Chainmail

[odin]

Has anyone ever tried/succeeded making chainmail?

[X-ray]

What sort of damage are you trying to protect against?
(Blunt or projectile)

[odin]

Er....none really. I'm just thinking about finding a new hobby :-D.

[X-ray]

You gonna make the traditional jousting mail? Knights and horses, that sort of thing?

[odin]

I guess....I'm not aware of any specific kind of chainmail yet though :-).

A friend of mine (Bryan Jones) makes chainmail for a living and teaches "chainmail 101" at a lot of Sci-Fi conventions.  You might contact him to see what he might have to say.  I haven't had the opportunity to keep up with him in a few years, but he may have even written a book on the subject by now.  He *is* damned good at it.

Wayne

[the_leander]

A mate of mine made a full suit of chain using metal washers, took him about 2 years of evenings in to do so, but was very robust... if somewhat cumbersome.

Having worn the stuff I can say it can be quite restrictive, not to mention very heavy (the full suit wieghed about half of what I did.

Plate armour is fun though, people don't tend to stand in the way of someone in that stuff, something about having pointy bits of metal sticking out of joints and shoes...

And the people who do the re enactments are quite mad :-D

[Doobrey]

A mate of mine made some the same way, using split washers from Screwfix, he said it was a real PITA trying to force them open when putting it together.

I had a go a few years back, trying to make a lightweight version using aluminium wire. That was pretty easy, just wind it around a metal rod to make a long spiral, then just cut down the length to make the individual links. Still a slow process though..I managed about a square foot an afternoon.