If I have to say it myself, that’s one of my best ever puns!
And then you hit me with mild BDSM …I don’t know whether to laugh or cry !!
Some years back I had a coworker who made himself what amounted to a chain mail t-shirt from coat hanger wire. I don’t remember how long it took, but he was single at the time and didn’t have a life. Anyway, since he was a skinny little guy, it was the equivalent of a size small t-shirt, but it was amazingly heavy. His workmanship was impressive, but he said he’d have preferred a smaller gauge wire.
I’m curious how well chain maile against sharks works? AFAIK shark teeth are needle like aren’t they? Wouldn’t chain maile allow a lot of the teeth to by-pass the armour?
It’s funny how RPG really increase your understanding of armour and weapons (GURPS player here).
If you want all-around protection what about chain maile with Kevlar inserts? Isn’t kevlar pretty light?
Likewise, the chainmail bikini bottom… 
I made a camail (fringe of mail hanging from my helmet) to protect my neck & collarbone; I used 3/16" spring steel lock washers. The guy who sold me the rings is a machinist, and tested the mail with a press of some sort. He said that if it was shot with a gun, the rings wouldn’t have opened, but they would have been driven into me. Ouch. It would definitely stop an arrow or any sharp hand weapon. However, an entire suit made from these rings would probably weigh about 70 pounds.
Also, an interesting catch-22 about people wearing mail in the SCA is that it doesn’t protect much at all vs. blunt weapons–the purpose of the mail is to spread the point of impact so that instead of getting hit with the edge of a sword, you’re hit by a strip of mail about an inch wide. Well, if somebody hits you with a stick that’s an inch wide, then there’s not much spread or dissipation of energy, so you might as well not be wearing any armor at all…
One way is to put a dowel into an electric drill, and use that to (carefully!) wind a long spring. Then use wire cutters to clip the individual rings from the spring.
A few months back, I was at a presentation given by a member of the Shark Research Institute (probably sharkresearch.org or sharks.org). The presenter said that he had previously been working in studies of white sharks (that’s “great white” to everybody), where the divers do wear chain mail.
His current project, and the subject of the presentation, is to tag and study tiger sharks around the North Carolina wrecks. He does NOT wear chain mail on those dives. (I forget why not – he showed footage of a tagging operation, where the shark turned on him when he stuck it. I wouldn’t want to get that close to a tiger shark without a shark suit!)
Onne possibility I’ve been considering is to make a suit of pseudo-chainmail (call it heliacal mail, I suppose). What I’m thinking of is winding the wire into loose helices (winding around a core, as already mentioned) but then not cutting it, and interleaving the helices. You see fireplace screens made in that manner, and it’s the same principle as a chain-link fence (although a fence is flattened out into the square shapes). I’m not sure how much protection this would offer, but it should look mostly right (which is what I’m primarily concerned about), and it should be a heck of a lot easier to make. I’m aware that such mail would be essentially inflexible in one direction, but as long as you wrap it right, that’s OK for most of the body, and I would do the shoulders and elbows in standard chainmail.
Why not wear chain mail on top of your class B Kevlar armour? That way you’d look cool and be doubly protected.
wont you get tired of going kchink kchink with every step you make?
London Calling said: If I have to say it myself, that’s one of my best ever puns!
I thought it was a GREAT pun and plan on “stealing” it when the opportunity arises.
And then you hit me with mild BDSM
hangs head in shame I didn’t even think about that (or I would have been cackling even harder when I posted). I was playing off “chased” which is what happens when I wear it to bike runs.
Another SCA fighter checking in here, I’d think that the fireplace-screen type material would not flex enough to be used as a covering on a garment. Doesn’t it usually just flex in 2 directions?
I’d think that if you wanted “Psuedo-chain-mail” you should take your cue from Hollywood and just use some kind of silver lame’ weave cloth. OR do what I did for halloween when I was little, take some long underwear and spray paint it silver, looked great!
Yeah, maybe, you can throw your dice around and call it manly, but there’s nothing like actually putting on that armour and hitting each other. 
et cetera …
My wife has one as well. It is not fitted, though, it has a clasp in the back for variable sizes. It is mildly heavy, but it looks and feels wonderful.
Methinks this is a good discussion, I would like to talk about this more … Skillet, do you mind if I e-mail you?
Shark teeth come in a variety of shapes from broad triangular shaped ones to skinny needle like ones. Mail will protect you somewhat from the “taste test” or “get out of my space” type bites where the shark lets go immediately that are most common shark bites. However, shark jaws can still crush your body into pulp even if the teeth don’t penetrate.
On a side note, even though mail gives less protection than plate it has two big advantages over it.
#1 It lets your body “breathe” somewhat making it easier to wear unlike plate which is like being in a pressure cooker.
#2 Plate has to be custom fittted while mail can be worn off the rack" so to speak as long as its your size.
Anybody ever see a chainmail bikini? That would be an AWSOME look for the beach…but it would have to be rust-proof!
not a problem Gorgon Heap
BMalion- We’ve modified our combat rules for Gurps, because we all have fought SCA, and know what actually works in Medieval melee combat and what doesn’t.
I just want the wearing of swords and such to become cool again. That’s what we need… swashbucklers and such.
I do not know what -GURPS- means 
I would love for swords to come back as fashion accessory. I’d buy a Gucchi baldrick!
GURPS- Generic Universal Role Playing System.
Basically it’s a really comprehensive rpg system. Very very well done.
I think it would be nice to see if swordsmanship would advance as an art if suddenly everyone started wearing swords to be cool.
Butted mail will stop a .22 bullet. I’ve tested this, with .22 LR from about 20 feet away. 100% of the time, butted mail made from bailing wire stopped the bullet, although it did destroy the mail.
.22 short had about the same effect.
Closer shooting likely would have gone through.
I thought that due to the small pellet size, a 12-gauge with #8 shot would have been stopped, from the same distance. Nope - blew about a 1" hole clean through it.
My .223, however, went through the mail, the backing board, and broke the fireplace bricks behind it. I won’t even say what the 7.62 or the .44 Magnum did, as you get the picture.
But now that’s I’ve shared that useful info…this RingLord site kicks ass! Does anyone have any specific recommendations? Caveats? Is the quality and material good? If so, I really, really would like to start making a titanium mail vest for Fierra…
And another question - when I see entire shirts, hauberks, etc. advertised, the pricing seems inordinately cheap. Knowing how much goes into even weaving butted mail together - is it still hand-made, at that price, or do they use a machine to weave it?
Una
Anthracite- your dedication astounds me. I wish I could have seen this testing. Did you do this just because of this thread?
The problem with a lot of the chain that you see on e-bay, or in other places is that it’s made of aluminum, and cheap. not many rings, not woven as densely as they should be. So they pass the cheapness on to you… sort of.
Good chainmaile is expensive, and rightly so. It’s a hell of a lot of effort, and usually it’s done by hand.
There is a machine that you can feed rolls of wire into, and it will churn out sheets of maile (no cite right now, sorry…) but is presumably expensive, and still only makes big flat sheets. You have to still shape the sheet yourself.
I have used a butchers vest at my job. It is very similar to mideval maile exept instrad of rings it uses small metal plates. We have tested the stuff out on each other and it will stop a sharp 2lb cleaver without leaving a mark on the armor.
note for the culinary uninformed the 2lb cleaver is what we use to cut through bones when the saw isnt available.