Maille Cutting

[George Turner]

Hi all,

Down at the Meyer workshop I brought some maille for test cutting. After we'd cut at it for all we were worth I put on a maille legging and let Jake Norwood try some slow draw cuts on me, which of course were going to be completely ineffective. Since we're rarely getting through maille with full force blows, to get through it he'd have to be swinging hard enough to break my leg. The maille is fully welded 16 gage with varying link size.

Here's the leg.



And here's a little mpeg of the cuts.

CutsOnLeg

It shows that slices or sawing against maille aren't going to accomplish anything, not that this comes as any surprise.

George Turner
ARMA in KY

[Shane Smith]

Thanks for bringing that stuff along for us to cut on George! You know,the fact that it couldn't be cut wasn't too surprising to me,but I must admit that not being able to thrust my anti-armour blade through it WAS a surprise. I wouldn't have guessed that as some modern riveted maille is easily defeated from the halfsword. <img src="/forum/images/icons/shocked.gif" alt="" />

[KatherineJohnson]

I think that it would have been easier to thrust through on a human opponent. Most of the time the maille had a pretty solid backing. so basically we were trying to thrust through maille and wood. (Even on their padded pell i dont think there was quite enough padding to allow enough give to thrust through)

[Shane Smith]

You may well be on to something Kat. My own thinking was that the pell had too little "body" to properly support the maille as a human body would.I believe I will need to harvest a deer this fall for further testing.

[robrobertson]

George,

I'm very glad that my son, Ian, and I went to that seminar! Making chain mail is one of Ian's hobbies, and now it seems that we MUST buy a new welder. I believe that the whole event was a sucess. Meeting you, the Welch's, Jake, Kat, David, etc. was a very good thing.

We're sending in our paperwork to join ARMA! In fact, the rest of my kids want to join too.

We'll have to get things moving up in Kentucky.

Rob

[George Turner]

Oh, thanks Rob! We really do have to get something put together. Hopefully I'll get freed up pretty soon.

Anyway Kathy, the maille is surprisingly thrust resistant even against muscle, and Jake even took your trusty spear and tried to push it through my leg without much result. The finer 18 gage maile (7/32" ID) has no problem collapsing one of the stiff-bladed Del Tin rapiers when backed by my leg, although they aren't as stiff as an original and certainly aren't sharp near the tip. However I have put my entire body-weight (about 150 lbs) on a WW-I bayonet point, protected by 19 gage 3/16" ID maille with no problem, though it was a single-edged blade and not particular optimized for that role. Plus, that's much finer than the typical weave.

[KatherineJohnson]

Hi George,

Yeh, I didnt figure thrusting through would be easy <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" /> I was very surprised at it's resilence. I wish we would have tested one of Jakes roundels against it, that would have been pretty intresting.

Speaking of the spear, I was watching the video's with Jake the other day and we came to the one where he was doing draw cuts on your maille vest while you were wearing it. I grinned at him and said "You should have just let me throw the spear at him" <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

I have been wondering how a non thrown spear would fair against it. I also wish we would have tried the sword throw against it (albeit my big clunker wasnt the best throwing sword). Maybe next time eh? I have to say that it was a blast trying to defeat it, even if the maille did win most of the time...

[Ryan Ricks]

that's a pretty dense weave there. what is it? 6:1? i've made my own hauberk, 14ga wire with 4:1 weave. i've put a lot of time into it, so i'm not sure whether it'd be worth having the rings welded closed, or if i should just go buy a new hauberk. the good thing about mine is that i specifically tailored it for my size, although if the rings were riveted or welded i'm sure i could have used lighter guage wire and thus reduced a lot of the weight.

i'm 5'7" 115 lbs, 36 jacket size, and my shirt weighs about 19 lbs with sleeves to the elbow and length to within about 3 inches of my knees.

any advice?

ryan

[JeanryChandler]

Could you repost that mail cutting video? I wanted to show it to someone to settle a bet!

DB