Editing Mail (section)

== How is it made? ==

[[image:mail_1in4.gif|thumb|200px|left|European 4-in-1 pattern]]

As was mentioned above, mail armour is made of thousands of interlocking rings. By far the most popular format the mail armour was constructed in was the European 4-in-1, where each ring is connected to four other rings. Depending on the period in which the mail was made the internal diameter of an individual ring varied between 8mm and 15mm. Obviously the smaller rings required much more man-hours to assemble properly and therefore were the sign of wealth not only of an individual but a testament to a well developed industry of a state.

The rings were usually made of malleable iron. First it would be drawn into wires, then wrapped around a rod many times and cut into rings. Rings would then be annealed and hammered flat (important - most of the known mail uses the "flat wire" rings, akin in appearance to washers, instead of "round wire" rings so prevalent on the market right now), creating an overlap, where later, during the linking, a wedge-shaped rivet would be inserted.
Many suits of mail were made using alternating rows of riveted rings and solid round washers of similar size. Whilst the former were hand made from wire, the latter were simply punched from a metal sheet. This reduced the workload enormously and made the whole thing stronger and less likely to break up.
Rings would then be put together into lengths of narrow strips by apprentices, which would then be correctly linked by a master armourer, forming a desired piece of armour. [[Derp|Think of it as stitching a shirt from strips of cloth using more cloth, but instead use metal keyrings.]]

Anyway. This created a metal skin comprising alternating layers of flat "washers", which was highly flexible and reactive to applied force - the rings would "bunch up" at the point of pressure, effectively multiplying the amount of metal resisting the blow.

Using expansion/contraction techniques (which involves adding or removing rings in predetermined places when making the armour), the mail shirt can be tailored to the wearer. One of the few surviving suits of mail (15th century or so) narrows at the waist, expands for hips and thighs and is additionaly enlarged at the back, to allow leeway for shoulderblades and arm movement.

There are other known patterns of pure mail armour. A '''very rare''' European 8-in-2 ("''The King's Mail''") was essentially a doubled-up 4-in-1 and used sparingly since it was hard to make and rather inflexible. Two patterns are native to Japan, namely square 4-in-1 (''so gusari'') and hexagonal 6-in-1 (''hana gusari''). These were much less dense (in terms of rings-per-square-inch) than their European counterparts and also much less resistant to damage as they were usually made of non-riveted rings. For this reason the Japanese mail was usually either stitched to the backing cloth or sandwiched between other layers of an armour suit. We won't get into further detail on how good or bad the Japanese mail is, since if you're genuinely interested in Japan, you'll know all about it anyway... and if your interest is [[Weeaboo|slightly more than just scientific]], you already know the details are irrelevant, since the [[Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20|Japanese swords will make short work of any mail on the planet]].

[[Category: History]]

[[Category: Weapons]]

[[Category: Medieval Weaponry]]

[[Category: Armour]]

{{MedievalWeaponry}}