Butted, Riveted, Welded Mail - Guide For Reenactors, Larpers and Collectors
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Whether you are a collector or a larper or you have decided to start diving into the world of historical reenactment mail armour is a kind of armour that you have probably been looking at.
Mail was used by the Celts, by the Romans, by the Vikings, and all the way from the classical era as primary armour to the late middle ages as secondary armour, under plate.
Here is a guide to help you find the right mail armour just for you.
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so the moral of this story is, get anything you want unless you are a reenactor
Yes. That is the moral of the story
Or if your a reenactor roleplay as a fucking present who can only by the cheapest shit available.
Knitted armour. Use grey wool.
I'm glad you mentioned the type of weaves in mail armor; 4-in-1, 6-in-1, or even 8-in-1, as the higher weave concentration is VERY hard to pierce, especially if its riveted as well.
Was 6in1 and 8in1 historical? Do have some links to this topic?
@@celem91 interesting, thx. Do u maybe have the link at hand to that video?
I would be interested to understand on what archaeological evidence we come to the cinclusion that it was historical (in Europe).
Awesome explanation of types, material, and useage of mail armies. You bring light to the world. Fly high Metatron.
A slight correction: There is evidence for welded mail, e.g. Smith 1960 and Lang et al. 1992, though it is true that the conclusions are still open for some debate in the academic community. It is often hard to distinguish corroded rivets from welds in rings from punched solid rings. Vegard Vike in his 'Mail Weave' article does a nice summarisation of the above.
Henriette Lyngstrøm (a Danish archaeologist) made experiments a few years ago, which showed that you could cold-weld rings made from bog-iron. Due to the low carbon content, you could essentially strike them or press them hard together (similar to closing a rivet) and get a weld.
If you would like to, I can send you the articles though they are in Swedish and Danish respectively. I believe there exists a shortened version of the Vike article in english, which I may have somewhere.
What IS true, is that none of the commercially available welded mail shows any resemblance to the historical examples of welds. So it's still rings true that reenactors should not buy it, but stick to riveted :)
I have an aluminum maille shirt, and although I agree you shouldn't use it for combat, it took accidental sword blows without breaking.
I usually wear steel linked maille over a gambeson, then over that I wear a tabbard, so you don't see the maille at all. My friend likes to take swings at me because the chain doesn't budge at all. I bought an aluminum one for walking around the park and visiting with people and things like that so it wouldn't weight as much(1/3 of the weight) He thought I was wearing steel and took swings at it. I had to repair 3 of the rings, but it didn't break. I'd like to add, I'd never wear this in combat, i felt the blows as with chain I feel nothing.
I feel that I should make a note that I have also seen titanium mail for sale. It is usually quite expensive, and is billed as being as strong as steel (or stronger) but nearly as light as aluminium. I don't know if this is the case, but if their statements are accurate, then ti would of course only be good for collectors (unless you are a very wealthy LARPer and can throw away a lot of money on what is essentially overkill).
Theoretically I suppose it would be very good armor if you were planning to use it as such. I HAVE seen people who buy mail and wear it around town and stuff, and they state that they do so because it looks cool but also because it'll protect them if someone pulls a knife on them...so I suppose it could have use in a very dangerous neighborhood.
+Kyle Flanagan Well, titanium is as strong as steel, but lighter, so if they use same dimensions for the rings, a titanium mail would weigh about half what a steel one would. I think the correct numbers are about 60 %, but don't take my word on it, needs checking.
great video although one minor nickpick my reenactment group and possibly other(although i don't know for sure) allow butted although rivetted is highly encouraged. Also i'd also mention ease of repair for example butted often needs more repair but is easier to repair(compared to rivetted). although the main reason we allow butted is because many of our members are students and want maille but can't spend alot of money
Mail is good armor as it allows the armpits to breathe or sweat through it.
It would be interesting to see how modern top-tier chainmail used by police would have performed in medieval times against their mail.
Even as a larper riveted mail is worth to be looked into, since otherwise you will often lose rings over time, which sucks.
And hand welded mail DID EXIST historically, even though it was not very prevalent.
And I never heard of aluminium mail breaking from other larpers, especially the riveted mail. Only sometimes bended when people were stupid enough to hit it with anything else than latex swords.
+jerome96114 Among other things I and a friend of mine own aluminium butted and it opens all the time ;)
+Metatron Oh that could be the reason. All people I know personally that use aluminium shirts have riveted ones.
Small critique: no one likes white backgrounds. Hard on the eyes. Make 'em darker.
then its harder to see in the dark
TH-cam's background colour.... White..
Thanks this helped me understand the difference between "buttered mail" (or "butted mail", as it's apparently actually called) and riveted mail :)
5:55 tsk tsk tsk.
Not a banana for size...
aluminum mail armour should just be used for decoration, and costume, because the tensile strength ratio between steel and aluminum is 11:1 and the lightness ratio between aluminum and steel is 2.5:1 so, I'd prefer steel
I'm a pink helmet with flowers attached to them collector. The axe one would be a fine addition to my collection.
thank you bro
Aluminum armor would have been the most expensive possible thing in medieval times lol.
More than gold? Probably seeing as how aluminum didn;t exist then.. so scarcity equals value I suppose... Take some cans back in time to trade for gold... ballin' ; )
For LARPers, I would also not recommend butted mail, simply because it looses rings too easily. When you put a bit of strain on it, which includes regular wear and foam weapon combat, you´ll get tears and holes over time. Unless you want to portray a really shabby looking soldier or something like an orc, better stay with riveted mail.
Also, riveted mail simply looks better. Many larpers in my surrounding stay pretty close to historical armor and fashion simply because it looks good and is time-tested. And stand-ins like aluminium or plastic plate is pretty much only used by people with health problems or for items used by super-powered beings (like a chaos champion´s armor). But the majoritiy of larpers stay pretty close to historical clothing and armor. We´ve come a long way since green face-painted orcs, plastic ear elves and knitted mail warriors.
+Ize Bird the good thing about butted mail is that you can easily fix it with a pair of pliers
You can do the same thing with riveted mail. Nothing stops you from quickly fixing riveted mail with a butted ring if you want to; however having it riveted drastically reduces the chance that you need to repair it in the first place.
Also, a quick and decent field repair for any kind of mail is just a wire.
+Ize Bird afaik the use of butted rings to repair (rivited) mail ist also a historic method.
Glimmlampe1982 Two birds with one stone^^
The low maintenance of mail is one reason I became such a fan of that armor over the years: Can be easily repaired or tailored, de-rusts itself during use, takes very little storage place and doesn´t need tear- or rottable leather straps. This and the relative ease of putting it on and off.
I do disagree with your statement on welded maille. like you said it depends on what type of soldering material used, but most if not all welds are made with silver solder or steel solder which is almost stronger than the actual rings being welded. and there are videos on TH-cam that prove how effective welded maille is even against powerful pole arm thrusts. so if your a jouster I'd highly recommend it because most riveted Maille you buy is really thin flat rings that bend quite easy and when struck would have to be replaced or repaired for risk of structural integrity.
You forgot to mention knitted armor which is most suitable for actors.
Is he calling us "Number 1's" or "Noble Ones" at the beginning of his videos?
Noble Ones.
Steven Schneider either one works for me. However, he is saying "Nobleones".
Steven Schneider Well, we can't all be number 1, but I've discovered from TH-cam that up to half a dozen people can be "first".
Its a crime you don't have more subs.
OC they could have had ¨welded¨ mail but it would be quite the task to produce.
I wonder if they'll start making mail from this so called "super-steel", which is a new kind of mixture of aluminium and iron, which makes it as strong as titanium, but just a bit heavier than aluminium.
It's also apparently really cheap since it's basically just iron, aluminium, a bit of nickel and a few other cheap materials.
What about you are someone that want to make cheap and easy but stylish armor to protect against potential zombie bite?
Thanks for the info.
top well made chain mail fully fitted and made in Europe is less the a 1000 that's for riveted steel
He wrote glavanized at 6:52 instead of galvanized.
1:25 where does the image come from!? Gorgeous.
Would buying the tools and steel wire to make one's own riveted maille be a reasonable (albeit time-consuming) alternative to buying a very expensive armor, or would a hobbyist have no hope of producing real armor?
+Nadia Cerezo It is absolutely possible, but it is VERY time-consuming.
Making riveted mail is slightly harder then just weaving butted mail and you need some additional tools, but the main problem is that it takes even longer. And I for one do not have enough patience to make even a butted hauberk. For butted mail you just need to twist wire into rings and then cut them so that the ends touch, and then you are ready to go. For riveted mail, you need to cut rings so that the ends overlap, then somehow flatten those ends, either flattening the whole ring in the process, or just the overlapping part, depending on the period and region you want to reconstruct. Then you need to punch holes. And after adding each ring you need to rivet it. I am only aware how wedge-shaped rivets were done, they were basically a flattened stripe of wire cut into triangles. Everything here can be done with some creative use of the hammer and several pairs of modified pliers, but it would take a couple of years to finish for a contemporary person who is also working or studying at the same time.
Then you should also consider that maille should actually be tailored, not hang from a person as a older brother's T-shirt. But there are now guides online explaining that, and, in fact, it should be easier to tailor the maille you're aready making then trying to fit off-the-shelf shirt.
The fact how easy it was to make mail is, in my opinion, the main explanation for its popularity, especially for the cultures that had some mechanized ways of drawing wire. I'm actually a firm believer of the theory that the sudden prevalence of plate armour we start seeing in the artwork from the 15th century is more of the economic consequence of the Black Death, when unskilled labor suddenly became more expensive.
....aluminium being brittle is something that DEPENDS!
on what kind of aluminium is used - just like the iron/steel is. At the moment there are high preformance Al alloys that give the same/better strength/weight ration than some of the better steels.
And if you have stuff made from lower density material it can be wider thus distributing the stress better, thus leading to better preformance than the material properties alone would suggest - this is the result of the fact that to reach the same strength you will need a larger volume of Al alloy, than steel (while its is still lighter)
Of course this is all "if" - since there is no reason why any manufacturer should really break a sweat over quality when there is no real control, and the clients don't have much clue.
How about other materials? Im thinking on trying brass or copper wire, only for aesthetics. Any clue on those?
4:50 - Welded mail didn't exist
But what would you tell about combination of welded and riveted rings? I don't think it's harder to weld a ring than to forge a nail. Also, I suppose welded rings are stronger than riveted, though not sure about it.
Just bought a riveted mail for 120 pounds :)
so they send you an envelope with a rivet through the center lol
Heart of Fire I was kinda expecting something like that, but today it arrived, nice and oiled, with extra rings and rivets, with exactly the proclaimed size.
From where?
I'm just trying to survive the apocalypse
there is titanium riveted mail on the market
What kind of armor would you use in medieval mma fighting.
i'm making a butted maile haulberk and coif for my own collection
Is there a practical difference between flat riveted or round riveted mail or doesn't it matter?
I want to make some mail for an armour I designed, and although the design itself is not historical I want to make sure that it makes practical sense by historical standards. The period I am using as a reference point is begin/middle 14th century Europe (Dutch/German and Welsh/English influenced). The problem is that I can't figure out what type of riveted mail to use or whether it even matters for historical "accuracy" or performance quality.
what about modern chainmail?
hi metatron,
where would you place theta link mail (bar link mail) in case of protection?
thx!
welding is just fusing 2 items together there was welding but not that small
You can weld that small on a authentic forge it called fire or forge welding it's a very different way of doing something similar to more modern MIG welders (Or the other types, I'm a blacksmith not a welder.)
wait so is soldered maile like thegnthrands not historically accurate?
Maya Lackman i hadnt seen anything with him saying its not historically accurate hence the question. still seems like a nice way to do maile though.
Historical reenactment.
Yes
i made a butted mail glove once when i was 8. lol
Binged video 152
taitanium mail armour
jeez, maybe i should start making chain mail armour, eh? get a couple of friend's kids involved, they'd love that stuff.... yes, i'm not above using friend's kids for child labour.
ryan barker Kids will love that!😃
Just make sure the rings sit proper
your not the first to have the idea my first job was making 4 in 1s and getting paid by the pound. by a shop that sold butted mail. Made way less than min. wage tho
Doesn't stop the Indians, why should it stop you?
What about mithril chainmail?
All mail is butted when you sit. ;D heheh
+Ó Slatraigh xD
Or when you shit :D
You win. That is all.
I see what you did there.
…with letters in your back pocket.
I've been watching your videos non-stop since yesterday now and have really enjoyed the depth that you put into your videos. Hey, everyone, this guy is something special. I'm so glad I found your channel and I'll be sharing it among my groups of friends.
I really appreciate that, thank you
I found rather funny that there's modern map under "historical accuracy" title, Russia hadn't chain-mails, Königsberg hadn't chain-mails.
Video is interesting and informative, thanks for that, it's just, well, funny.
4:26 but of course; *IT DOES HAVE ITS COSTS*
"Pink helmet with a flower on top and an axe ditched into it" confirmed as the next Metatron's review piece.
+Sunyatasattva xD
I want a scale mail made of Euros
+Johnny xD xD
+Johnny dunno about that, but here's one made from spoons i.imgur.com/LFjlLPV.jpg
cool ahahha!
@@da_gonozal6754 That actually looks pretty decent, do you have any better pictures of it?
@@da_gonozal6754 lol that spoon scale mail is a super budget idea for costume production :D love it
My personal experience is as follows:
Butted Mail is great for looks, and if you want to feel what wearing mail is like. It will not behave like historical armor, and shouldn't be thought to do so.
Riveted Mail is more accurate, and will hold up more, but is hugely expensive. It is accurate looking, but is a collection piece. The strength only matters if you plan to beat the hell out of it, and it would be the ideal for testing.
Welded: I have no experience, but I imagine it sits between the other two. Not historically accurate, but stronger than butted.
You forgot to mention that the steel used in modern mail will be far higher quality than what you would have found in historical mail.
Butted mail did exist historically though.
Rodrigo Ugarte I did say more accurate, not exclusively accurate.
There are very few instances of butted mail in Europe, with at least one supposed example later being shown to actually be riveted. Roman mail was half/half, Japanese mail in 14-15th centuries was almost exclusively butted, and there are a few instances of mid-east butted mail for very small links.
You are correct to say it existed, but riveted was so ridiculously more common in Europe that butted mail is an oddity.
+Wreqt - Butted chain mail was also used to conduct quick repairs of riveted mail in field, but if you had the ability to make riveted, you had no reason not to.
+Wreqt
butted if good for Larping or looking the part. so a normal person who goes to a fair or wants a costume piece.
riveted is for serious collectors and people who are in it for historical accuracy
welded while not as accurate, in my experience is stronger than riveted, so for people who do real combat, like professional jousters or stage combat using solid stage weapons
i've also heard that the welded mail feels better under plate,
+1988RanDom there were plenty of reasons not to. for example, the husband of the dame you fancy. his armor fails, he dies, you get laid. perfect reason to go with butted.
also, butted was used in asia more than riveted. twisted was also used in japan and china instead of riveting, which was considered to be to costly
I've had riveted aluminum mail, it was great for costumes and I would say it was stronger than butted steel armor but the rings would rip if stabbed, so I definitely don't recommend using it for fighting. My biggest complaint about it is that the aluminum rubbing against its self covered all of my clothes in a dark silver aluminum powder.
There are aluminium alloys that are very strong and light though. Like the aluminium used for aircraft parts. Its also very expensive material though and i dont know if its even possible to make mail out of it?
A little nitpick - aluminium is anything, but not brittle. It is soft and can be easily cut through, but it is very flexible.
Perhaps you mistaken it for duraluminium (which is aluminium-based alloy) - it is much stronger than aluminium and some types can be as tough as steel, but is lighter and can be brittle.
+Nick Fedorov I was only referring to the strength of the rings, I own among others an aluminium shirt, the rings break open very easily, so probably brittle is not the best word for it, but the strength of the link in butted alluminium is equal to nothing in my experience, you coul almost open it by hand.
+Metatron that's why you should always check the alloy if you're buying something even remotely expensive and there is possibility you would care about it's durability.
Especially in case of aluminium where regular customers can only distinguish duraluminium and "aluminium". It's like sorting iron-based things into "eee.. steel" and "anything other containing iron" categories.
I have a question for reenactors: how do you feel about forge-welded mail? I tried to make riveted mail and all goes well except for the actual riveting, I could never make it look good. Yes, it's effective, and yes, it's actually riveted, but on the other hand when you take a close look it just doesn't look anything like the actual historical or modern commercial riveted mail, plus it takes a lot of time and I end up wasting a lot of rings. I didn't want to give up and I couldn't afford to buy a finished one (more on that later), so after some thinking and experimenting I started making forge-welded rings. Basically the process of production is the same as for riveted rings, except that instead of riveting the overlapping ends I just forge weld them. The rings look the same apart from the lack of the rivet, so if you're looking from more than 2 meters away you can't tell the difference. I know it's not historical (there were forge-welded rings in Anglo-Saxon England in Sutton Hoo and Coppergate burials, but they were combined with riveted and looked different from mine so I'm not going to use them to 'justify' my decision, although they actually inspired me to start thinking in that direction), but on the plus side - the shape of the rings is the same (the only visual difference is the absence of the rivet), the weight is the same, the 'feel' and sound it makes is same, and it's actually stronger than riveted.
The thing is, when you live in a poor country, even if you have a good salary for local standards your extra money is pretty worthless when you try to buy something from abroad. Buying stuff that doesn't require too much time to produce (such as helmets or blunt weapons) from local blacksmiths is affordable, but when it comes to acquiring labor-intensive items (such as mail) people have two options - make your own or give up. That's why most people end up using butted - nobody likes it, but everyone is aware of the economic situation so it's kinda tolerated. Personally I think that in such a situation forge-welded is definitely better than butted...
4:27 Suddenly gets much closer to the microphone. I'm not picking on it at all I just found it quite funny.
I guess I am a larper. I bought several products to recreate a Templar knight armour.
I bought a great helm with a golden cross in the front.
An iron steel butted chainmal V neck coif
An iron steel flat rivetted chainmail
A padded coat armour (late 12th century)
A padded coif
Gonna buy a cloak and the shirt with the red cross in the center left chest.
Great video!
Are you telling me that tailored, hand riveted mail made by professional craftsmen is expensive? *mind blown*
Properly made welded is straight up superior to riveted possibly by a factor as large as twice.
If for no other reason then that welding allows the use of higher tensile steels in the shirt. I'm not sure where you're even getting this 'soder' stuff from, the steel rings are simply directly spot welded together. Ideally with a form of lap weld where in the ends of the link are stacked atop each other and welded both top and bottom effectively doubling thickness at the point of connection. A welded mail shirt made of higher hardness steel particularly one that use lap welds is just flat out superior to riveted mail mechanically. This is no great shock, their is a reason welding more or less completely displaced rivets in structural steel systems once it was perfected.
So if someone just wanted to buy a mail shirt as day to day armor what would be the optimal choice
For time and budget reasons, you can use butted rings purchased from a spring manufacturer. These spring steel rings tend to be stronger than the rings that appear in commercially available butted mail products. You can then knit the armour to conform to your body. I mention time because butting is a lot quicker than riveting though obviously the finished armour will be smoother than the historic riveted version.
The kind of force that would be required to pierce a spring steel butted armour would do you serious injury if you wearing riveted armour so the only drawback is authenticity.
I've heard of mail that uses a combination of solid rings that were never open, and riveted rings to link them together. Is that historical at all, or just a modern concept?
There do exist welded mail in history, though exceedingly rare. I can't remember the source (TH-cam commenters, right?) but I believe it was a rather small aventail on some very specific helmet, where the links were assembled in 4 to 1 and were forge welded when added to the pattern. I think the method supposedly used was to pull a piping-hot (glowing yellow! Bright yellow!) ring out of the forge, add it immediately to the pattern and smack with hammer. Seems tedious to me.
Dear Metatron, all mail, I see in the Internet and on your presentation, make use of round and planar rings. These are easy to produce, but as an Engineer, I know it is far from optimized to take force. Here a nonplanar ring having a small bending radius at the position where it meets other rings and strait wire in between could take considerable more force before it is deformed. In addition, this design would increase density.
Where armors of this type used?
here is my two cents on it: galvanised iron will get a patine after a bit of use, making it less shiny. basically, after a year it will start to ressemble a brand new non-galva mail. Still look a bit off, but I'd say it's worth mentioning. (hammering the rings before assembly helps a lot too).
aluminium is not brittle it's soft
Depends on heat treatment and the exact alloy. ;-)
Aluminium is not an alloy, although it almost always is used in alloys and I am aware you meant that.
I enjoy these videos because every time I watch one I learn something new. Also as I'm sure many of you will agree, real mail armour is a thing of beauty.
Just a side note. A well done weld has a much higher tensile strength than its parent material. The shear strength, however, can in fact be less than the original components. The way that mail is designed redistributes force into overall tensile stress throughout the armor. This design capitalizes on the resistances of the weld.
Mail armor is so riveting.
I am trying to take back the holy land!
Welded is best for a modern butcher who handles sharp knivws every single day.
Thank you very much for this video ! The whole round,flat and other options always made me wonder what was more protective as prices were much different between them. Would love to see a follow up or a few on buying plate,brigandine and lamellar armour :)
+Liam O'Brien (ThatHurtsGuy) I have already recorded the plate armour version but it will take quite a bit to edit xD in the meantime I'll upload other videos but it will come :D
+Metatron Can't wait to see it, thank you :)
Dear Metatron,
Great video, I fully agree with the stuff you say. I only find that you are maybe a bit hard on the reenactors. I am a beginning reenactor myself (12th century Templar, very original choice ;-) ). and i chose to buy butted mail rather than riveted. The reasons for this are firstly: price, as a beginning reenactor you don't want to immediately spent all your savings on you costume. And secondly work-ability/repair-ability, I was not happy with the fit and form of my mail (I got mail that completely covers me and thus I want it to fit snugly. For this reason I got myself a bag of spare links and made large parts of extra mail myself. Obviously this is possible with riveted mail but it would take ages to do it properly and small mistakes cannot easily be corrected.
Also from a distance you can barely see the difference between butted and riveted mail. For these reasons I would say that butted mail is also acceptable (though not historically accurate) for reenactors.
I do plan to get myself a full riveted mail suit at some point in my life, but as you stated in your video, that would be an enormous investment, especially if I have it fitted to my body.
Lastly, Thrand has a video in which he tests the really cheap Indian mail in combination with a padded cap and it actually holds out really well!
+CarlosJoachim the better solution would be to concentrate on the more important stuff (non-armor stuff like clothing) and save the money until you can afford a rivited mail. saves a lot of money and you dont end up with obviously wrong stuff ;) especially if you want to go into reenactment and not what we in german call GroMi (Grobmittelalter.. would translate to something like "somewhat medieval")
but as someone who bought armor and sword first, i am not the best to throw the first stone ;)
+Glimmlampe1982 I have to agree with Meister Lampe hier. It´s not reenacting if it´s not historically accurate, and historical accuracy takes a lot of work. Even for clothing, there are things to consider like the fabric (no cotton), the shape, the sewing technique (especially nothing machine made), the fabric of the yarn, the nature of the coloring (plant-based colors and not chemical ones)... and so on. A similar list could be done for arms and armor - which is why I, even though I own lots of medieval-themed clothing and equipment, would never call myself a reenactor. If you want to do just a bit of costume play, then that´s fine, have fun with that :) But if you want to reenact, there are no half-measures.
What about maille that is composed of multiple overlapping and interlinked layers of rings? Three layers shoild be quite strong.
Request: Would it be possible to do some videos on proper maintenance of armor and weapons, both modern and historical methods. I'm very interested in how warriors of the past would kept all of their gear in proper condition.
You can buy unriveted links, along with the rivets, and save a lot of money by making the items yourself. A lot of people realised it's probably more profitable to just sell links, rather than sell finished items. And, let's face it: Nobody wants to be the poor schmuck connecting all the links together
I would recommend riveted mail for LARP too. Butted mail tends to snag on hair and costumes (having a butted mail hauberk hanging off your long hair at 3am with nobody around to help is no joke), and even if very carefully made eventually the rings start to move at the join, snag more, and occasionally rings can be lost - butted mail is simply not that robust. Also in order to mitigate some of these problems, the rings tend to be heavier gauge so the armour will be heavier overall than many comparable riveted armours. Riveted mails can get away with lighter rings and still be stronger than butted.
On the welded mail front, I have seen some examples of historic middle eastern mails that were claimed to be welded, but I am not sure how - I wonder if very high quality mails could have been forge-welded with special tools? Perhaps a very specific stake and punch could have been used to forge the rings closed. There would be numerous challenges to overcome to achieve it though, and I am not sure that the claims are true.
Aluminum Armor in the midieval period would be fabulously expensive for something so worthless. Any protection that you'd get it would be from people noticing what you're wearing and choking or laughing at how utterly stupid you were and/or the cost of the thing. Of course, then they'd target you even more to rip it off your dead body cuz they could then sell it and probably become a Freeman.
When my father was my age he made a butted maille tunic and coif. Now that I’m around the age he was when he made it, I decided to finish the set. I made butted maille chausses and leather fittings. I know it’s not historically accurate but there’s no way Im making riveted maille, simply because just butted maille took me 100+ hours to make two leggings. I love the idea of armour and I know it’s not actually armour but it looks sick all the same. So I am clearly not a reenactor, It’s just a costume. And im proud of it weather it’s accurate or not.
Knotted maille is the most impressive in terms of skill! The ability to tie off steel wire is amazing!
(A joke.)
I think definitions have changed in many things since the HEMA, reenactor boom. I always understood that there were TWO authentic types of mediaeval mail, 'flattened and riveted' was one, and 'butted and welded' was the other. Butted mail had the ends of the rings hammered so that they looked like little trumpets, which were then welded together as a ring. What you're calling 'butted' was for movie sets etc. and was called 'open ring' mail, because it isn't 'butted' at all, i.e. the ends haven't been butted out. Do check this please.
Yes, aluminium is not historically accurate, it's softness aside. The price would be the main limiting thing. A king could not afford aluminium mail in medieval times. It remained more expensive than gold until 1890's when the new technique allowed mass production and until then the largest piece ever cast was the 2,5 kg capstone in Washington monument in 188...5?
How historically accurate would you consider the products from "Arms and Armor Manufacture". They have some really interesting prices, including a suit of mximilian armor for 2500 euros. It is iron, not high carbon tempered steel as period armor, 1.5mm thick, could it protect in reenactments? I do know iron plate armor was used before high carbon tempered steel armors were more common, could then this be considered armor?
Nealry all the first chainmails from Europe of Celtic origin are made with butted rings. That nonsense that butted mail was never used is just internet trash. Also, most people who "rebuild" chainmail use very, very, very, very weak material; people can even split this material in order to create rings, which is pretty unauthentic.
I bought some butted maille for a ren fair costume, and it's *not bad* but I wont buy any more.
The rings like to come apart pretty easily and you have to reweave them back in because most manufacturers wont take it back unless you want to spend your cash to mail it.
Get riveted or welded maille, the extra money spent is worth it.
If you intend to do any form of strenuous movement, butted mail is absolutely rubbish. It tends to break down fairly quickly- even for larp activities. You'll spend just about as much time repairing it as you do wearing it.
Metatron, about the butted mail in Europe there is an example about one from the second half of the 17th century specifally a Tatar mail shirt.
The translated description: The rings are simply bent, not soldered or riveted.
I personally have not seen the mail shirt from up close only from a picture and I can hardly tell if it is actually like the butted type.
I wore real 14th cent. Plate Armor for a Larp,(they allowed full metal swords but dulled)And I used a dulled arming sword and to make a long story short I pissed off a lot of nerds. They were whining on how they couldent hit me with my armor but they lost there shit when I said it was 100% real 14th Cent. Plate Armor they called me a false player until I beat them on a one v one.
hay my friend I have seen historical indian butted and riveted mail two. but:) I did noticed fine butted mail more on the (plate and mail and under four mirrors) I've seen it on Chinese and Korean two. what do you think? rocks fall everyone dies
Very good video, i would only add two points:
* there is no prove for a gambeson in the early middle ages, neither in finds nor in texts or pictures. most likely normal clothing was enough under the mail, especilly if you take into account that the clothing was thicker than normal clothing today.
* galvanizing isn't historically correct, but there is evidence that at least some (some sugest most) mail was tin-coated. but i haven't seen any tin-coated armor for sale yet.
Great video, Metatron! I would add one more category that I think you may have forgotten, which is SCA or very similar usage. In SCA, your armor *needs* to be functional and protective, but generally speaking, not historically accurate. It's like LARP, with actual protection necessary. (:
Thanks for this video by the way, I needed help in defining the difference between mail types.
***** I assumed a collector, by definition, would not necessarily intend to use them, or need them to be functional.
I dunno about the alum. I'd have to disagree with you a little. If you use thick enough rings just as 14g it'll take a hell of a pounding. For safety sake I'd never use it against steel, even blunted steel, but I've seen plenty of SCA guys use it with rattan sticks and it holds up about as well as you'd expect butted to hold up
Modern welding techniques should make welded ring mail the strongest type, and definitely cheaper than hand riveted mail. The only thing that comes to mind as an extra step in its manufacture would be the need to post weld heat treat that mail after the welding is complete.
Assemble with butted rings, then use mig or tig welding (the inert gas would be necessary to prevent oxidation) to bond the rings at the butt joint. The heat input from the welding is what will require annealing after the welding of the mail is complete. No filler rod would be required, as the butted ring faces would provide the material for the bond when it melts from the heat of the welder current. Pretty much how they weld car bodies.
Why does butted mail even exist? It's so fragile that it's a waste of money unless you;re making your own out of scrap. In fact, tha's not even worth it because I would a least solder the ends to keep them from coming apart.
LARPers*
Great video.
You can find the right picture in 6:05 on the internet website battle merchant. That's where I bought my riveted mail from. I worked a long time to finally purchase it. But it's fully worth it.I mean if someone stabbs you with a pike or a sword you really really want your chainmail works at that moment.
Actually what specific TYPE of steel or aluminium are we talking about. Let alone many other metals one could use like stainless steel wich does not have to be shiny depending on again what type.