Thinking about making my own chainmail for a costume, this is the first video I've found that actually explains the pattern instead of just being how to connect the rings!
you are the best you even drew it so logical that i understood it in one go. and i wont too look at your video again because you explained it perfectly thank you my dear lord. thank you.
Sir, you're a blessing! Thank you so much for your tutorial. It's well done and rich in useful information. You love your craft and it shows. Just showing how to put it on is fantastic. Not having to make some type of fastening is really a wonderful idea. Thanks again.
Great video thanks. 1 tip, dont make chainmail on a rod like you do. Its way faster to make chains first with a 2-1-2-1-2-1-2 pattern. Prepare a bucket of closed rings and a bucket of split rings, then proceed to make a chain with that pattern. I make them 10 "double links" (5 4in1 together) or 20 "double links" (10 4in1 together) long. This is very easy and can be done while watching tv or something. Then just lay down the chains and put them together with split rings. It takes way les effort, because only the last step requires concentration and a good surface or workingstation
No that's even takes longer 4-1 procedure is faster since it already made a premade parts for the chainmaille all you have to do afterwards is to joint the 4-1 rings you made, hell I finished the front and back in just week and a few days by doing it
@@REMASTEREDAGAIN hi, i used 4 in 1 as well, but you can first connect all those 4in1 in one direction as a chain, which is very easy. Only the second direction, which turns seperate chains into a fabric requires you to concentrate on the pattern and use a flat surface
@@scotstephenson114 Hi Scot, wish you good luck, I hope you finish yours. Im not even halfway. Make sure you are happy with your wire and have enough of it in stock or that you can buy the same wire again if you need to. I would advise you to have at least 500 meters. In addition to this video I would recommend the one EpicFantasy made. He explains the tactic I found easiest. If you combine the two videos, you will pick it up. It takes practice at first, but you will soon get fast.
I recently made by first bit of chain mail, just a small square to test it out. Very fun, my inside diameter was 18mm and they looked to large to me, definitely gunna go down to at least 14 mm
8 to 9mm rings were basically the biggest historic rings were I recommend 8mm rings as it still quite protective but not as laborious as 6mm (like I do, it takes tens of thousands of rings more to make a shirt and makes you go insane lmao)
I would love to see one of these days of how to make a chainmail jacket that looks like normal street wear like it just looks like a heavy jacket but if you're getting mugged and he tries to stab you you got a better chance at surviving because he's pretty much fighting a metal wall at this point.
I've seem some people use chainmail as protection under normal clothes. Another benefit for chainmail as normal wear would be for weight loss. This piece I made weighs probably about 12 kg if I'm not mistaken, it really drains you to wear it all day
Something in the middle. Also keep in mind if you pattern it correctly it stretches in one direction and is rigid in the other. So you want it to stretch horizontally and be rigid vertically. Leave a lot of extra room in the arms as well, they have a tendency of getting really tight when flexing and bending your arms.
I have to pick back up my chainmaille project. t has been sitting for way too long now. I use 1.6mm SG2 mig welding wire because from the start I was planning on welding my rings and galvanized wire would be a noxious and rather dangerous affair to attempt to weld. To weld the rings shut (butted ends together) I made a welder made from parts salvaged from an old microwave oven. The welder works wonderfully well and makes very nice and more importantly very strong rings and beautifull looking chainmaille. I realize welding chainmaille is not historically accurate although I am quite sure some smith somewhere must have attempted it one way or the other and most likely succeeded to some degree though I expect any medieval method of welding small items 10.000's of times would be impractical. Apart from a fantastic welder (which works surprisingly well for something thrown together from bits I had collecting dust in my shop) I made various tooling to aid in chainmaille manufacture. A thingy to store the 15kg spool of welding wire which lets me unroll wire in a controlled fashion without the springback nastiness, a very handy and safe thing to make coils using a hand drill and I modified an electricians side wire cutter to liberate rings from the wound coils. Where most people use mini bolt cutters I was more or less forced to use a different method.Not only mini bolt cutters where hard to find in my area but also I didn't like the finish the cutter left on the rings. I tried the effect with a larger side cutter and it didn't work for my purpose. Luckily I found a video on a score and break method which turned out to be the perfect method to separate rings from the coil for butt welding. The score and break method leaves an almost perfect flush and straight cutting surface at the end of the wire which is very nice to weld shut again. Even for butted chainmaille I imagin the method works better then the diagonal cut ends. I find diagonal ends on the rings tend to catch on clothing and rings seem to be more proned to opening up while in use. I weld close rings before I start weaving and store them seperately. I weave my maille using a adaptation to a speed weaving method called 3 plus 1 (also featured on a TH-cam video) where I weave the previously welded rings into the chainmaille and weld the new rings shut in situ. Sounds hard to do but it is surprisingly easy, though slow but very satisfying to do. I have several short videos on my very small channel which show the welder in experimental action (The rings I use for the experiment are made with 1.2mm sg2 mig welding wire. Some of my tooling is also featured on the channel. I plan to do a more exploratory video on the insides and workings of the welder and a video showing how I weld chainmaille using the DIY butt welding machine which I call the Ringmatron.
Thanks for all the info. My maille setup is very rudimentary, as you can probably gather from the videos. I am definitely gonna check your channel out. Very interested in the DIY welder as well, I love making my own tools. I am getting a Dremmel tool soon which I'm gonna experiment with for ring production, might make scoring really easy
Dear good Sir! I'd like to know more of how you have done it! My questions would be: how did you find out the correct circumference around the shoulder? By that I mean for the vest part of the mail. What was the lowest armpit point? What was your armpit junctioning method? Horizontal or "V" or other which I dont know of? Why i ask is because I have hanging sleeves on which I made, but every time I try to tailor it, the bottom midline along the under arm part gets tight and excess material is present at latissimus dorsi or pectoralis maior when flexing the shoulder. Even if I let my arm simply down by my side there is material extrusion between my arm and thorax, and circular tension arises from the top of my delts. I would kindly ask you to elaborate in detail if possible, please!
Honestly I struggled with this part myself and it's been quite a while since I did it last. I'll have a look at my maille and see if I can clear anything up. From what I can remember mine also feels like you are carrying golfballs under your armpits when you let your arm hang down. One solution that I've heard from a few other tutorials was to plainly leave gaps in these areas, not exactly historically accurate I would assume as the armpits are particularly vulnerable areas and maille was used to protect these where plate armour wasn't able to
How long does it take to make approximately? For a beginner. I know he says at the end to give it 3 or 4 months but is there an idea in hours? Like if you really put your all into it?
honestly I generally left the armpit out, it's something you need to experiment with to see what fits. I know leaving it out is definitely not historically correct, but hey, hopefully no one tries to stab us in the armpit 😉
@@ManinaCanArmoury fair enough. Its for cosplay purposes anyway, So who Cares about historical accuracy, am i right? 😁 If anything ill just figure out how to patch it up on my own. Thank you for the tutorial, and the fast reply as well!
Missing triangular expansions / contractions for chest waist and hips. - also elbows should have gusset triangular pockets so you can make long sleeves and still be able to flex your arm
Question- You describe the first part in assembling of 3 strips of 20 rows, with a gap in the center left for your head how many rings across should the whole thing be first, and how many rings across should be left out for your head ( in the row)?
It's hard to say exactly because your ring size will differ. I just measured it on my own body. I'll check exactly how many mine has when I get a chance and let you know.
@@ManinaCanArmoury thank you. I am using 1/2" rings, 16 gauge. If you have a picture of what it looks like after putting together those first 60 rows, I'd love to see it!
ty for that Video i want to start making a chainmail with a 6 in 1 pattern (because i think it look much better) i never done anything like that but i want to do it now xD ty for the video helps a lot
Thank you for the video! :) I'm attempting to make my own chain mail shirt but I'm having trouble with connecting the front and back pieces. If I fold the front and back, the pattern doesn't allign but goes like this: ))) (((. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong please? :)
You might be shifting the two ends one row up or down when you fold it, make sure to align the rows properly and that there isn't a step in the rows as they go around. I made the front and back separately and joined them at the side, if that helps
@@ManinaCanArmoury Thank you for your quick reply! :) I looked at the pattern again and shifting one row up/down seems to be the mistake. I'm attempting to make the front and back separately as well to join them at the sides. Thanks again, now I can continue without worrying why it didn't match up :)
@@ManinaCanArmoury Solved the issue, took some plant cord and cut short pieces of it to repeatedly connect 2 rings from both sides of the armpit mail. Doesnt block my moves but holds very tight and feels reasonably comfortable (if you take one piece of cord for the whole thing it wont properly fit as i found out). Even if it was used in battle its to small of a spot to cut the whole cord what one piece of cord wont do, beside of that it looks good. Maybe you can make a video to tell people about that option, its the only way ive found that works properly and doesnt change the pattern of the rings. Id realy like to share this method with people who dont know how to do the armpit because it took me a lot of time to figure this out and I dont want people to waste as much time on it as I did.
4:43 "you just won't put the rings in there" yeah and then you get to the part where you DO need to put in rings across to close the gap and realise that life aint so good after all 2 hours of sweat blood and tears (mostly tears and wishing you were dead) later you realise you need to undo all your work because what you doing aint working
Very sceptical about that “english chainmail. using butted mail is no use at all against attacks. no fighter in a buhurt would risk his health wearing this chunk.
You are correct, when I refer to english mail I'm referring to the pattern. In the video before this one I explain the different types of mail and that butted mail is just for decorative purposes and not strong enough to fight with
Wish you would have showed how you step down the sleeve ! I thought this video would have actually show you how not just bla bla bla , sorry but i thumbs downed you man , i came here to see how not listen how .....
sportster davidson sorry that he didn’t want to take weeks to just show us the start to finish process of how to make mail. If you’re actually making it then I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure it out, if not the good lord do you need help
Thinking about making my own chainmail for a costume, this is the first video I've found that actually explains the pattern instead of just being how to connect the rings!
Exactly, everyone says "Here is how you attach 4 in 1" but no one says "Here is how you make the shirt"
you are the best you even drew it so logical that i understood it in one go. and i wont too look at your video again because you explained it perfectly thank you my dear lord. thank you.
Sir, you're a blessing! Thank you so much for your tutorial. It's well done and rich in useful information. You love your craft and it shows. Just showing how to put it on is fantastic. Not having to make some type of fastening is really a wonderful idea. Thanks again.
Thanks for your kind words. Maybe one day my health will be good enough to start wacking plate again
I've been looking on youtube for a long time for a video like this. You made it very clear, thank you :)
Thanks for the info in sleeves, I've been trying to find more clarity on tailoring
no problem man, if you need help just ask
Thanks for explaining the pattern!
Great video thanks. 1 tip, dont make chainmail on a rod like you do. Its way faster to make chains first with a 2-1-2-1-2-1-2 pattern. Prepare a bucket of closed rings and a bucket of split rings, then proceed to make a chain with that pattern. I make them 10 "double links" (5 4in1 together) or 20 "double links" (10 4in1 together) long. This is very easy and can be done while watching tv or something. Then just lay down the chains and put them together with split rings. It takes way les effort, because only the last step requires concentration and a good surface or workingstation
Yeah I agree. Just used the rod to better show how the rings connect ;)
No that's even takes longer 4-1 procedure is faster since it already made a premade parts for the chainmaille all you have to do afterwards is to joint the 4-1 rings you made, hell I finished the front and back in just week and a few days by doing it
@@REMASTEREDAGAIN hi, i used 4 in 1 as well, but you can first connect all those 4in1 in one direction as a chain, which is very easy. Only the second direction, which turns seperate chains into a fabric requires you to concentrate on the pattern and use a flat surface
I made two links of 1-2-1-2-1-2-1, but can’t figure out how to connect them. Any tips?
@@scotstephenson114 Hi Scot, wish you good luck, I hope you finish yours. Im not even halfway. Make sure you are happy with your wire and have enough of it in stock or that you can buy the same wire again if you need to. I would advise you to have at least 500 meters.
In addition to this video I would recommend the one EpicFantasy made. He explains the tactic I found easiest. If you combine the two videos, you will pick it up. It takes practice at first, but you will soon get fast.
I came to learn how to make chainmail. I'll stay for your taste in music my friend
I recently made by first bit of chain mail, just a small square to test it out. Very fun, my inside diameter was 18mm and they looked to large to me, definitely gunna go down to at least 14 mm
Smaller looks better imo
yeah it does but also it just functions better, liker better penitration protection@@ManinaCanArmoury
8 to 9mm rings were basically the biggest historic rings were
I recommend 8mm rings as it still quite protective but not as laborious as 6mm (like I do, it takes tens of thousands of rings more to make a shirt and makes you go insane lmao)
I would love to see one of these days of how to make a chainmail jacket that looks like normal street wear like it just looks like a heavy jacket but if you're getting mugged and he tries to stab you you got a better chance at surviving because he's pretty much fighting a metal wall at this point.
I've seem some people use chainmail as protection under normal clothes.
Another benefit for chainmail as normal wear would be for weight loss. This piece I made weighs probably about 12 kg if I'm not mistaken, it really drains you to wear it all day
@@ManinaCanArmoury maybe add a gambeson underneath it could work perfectly shock absorption.
I'm wanting to make a Lorica Hamata with the included shoulder piece.
when sizing / planning the shirt, should one measure it so it is stretched when donned or should it be lose? or something in the middle?
Something in the middle. Also keep in mind if you pattern it correctly it stretches in one direction and is rigid in the other. So you want it to stretch horizontally and be rigid vertically. Leave a lot of extra room in the arms as well, they have a tendency of getting really tight when flexing and bending your arms.
I have to pick back up my chainmaille project. t has been sitting for way too long now.
I use 1.6mm SG2 mig welding wire because from the start I was planning on welding my rings and galvanized wire would be a noxious and rather dangerous affair to attempt to weld.
To weld the rings shut (butted ends together) I made a welder made from parts salvaged from an old microwave oven. The welder works wonderfully well and makes very nice and more importantly very strong rings and beautifull looking chainmaille. I realize welding chainmaille is not historically accurate although I am quite sure some smith somewhere must have attempted it one way or the other and most likely succeeded to some degree though I expect any medieval method of welding small items 10.000's of times would be impractical. Apart from a fantastic welder (which works surprisingly well for something thrown together from bits I had collecting dust in my shop) I made various tooling to aid in chainmaille manufacture. A thingy to store the 15kg spool of welding wire which lets me unroll wire in a controlled fashion without the springback nastiness, a very handy and safe thing to make coils using a hand drill and I modified an electricians side wire cutter to liberate rings from the wound coils. Where most people use mini bolt cutters I was more or less forced to use a different method.Not only mini bolt cutters where hard to find in my area but also I didn't like the finish the cutter left on the rings. I tried the effect with a larger side cutter and it didn't work for my purpose. Luckily I found a video on a score and break method which turned out to be the perfect method to separate rings from the coil for butt welding. The score and break method leaves an almost perfect flush and straight cutting surface at the end of the wire which is very nice to weld shut again. Even for butted chainmaille I imagin the method works better then the diagonal cut ends. I find diagonal ends on the rings tend to catch on clothing and rings seem to be more proned to opening up while in use.
I weld close rings before I start weaving and store them seperately. I weave my maille using a adaptation to a speed weaving method called 3 plus 1 (also featured on a TH-cam video) where I weave the previously welded rings into the chainmaille and weld the new rings shut in situ. Sounds hard to do but it is surprisingly easy, though slow but very satisfying to do.
I have several short videos on my very small channel which show the welder in experimental action (The rings I use for the experiment are made with 1.2mm sg2 mig welding wire. Some of my tooling is also featured on the channel.
I plan to do a more exploratory video on the insides and workings of the welder and a video showing how I weld chainmaille using the DIY butt welding machine which I call the Ringmatron.
Thanks for all the info. My maille setup is very rudimentary, as you can probably gather from the videos. I am definitely gonna check your channel out. Very interested in the DIY welder as well, I love making my own tools. I am getting a Dremmel tool soon which I'm gonna experiment with for ring production, might make scoring really easy
Can you zoom in on the sleeves?
Dear good Sir! I'd like to know more of how you have done it! My questions would be: how did you find out the correct circumference around the shoulder? By that I mean for the vest part of the mail. What was the lowest armpit point? What was your armpit junctioning method? Horizontal or "V" or other which I dont know of? Why i ask is because I have hanging sleeves on which I made, but every time I try to tailor it, the bottom midline along the under arm part gets tight and excess material is present at latissimus dorsi or pectoralis maior when flexing the shoulder. Even if I let my arm simply down by my side there is material extrusion between my arm and thorax, and circular tension arises from the top of my delts. I would kindly ask you to elaborate in detail if possible, please!
Honestly I struggled with this part myself and it's been quite a while since I did it last. I'll have a look at my maille and see if I can clear anything up. From what I can remember mine also feels like you are carrying golfballs under your armpits when you let your arm hang down. One solution that I've heard from a few other tutorials was to plainly leave gaps in these areas, not exactly historically accurate I would assume as the armpits are particularly vulnerable areas and maille was used to protect these where plate armour wasn't able to
How long does it take to make approximately? For a beginner. I know he says at the end to give it 3 or 4 months but is there an idea in hours? Like if you really put your all into it?
I am still a bit confused about the part of sleeves for the armpit. Other than that, i am very grateful for the tutorial!
honestly I generally left the armpit out, it's something you need to experiment with to see what fits. I know leaving it out is definitely not historically correct, but hey, hopefully no one tries to stab us in the armpit 😉
@@ManinaCanArmoury fair enough. Its for cosplay purposes anyway, So who Cares about historical accuracy, am i right? 😁 If anything ill just figure out how to patch it up on my own. Thank you for the tutorial, and the fast reply as well!
Missing triangular expansions / contractions for chest waist and hips. - also elbows should have gusset triangular pockets so you can make long sleeves and still be able to flex your arm
Have you tried any other weave for your shirt? I am currently making one using hp3s5 and hp3s6
No not yet. Would like to try kings maille sometime though
@@ManinaCanArmoury Simply double up the rings for euro four in one
Question-
You describe the first part in assembling of 3 strips of 20 rows, with a gap in the center left for your head how many rings across should the whole thing be first, and how many rings across should be left out for your head ( in the row)?
It's hard to say exactly because your ring size will differ. I just measured it on my own body. I'll check exactly how many mine has when I get a chance and let you know.
@@ManinaCanArmoury thank you. I am using 1/2" rings, 16 gauge. If you have a picture of what it looks like after putting together those first 60 rows, I'd love to see it!
Thank you for the explain, you are great man.
My pleasure man, thank you for subscribing!
How do I get the armpit parts right? That’s the only think I’m struggling with right now
Like, how do I connect them 😊
Sorry for the late replies. I honestly can't remember how I did them, I think I just left a hole where they bunch up haha
ty for that Video i want to start making a chainmail with a 6 in 1 pattern (because i think it look much better) i never done anything like that but i want to do it now xD ty for the video helps a lot
Thanks for the nice words, good luck with the mail!
May I ask you: I have a riveted flatring short sleeved mail. Does it make sense to expand it with round butted rings? Would it look ugly/ahistorical?
I reckon it should look okay, don't think it's historically accurate but I can imagine a soldier patching his mail with butted rings in the field
Thank you for the video! :) I'm attempting to make my own chain mail shirt but I'm having trouble with connecting the front and back pieces. If I fold the front and back, the pattern doesn't allign but goes like this: ))) (((. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong please? :)
You might be shifting the two ends one row up or down when you fold it, make sure to align the rows properly and that there isn't a step in the rows as they go around. I made the front and back separately and joined them at the side, if that helps
@@ManinaCanArmoury Thank you for your quick reply! :) I looked at the pattern again and shifting one row up/down seems to be the mistake. I'm attempting to make the front and back separately as well to join them at the sides. Thanks again, now I can continue without worrying why it didn't match up :)
Finally! The easy way!
im stuck with that armpit connecting issue : (
I found most people just leave a gap in the armpits, it can be quite a challenge to get it to work
@@ManinaCanArmoury Solved the issue, took some plant cord and cut short pieces of it to repeatedly connect 2 rings from both sides of the armpit mail. Doesnt block my moves but holds very tight and feels reasonably comfortable (if you take one piece of cord for the whole thing it wont properly fit as i found out). Even if it was used in battle its to small of a spot to cut the whole cord what one piece of cord wont do, beside of that it looks good. Maybe you can make a video to tell people about that option, its the only way ive found that works properly and doesnt change the pattern of the rings. Id realy like to share this method with people who dont know how to do the armpit because it took me a lot of time to figure this out and I dont want people to waste as much time on it as I did.
nice JFAC tshirt ;)
Thanks! One of my all time favorite bands
4:43 "you just won't put the rings in there"
yeah and then you get to the part where you DO need to put in rings across to close the gap and realise that life aint so good after all
2 hours of sweat blood and tears (mostly tears and wishing you were dead) later you realise you need to undo all your work because what you doing aint working
South frican accent ?
Very sceptical about that “english chainmail. using butted mail is no use at all against attacks. no fighter in a buhurt would risk his health wearing this chunk.
You are correct, when I refer to english mail I'm referring to the pattern. In the video before this one I explain the different types of mail and that butted mail is just for decorative purposes and not strong enough to fight with
Wish you would have showed how you step down the sleeve ! I thought this video would have actually show you how not just bla bla bla , sorry but i thumbs downed you man , i came here to see how not listen how .....
sportster davidson sorry that he didn’t want to take weeks to just show us the start to finish process of how to make mail. If you’re actually making it then I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure it out, if not the good lord do you need help
He did, at about eight minutes in while showing us the assembly.
Don't spend so much on your hobby that you can't afford to pay attention.