Chainmail shirt Psudo-howto

From Fozzee.net

My first random venture into armoring was chainmail. Chainmail has always interested me, but it never occurred to me how one might make it. I did some research and found that European 4-in-1 is way too complicated for my little brain, and that most people would never know the difference. Plus, Italian uses something like 30% less rings, making it lighter and faster to build. The downside to this, however, is that it limits it's piercing protection. Anyhow, onward to the pics.

	This is what the cut rings look like. I'm using 16ga galvanized steel wire for my main project (though I've made other rings, these are small enough to look nice). More pix to come showing how rings are made.
	Here's Micah assembling the chains of rings into a small piece of mail. More details on this assembly process to come, though there are many people out there who can explain chain weaving far better than I.
	This is a closeup of a larger piece of mail, all finished. Notice the difference in how the links are cut. I switched cutters 3 times trying to find something I liked (and could do without breaking myself).
	I finally outgrew the smaller desktop rig, if only because it wasn't very stable. Anyhow, this deal hangs from a cupboard or shelf and lets me make mail at the desired width (59 rings, arbitrarily). It's also strong enough to support a piece of mail aproximately 24" wide. The only reason I could see to upgrade further is to get heavier gauge wire, so you could make longer chains or use heavier links. At the very top, you can see that I've started cross-linking the chains.
	This is the piece of mail that I've been at off and on for a few months now. It's approximately 18"x36". It really needs about another 12" to fit correctly. Once that's done, I plan to build the shoulders separately, ant attach them to the top, after connecting the ends of the body. More to come!
	And the final product, albeit posted a few years later. In actuality, this shirt took "every night" for a few weeks. Not that I worked terribly hard every night, usually the guys came over, hung out, made some rings, etc etc. Totally worth the experience.