This article has pictures of my mail shirt during its construction, this is a big project, it is definitely the biggest thing I have ever attempted to make out of mail links, and probably the biggest thing I will ever make out of them. Of course I may make more shirts down the track, but there is really not many items that one could make requiring as many rings.

Seeing as this is a "mantle top" shirt one needs to start by making the mantle, and to make a mantle one needs to start with a length of chain joined at both ends to make the neck hole. This looped chain needs to be able to fit over the wearers head and be as small as practical whilst still fitting. It is also a good idea to make the number of links divisible by ten for ease when performing the circular expansion later.

Below is a small chain made using the 4-in-1 weave. In a sheet of this weave each ring passes through four others, there are times in a garment where expansions and contractions are necessary and this rule will be broken, but the majority of it will maintain this pattern.



I found 70 links to give a good size neck to fit over my head, which is in reality 210 rings as this a 4-in-1 chain has three rows. I don't have a picture of this exactly, but it is like the bit above but longer and looped around.

Next I expanded every second row, if I didn't do tat I would just have a tube that fitted over my head, not the shape required. Because it was all done in multiples of ten it was a case of adding in ten rings every time I expanded. To do this each time I divided the number of rings around the outside by ten, this game me ten groups of seven rings initially, and went up by one each time, due to there being 10 more rings and dividing by ten.

To a group of seven rings it is possible to add six links on that will pass through two links (as is required for the weave), so to achieve the desired result of adding one ring to the group and ending up with eight links passing through the seven present the two end ones only go through one link in a sort of floppy floating manner.

The next row is a non-expansion row, this is just a case of threading each new link through two links. All of this can be demonstrated by looking at the following image. Play close attention to the gap, this it where the expansion is.



I didn't particularly like all the little holes so I filled them in with a bit of dodgy weaving, there are three loose rings sitting there that a link can be put through if desired. I hear it is a good idea to try and fairly evenly offset these expansion points as it apparently maintains more of a round shape, probably end up with funny stripes if they all lined up.

The following picture shows the beginnings of a mantle, after the addition of one expansion row and one standard row.



All I did then was continue the alternating expansion rows until it got to the point where when worn over padding it came to just the point where a shoulder becomes an arm.

This is the Mantle spread out.



Once the mantle is done it is time to make it into a shirt, my next step was to add a flap to the front and back, this was just a square sheet of an appropriate width.

The following picture shows the mantle with the back flap attached, this was going to be the front but a miscalculation meant it ended up as a better width for the back.



At this point I ran out of the rings I had left over from the Gauntlets and the coif, so stalled here until I organised a new batch.

When the new batch of 15,000 rings arrived I made the front flap, extended the back flap and then made it join up under the armpits. The following picture shows the shirt in the process of being joined up under the arms, I did this on a dummy that I made that was wearing the padded garment I currently wear in combat.

The garment the dummy is wearing goes by many names as many cultures trough out many time periods had something similar worn either under or over mail and other armours. The standardised one used amongst people I come into contact with is Gambeson, which is the French name for one such garment and is probably a perversion of a Germanic word.



Ok so I had to split that into two paragraphs but it is pretty clear that the paragraphs above were talking about the picture directly above this paragraph. Note in the above photo the colour difference, this was unfortunate side effect of using different batches, the old ones had basically no oil left and had an aged look while the new ones are shiny and still have a fair bit of oil, hopefully it evens out eventually. Also the image has been cropped, the padded arms and lower body is not relevant to this stage of construction.

From there the body was just lengthened until it basically hung to where a belt would sit when wearing a pair of pants, I don't think I took any photos of this, it really looks much the same just a lot longer and has totally squared off at the bottom under its own weight. I stopped it at this point, but it will get longer eventually, after the sleeves have been done.

After lengthening the body it was time to make some sleeves, I started this process by building flaps onto the shoulder parts of the now vest, initially the very edge of the mantle.

The following picture shows an arm flap, I took this photo of myself wearing it, I lined up the shot using the bathroom miror to view a reflection of the screen on the back of my camera, the combination of this and trying to get it to sit right whilst taking the photo is the reason for the odd contorted body positioning. Obviously there were flaps on both arms at this stage of construction



From here I build a band to encircle my arm at the end of the flap and then filled in the gap back towrds the armpit, I messed this bit up several times trying to find the right balance between minimal baggyness when arms were by my side and growing wings when my arms were lifted. The wings are formed when the whole shirt body gets lifted in the process of raising ones arms. I attempted to take a photo of my wings but it did not really show the point I was trying to make.

What I do have however is a picture after I split open the arm pit the final time to make room for some additional mail to sort out the wing problem, this is another bathroom job, so it has strange angles again.



Once I had finally filled in the armpits in an acceptable way I moved onto extending the arms. This is the point it was at after finishing the armpits then adding several rows to the sleeve length, I think it looks a bit like a metal tshirt at this point.



On the above photo there are two strange dark marks that can be seen, the most noticable one is right on the colour transition between the mantle part of the shirt and the rest of it, this is actually the ties that hold the flaps at the front of the Gambeson shut. When I make my Gambeson I am going to go for something more like a tunic than a jacket, because I think these ties make my mail shirt sit funny.

An observation I made whilst working on the shirt is that cats seem to like to be near mail, it must be the oily steel smell, however they also don't like to sit on it, perhaps it is too cold most of the time. These factors led to the posibility of setting up the following picture.



We couldn't quite get the pliers to look right, probably due to them being designed for human hands, not cat paws. It is a fun photo anyway.



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Article last updated 04/10/2004