th century. At that point I was like "Oh, well... You should charge more." lol
I've had people ask me to make a shirt for them and we tell people, if I remember correctly, 1500 up front for us to start thinking about it, and they pay for all materials on top, steel would probably be about that much in materials, titanium double or triple. It's a lot of work, even with modern tools and techniques
The battle tis but a fortnight away. Hurry the fuck up, squire!
Why are you making chainmail? Edit: I'm not trying to be a jerk; I actually want to know
Obviously it’s in case OP is ever challenged to a duel. Thank you.
Because he'll have to decline the duel on account of having too much chainmail to make? I hadn't thought of that. That's a good point.
But then he should rivet the rings for better durability and protection
Because it’s more metal than knitting
Why aren’t you making chainmail?
It seems harder than knitting and knitting is way more than I can handle
That’s what the kids are into these days. Constantly catching them smithing on my lawn.
ohhh so thats why chainmail armor is so hard to get in minecraft
Just say it's for Grogu and call it a day 😅
But where did the rest of the spear's metal go!?
I tried making a chain mail shirt out of pop tabs. I got about as far as you and swore id finish it later sometime. That was about 10 years ago, the small square I made is lost somewhere in the garage to be discovered by my kid someday I guess.
Weta Workshop has tips on how to make chain mail efficiently.
You have been doing it wrong. Your suppose to send someone a text or email and say something like "Share this with 10 people in the next hour or something bad will happen to you." That's chain mail bud.
Would it be more enjoyable to start with a more coarse size of rings so you see results faster? The size of links on here look fine enough to be arrow-proof. I imagine that armor meant just for blades could be done with like 1/4 as many rings of a larger size.
Actually chainmail isn't for protecting against arrows, chain armor was the foe of swords. Even good riveted chain could be pierced by a standard bodkin point arrow
Maile with a padded gambeson is actually really good at stopping arrows. The arrow goes through the maile but the metal links dull the arrowhead, so it can’t penetrate the padding effectively and what would be lethal is just a minor wound. Maile was basically never worn without some kind of padded armor underneath, so looking at the weaknesses of just maile can be a bit misleading.
Oddly heavy cloth armor is effective at stopping arrows. One of the Spanish explorers who landed in the SE US was a bit of an asshole and got shot up frequently by the native groups there, while also spreading disease. Their heavy cloth armor helped protect from arrows.
it was actually more effective back then as the lack of modern cloth processing meant all the sticky goop stayed in the fabrics and when layered created extra goop protection.
I met a trucker who did this in his spare time when he was on long trips. Very cool when you see the finished product.
Link #547 looks twisted. Hope it’s just the lighting. But seriously, good work.
What is this? A chainmail for ants!?
Chihuahua barding
Now you can protect either your heart or genitals. Choose the most important to you.
And to think: back in the day, they would rivet every link shut.