http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

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Riveted Maille from Scratch.by armourkris on January 31, 2010

Table of Contents

Riveted Maille from Scratch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Intro:   Riveted Maille from Scratch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 1:   The Tools I Use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 2:   Making rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Step 3:   Flattening your Rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Step 4:   Punching the rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Step 5:   Riveting the Rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Intro:  Riveted Maille from Scratch.There are already a number of Instructables on making maille, and making various projects from maille. The one thing that I found was missing was how to make rivetedmaille.

Now, in the past I've dabbled in riveted maille a bit, my maille and plates cuise (that's thigh armour) and all the repairs on my cuirass. Thing is, for those projects I wentand bought pre-made rings and rivets then just assembled them. That is hardly the DIY ethic that Instructables espouses now is it? So with a quick prayer to the gods oftedium and insanity I decided to try my hand at making my own riveted maille, from scratch.

Riveted maille is really done 2 ways, wedge rivets and Round rivets. the difference is pretty self explanatory. Wedge rivets are tiny triangles, Round rivets are tiny bits ofwire. To the best of my knowledge maille started out with round rivets, then at some point, around the 14th century i think, a lot of European armouries switched over towedge rivets, whereas maille from the middle east and Asia stuck with the round rivets. that's all pretty generalized, but it gets the idea across.In any case, I'm making maille sleeves for my armour and my armour is a near/middle eastern style. So, round Rivets it is.

Enough of my babbling, this seems like a decent enough intro. Now onto the good stuff.

Step 1: The Tools I Use.Tool wise you only really need a few more tools then you need to make butted maille.Here is what you'll need.

Standard maille tools:-A pair of small pliers-a mandrel for winding coils-side cutters to cut the coils (these will be modified slightly)

The special stuff-Rivet setting tongs-a ring flatener-a hammer-a punch.

Now, to start with You'll need to grind or file a notch in your side cutters a little back from the tip. this will let you cut your rings with a little overlap. that's pretty simple.

Rivet setting tongs are pretty simple too. I made mine from a $4 pair of carpenters nippers. You could also make them from some linesman pliers, or really any pliers withabout 6 inches of handle. just grind the jaws down till they are smooth and close flush, then take a 1/8" drill bit and put a little divot into one side of the jaws. that's allthere is to it.

For flattening my rings I use a piston setup. I scrounged and scavenged mine. it's just a really big brake caliper from something, and 2 chunks of 1" steel plate, one ofwhich has hole that's about the same size as the caliper on it. alternately, with some practice you can skip the piston and flatten your rings with just a hammer, or I'veseen pictures of a Whitney punch with bits modified to flatten rings. My experience is that the piston setup has the quickest learning curve and gives me the mostconsistent results.

the hammer is pretty self explanatory, use it to bash stuff.

That just leaves the punch. Historically speaking you'd most likely have a set of tongs with a drift and a matching hole in them and you would just pierce a hole in yourrings. A lot of people still use variations on this method. I've also seen arbor presses modded to hold punches or drifts. Myself, I'm using my knock off Whitney punch witha 1/16" punch and die in it. In the future I'd like to try re-working a punch into a drift to see how that works, but until then, I'll just punch holes.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Image Notes1. rivet setting tongs2. ring flattener3. knock off Whitney punch with a 1/16" bit.

Image Notes1. just a little hole ground out. took me about 30 seconds with a rotary tool

Image Notes1. jaws are ground flat, and there is a tiny little divot.2. ignore this, it's for setting wedge rivets and need not concern you for thisinstructable.

Image Notes1. hunk o steel with appropriately sized hole2. huge ass brake caliper. the duct tape is just to make it fit a little more snug inthe hole. less wiggle=better

Step 2: Making ringsOk, so making rings for riveted maille is almost exactly the same as it is for butted maille. The only 2 differences are that you can use thinner wire, and you need to cutthem with an overlap.

In this case I'm using 16ga. tie wire. you can usually find this stuff pretty cheap in most hardware stores. You're looking for the black stuff that leaves black crud on yourhands as it is not galvanized and is already annealed.My mandrel is an old roller from a garage door and is about half way between 3/8" and 1/2" I couldn't tell you exactly what size that it is but the rings look about right forthe larger rings that seem to be common with near eastern armour.

Anyways, just wind your coil like you would for any other maille, then cut them with your freshly modded side cutters. You'll want to leave 3/16" to 1/4" of overlap.

Once you've got your rings all cut it's time to normalize them. This step isn't strictly necessary, but Ifind it does help a bit. I get about 10% less bunk rings in the flattening stage if I normalize them first.

To normalize them I string them onto a loop of wire, then heat them up red hot and let them cool to room temperature. I'd heard you can do this on a gas stove, but mystove was taking too long. I prefer to use a blowtorch. Alternately I'm sure a BBQ would work wonders, or a fireplace.

Lastly, do not hold the wire with your fingers while you are blow torching the rings, it is a bad idea. Also, do not put the recently red hot rings onto anything flammablewhile they are cooling, it is also a bad idea.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Image Notes1. i never make much more than this at a time, after all, they still need to beflattened and punched.

Image Notes1. look at that overlap, beautiful.

Image Notes1. look at that overlap, and a bit of black crud on my fingers

Image Notes1. one coils worth of rings

Image Notes1. start threading....

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Image Notes1. keep going

Image Notes1. hook the ends together

Image Notes1. and my stove is WAY to slow

Image Notes1. now were talking

Image Notes1. and lastly, make sure you put them on something that wont burn so they cancool off.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Step 3: Flattening your RingsFlattening the rings with a piston is as simple as putting a ring in the hole, placing the piston on the ring, and bashing it with a hammer. on my thigh it takes me 6 or 8strokes. when i can put the anvil on something solid it takes me 4 strokes.I find I get the most consistent results if i place the overlap facing away from me, parallel to the hammer handle.

Image Notes1. Place the ring in the hole

Image Notes1. you can flatten rings on your thigh, but it stings a bit and you lose a lot of thehammers force. Instead i recommend putting the anvil on something solid, like asturdy workbench, or a ground level floor. just dont hammer on your downstairsneighbors ceiling late at night. it will most likely piss them off.2. hold the piston in place and bash it a few times with the hammer

Image Notes1. TA DA!! now take it out and repeat as necessary.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Image Notes1. all ready to be punched

Step 4: Punching the ringsTo punch my rings I use a knockoff Whitney punch with a 1/16" bit. I think it's important to mention that historically the rings would have been pierced rather than punchedas punching the rings removes a small amount of metal weakening the ring slightly. To this end I'm planning on buying another 1/16" punch and re-grinding the punchinto a piercing drift. I'll update the instructable when I get to that point. In the meanwhile.....

The first thing to keep in mind punching the rings is that your overlap is sufficiently flattened, i try and have my overlaps flattened to the point where they are at least 1/8"wide and preferably a little closer to 3/16". I can still punch a hole in less, but i find that during the riveting stage the swelling rivet will often cause the sides to tear out ifthey are to thin.

Actually punching the rings is simple enough with the ton or so of pressure coming from the punch. just center the overlap on the die, under the punch and squeeze thehandles.Sometimes the punch will catch on one half of the overlap. if this happens and you pull the punch back the rings get deformed and are a pain to get out. to counter thisproblem I took a short strip of pallet banding and cut a small slit down one end with some tin snips. After I punch a ring I slip the strip of banding over the ring and aroundthe punch then retract the punch. the banding stops the ring from getting sucked up into the punch housing and keeps everything laying nice and flat.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Image Notes1. ready for assembly

Step 5: Riveting the RingsTo rivet your rings shut the first thing you'll need are rivets. fortunately 16ga. wire happens to be 1/16" in diameter so it fits in the holes we punched perfectly. To makerivets just grab a foot or so of wire and cut it down into bits about 1/8" long. Now you have your rivets. Pretty simple eh?

To rivet a ring shut start by slipping a rivet through the hole. try and get it more or less centered.

Next take your set tongs and grab the rivet so that one end is in the divot then with smooth even pressure squeeze the tongs shut. This should compress the rivedlengthwise causing it to swell on either side of the hole,leaving a flat bump on the bottom and a domed one on the top.

When it comes time to actually weave maille I like to rivet 4 rings, feed them onto a fifth ring then rivet it. I usually make a few dozen of these at a time then connect themall together. I don't think it's actually any faster than going one ring at a time, but it looks like it goes together faster, and that helps keep me sane.

As well riveted maille has an inside and an outside. if you're making for example a shirt the inside should have the flat sides of the rivets and the domed side should bethe outside. I'm not sure if it really makes much difference in the long run, but that's how it was done back then, so that's how I'm doing it now.

Image Notes1. by camera refused to focus. this was the best of the lot

Image Notes1. one rivet next to a ring

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Image Notes1. now were ready to make some maille.

Image Notes1. not so centered, but it's in the hole.

Image Notes1. grab the rivet with the tongs....

Image Notes1. and smoothly squeeze it to peen the rivet

Image Notes1. it sould leave a nice dome on one side, this will be the outside of whatever youchoose to make.

Image Notes1. and a smooth flat bump on the inside of whatever you're making.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Image Notes1. repeat as necessary and you get Maille!

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Maille and plateleg armour(Photos) byarmourkris

Chain mailleembroideredShirt by Lizander

European 4-in-1maille(chainmail)speedweavingby Paul the Mole

How to MakeJapanese 4-1Maille(Speedweaving)byineverfinishanyth

FingerlessChainmailleGloves by Kenta-Rin

can tab chainbody armour byknoxarama

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

Comments

50 comments Add Comment view all 74 comments

 seabee890 says:  Feb 19, 2011. 11:26 AM  REPLYIf you can find a bar with a slot in it, or grind one into the bar that you want to use. you can use a dremel tool to cut a bunch of rings faster. I undrstandwanting to do this some- what old-school (can't remember where to put the damn dashes) however, the sheer volume of rings needed to complete anyproject might turn some people to the amazing art of mail working, good luck i am looking forward to see what readers create. ( and you also)

 armourkris says:  Feb 21, 2011. 1:50 PM  REPLYThat's true, but it doesn't leave the overlap I need for riveting the rings and when I'm making butted maille I cut my rings with a pair of tin snips, but first istretch the coil open. it doesn't leave as nice of a cut as a dremel and cut off disc, but it's way faster, leaves me with pre-opened rings, and 1 pair of snipshas made 2 shirts and i don't know hoe many small pieces, so it's a lot cheaper than getting a new cut off wheel every couple hundred rings.

 Grolm says:  Jan 18, 2011. 11:57 PM  REPLYI am brand new to making chain mail and would very much like to specialize in making riveted mail, so I was wondering if you would be able to point me inthe way of a sort of starter kit? My hopes are to eventually be able to make a leather/chain mail set of armor for the local Faire.

 Rozarius says:  Jan 20, 2011. 4:15 PM  REPLYThe only starter kit I'm aware of is a German made one that runs about 100 euros plus shipping, so it's pretty damn pricey. I your interested I can try andfind the URL for the site though.I would honestly have to recommend asking some questions on the maille artisans forums, and maybe the riveted maille group on yahoo groups and seewhat other people are using for their set ups.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rivetedmaille/http://www.mailleartisans.org/

I'm assuming you're thinking about making rings from scratch and so on, I'd personally recommend against that, start to finish it takes me about 2minutes per ring, which isn't much, until you factor in that there is 20 or 30 thousand rings in a shirt, then you start to go a little crazy. Instead I'd considerlooking into bulk ready to rivet rings from India or maybe an appropriately sized circlip then either making or buying a pair of rivet setting tongs.

 Grolm says:  Jan 20, 2011. 10:46 PM  REPLYAwesome thanks for the help i'll definitely start looking into it. ^^

 Aklash, The hunchback says:  Dec 1, 2010. 9:15 AM  REPLYCould you make an instructable for wedge rivets? I checked and there don't seem to be any

 armourkris says:  Dec 8, 2010. 6:30 PM  REPLYI tried making up tools to make wedge rivets and rings, but it failed miserably, so if your looking for how to make the rings themselvs then i cant reallyhelp there. the rivets themselvs are easy enough, just take a suitably small diameter wire, flatten it out with a hammer and then use some side cutters toclip off tiny tiny triangles. the specific size depends on your rings though, so a bit of trial and error is needed there. as for riveting them, I used the sametongs that I use for the round rings, and did evrything pretty much te same, the only difference being that I was putting tiny triangles into a slit in the ringinstead of siny bits of wire into a hole in the ring. i did find that you need to be a little more carefull lining everything up with the wedge rivets though sothat they mushroom out instead of folding over.

I home that helps somewhat.

 Blacklance says:  Nov 10, 2010. 10:26 PM  REPLYAWESOME! What material was the "rivet wire" made out of though? Steel or something softer?

 armourkris says:  Nov 23, 2010. 10:42 AM  REPLYI use the same wire i made the rings from. it's the black tie wire available at most hardware stores. It's 16gauge, anealed, and kinda black and dirty, but itworks great.

 webenmopher says:  Nov 12, 2010. 3:46 AM  REPLYi use annealed tie wire. its easy to set.

 Aklash, The hunchback says:  Oct 1, 2010. 7:34 AM  REPLYfor setting rivets, would a pair of modified vice-grips work? everything i have tried has not worked

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

 armourkris says:  Oct 1, 2010. 10:04 AM  REPLYI don't see why they wouldn't, you'd have to grind the teeth off to make them sit flush, then i guess you'd have to use a small bit on a dremel orsomething like that to make the divot that lets the rivet head swell.if you try it let me know how it works out

 Aklash, The hunchback says:  Oct 1, 2010. 12:52 PM  REPLYI will, I already tried modifying a pair of linesman pliers but that didn't work out too well

 Greasetattoo says:  Sep 30, 2010. 2:06 PM  REPLYWow...GREAT stuff.

You must have a lot of patience...GREAT job!

 JamesTB13 says:  Sep 20, 2010. 5:39 PM  REPLYI would like to know why you're trying to make riveted french mustard?

 armourkris says:  Sep 21, 2010. 9:28 AM  REPLYbecause it's way better than the non riveted mustard. the rivets add extra iron, and that makes it more healthy, right?

 JamesTB13 says:  Sep 21, 2010. 12:59 PM  REPLYohh, good point lolif they're lead rivets they won't be too crunchy either!!

 spenfisher12 says:  Aug 29, 2010. 1:31 PM  REPLYi have an old wood stove evry winter i heat the house with it that might make me able to heat over 500 rings at once

 Aklash, The hunchback says:  May 21, 2010. 5:41 AM  REPLYI found that a great way to flatten the rings is with a wheel weight from a car and an 8 pound sledgehammer, it flattens 'em real good

 Aklash, The hunchback says:  May 21, 2010. 5:43 AM  REPLY Also, the way I put holes in it is actually cheaper then with a punch, i use a scratch awl and a ball pean hammer

 armourkris says:  May 21, 2010. 1:54 PM  REPLYI'm pretty happy with my ring flattening setup, but I'll definitely have to try using a scratch awl to pierce holes. what are you using to back the ringswhen you put holes in them?

 Aklash, The hunchback says:  May 28, 2010. 5:38 AM  REPLY I've been just using the weight, and I need to come up with a better surface to use when piercing them because it is not nice to either the awl orthe weight, but otherwise it works great

 naruto the ninja13 says:  Apr 6, 2010. 4:43 PM  REPLYCould you use these to make japanese 6-1 or 12-2 maille?

 armourkris says:  Apr 7, 2010. 2:05 PM  REPLYI dont see any reason why you couldnt, youw ould probably want to use a smaller diameter ring than I;m using here though.

In historic Japanese maille the rings arent actually riveted, they are more like keychain rings, only about 1/4" is or smaller. theringlord.com sells split ringsthat would be pretty much perfect for japanese maille and a lot less work than making riveted rings as well if your interested in going that way.

 Aklash, The hunchback says:  May 14, 2010. 6:04 AM  REPLY I just got an idea, one could make maille using actual keychain split rings, not really any good as armor, but it would look cool

 armourkris says:  May 14, 2010. 2:23 PM  REPLYI made a bit of that using 1.8" keychain rings. it;s actually about 3/4 the strength of riveted maille. so assuming you used an apropriate size of keyring it would work fine for armour.

I would however recommend split ring pliers.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

 naruto the ninja13 says:  May 13, 2010. 3:17 PM  REPLYokay thanks

 Rune Cutter says:  Apr 28, 2010. 8:59 PM  REPLYYou are the man!

 PKTraceur says:  Mar 22, 2010. 2:08 PM  REPLY Cool! 

What is the advantage of using riveted maille over regular maille?-PKT

 armourkris says:  Mar 22, 2010. 3:15 PM  REPLYYou get maille with 10 times the strength for 1/2  weight. and that in turn means that i don't need to repair my armour after an afternoon of fighting.

 PKTraceur says:  Mar 22, 2010. 3:33 PM  REPLYHow long would it last against full force wooden sword blows? (My wood is harder than steel, it seems...

 armourkris says:  Mar 23, 2010. 2:08 PM  REPLYi couldnt give you an exact length of time, but I'll go with a long time.

since i started swapping out my maille over to the riveted rings i haven't had to do any repairs on the new rings in about a year. the ones that didfail were some of the crappy ones i made when i first started making the stuff.

 jimjamaroo says:  Mar 17, 2010. 10:16 AM  REPLYdoes it matter if you use tie wire instead of galvanized steel wire.

 armourkris says:  Mar 17, 2010. 3:30 PM  REPLYI actually recommended using tie wire over galvanized wire.

The only problem with galvanized wire is that to normalize the rings you heat them hot enough to burn the galvanizing off. burning the galvanizationcauses it to belch out zinc fumes, and that'll give you a bit of heavy metal poisoning (zink fume fever in this case). Now, even though heavy metalpoisoning is about as cool as poisoning can get it isn't much fun. In the case of Zinc fume fever your looking at some nasty flue like symptoms for a dayor 2.

 jimjamaroo says:  Mar 12, 2010. 1:55 PM  REPLYyou mentioned that historically you would have pierced and not punched a hole. my questions are 1) what is the difference between the two processes? 2) inboth methods wouldn't you still be removing a little bit of metal which results in it being weakened? And 3) how would you pierce the ring instead of punchingit? 

 armourkris says:  Mar 12, 2010. 6:01 PM  REPLYOk, this would be easier to draw, or better yet, show in person, but here goes.

punching a ring removes a small circle of metal, much like a hole punch does on a piece of paper, the punch even works pretty much the same. where asusing a piercing drift would be more like grabbing a nail and using it to poke a hole in the paper. so instead of removing metal it pokes a hole in it andpushes the extra up around like a bit of a lip. then when you rivet it it all gets compressed into the head of the rivet causing everything to be even morefirmly held together.

 jimjamaroo says:  Mar 11, 2010. 9:03 AM  REPLYI had an idea as far as possibly minimizing your amount of strokes to flatten your rings. if its possible you could first drill a hole in each corner of the anvil andpart way in to the holed half and connect them more tightly. That may help reduce the amount of  "jump" you could get from each half. The second part is ifits possible you could also find a place to ground or secure your anvil to like another metal surface or even substitute the metal surface for the anvil so that the anvil will stop jumping off of your work space and from the top half. just a thought

 armourkris says:  Mar 11, 2010. 4:07 PM  REPLYI actually ended up going the lazy rout and duct taping the 2 half's of the anvil together, that did make a big difference, I also usually place it on a cementretaining wall behind my apartment when I;m flattening rings. right now i can get a ring flattened in 2 or 3 strokes. practice also helped, i can hit themharder and faster now then when i first started.

 servion says:  Feb 26, 2010. 6:44 PM  REPLYHow much does the 1/16 punch costs?

http://www.instructables.com/id/Riveted-Maille-from-Scratch/

 armourkris says:  Feb 26, 2010. 9:41 PM  REPLYThe canadian distributor had a $30 minimum order so I spent $33 and got 2 punches and 2 dies shipped to my door.thats a sweet avatar. you do PK?

 servion says:  Mar 6, 2010. 6:11 PM  REPLYThats right ;-)

 Speedmite says:  Feb 28, 2010. 4:33 PM  REPLYUggg..... Do you think there is a cheaper way? I really dont want to spend 30 bucks to punch such a small hole...

Drill press?Get a diamond 1/16" bit...Idk...

How long does it take to make an accurate punch?

 armourkris says:  Mar 1, 2010. 7:31 AM  REPLYIf you;ve already got a whitney punch or knockoff and access to a metal lathe then making your own punch and die's should be a pretty simplematter, otherwise I've seen pictures of a number of different ways to make punch tongs, but i couldnt realy say how to do it since the ones i madedint work out too well.http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rivetedmaille/ has a number of pictures of peoples tools on it, and I'm sure someone there could tell you how theymade their punch.

 Speedmite says:  Mar 2, 2010. 9:07 PM  REPLYI dont got a punch, and dont want to spend the $30 for it. Dont have a lathe either. I was wondering if you thought a drill press would workinstead, and how fast can you punch per ring. Just wanted your oppinion before I tried it, and if it didnt work, I would just get the punchreluctantly, or just go back to my buted mail...

 armourkris says:  Mar 3, 2010. 7:55 AM  REPLYI dont see any reason why a drill press wont work, just make sure to hold onto your rings with a pair of pliers or something while you drillthem.It takes me between 4 and 6 seconds to grab a ring, punch it, put it into the punched ring container and be ready to get the next ring.

 Speedmite says:  Mar 6, 2010. 12:30 PM  REPLYOk, I was just thinking take a block of like pine, Smack a ring into it with a hammer, then clamp the wood to the press to drill whereyou want it. Then you get the same thing each time.

 sgps says:  Mar 2, 2010. 6:00 PM  REPLYthe spelling of chainmail is like that im a historian

 armourkris says:  Mar 3, 2010. 8:00 AM  REPLYI always under the impression that it was one of those color or colour kind of things. I know that maille is the french spelling, but it seems to get tossedaround just as much.I personally use the extra L and E to differentiate it from chain letters and the bills that get slipped through my mail slot.

 skimmo says:  Feb 27, 2010. 11:24 PM  REPLYis this more effecting then none riveted?

 armourkris says:  Mar 1, 2010. 7:21 AM  REPLYyep. the riveted rings are about 10x as strong and half the weight.

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