Chainmail arm rows

Chainmail arm rows

Philipppp 18 Sep 2007 11:32

Hello, ye chainmail makers!

I'm at a point where I need to attach arms to what is currently my chainmail vest. I have done the some fancy underarm pit making and that's all fine, so I now have a more or less circular opening for the arm. However, to actually attach arms I looked at different mail-making sites (English, German and Spanish ones) and most of them don't mention which direction the rows go on the arms. Those which do, either imply that they just continue down over the shoulder (i.e. horizontally when holding the arms straight to the side), while I also found diagrams where it appears that the rows go round the arm and there's a kind of seam by the shoulder where the horizontal rows of the main body (from neck to arms) meet the circular ones going round the arm. How did you (Dom, Jeannie, whoever else has chainmail) do it? How do findings of Saxon/Viking short-sleeved chainmail have it?

Thanks

Re: Chainmail arm rows

axebreaker 18 Sep 2007 18:45

How exciting! Wychwood will be truly jingly come next term :D

Dom, Cai and I had a discussion about this a while ago. The problem is that maille finds are almost always small fragments, so there is almost no evidence of how garments were 'tailored.' There is, however, a nearly-complete Viking hauberk in the Oslo University antiquities collection. I have a photo of it in a book but have been unable to find it on the web. It looks like it has rows continuing horizontally into the arms as you initially describe, and this is how my hauberk was made (plus armpit tailoring). I also saw a museum replica hauberk when I was in Uppsala which was made like this. I can post a photo of my maille sleeves later if you like.

I'd say: as we don't know, any way of doing it which is hassle-free and leads to comfortable sleeves which don't restrict movement is probably fine…

p.s. Which sites did you use? If they're any good, could you stick the links up? Ta.

---

þas ofereode, þisses swa mæg

Last edited on 09 Nov 2007 20:20 by wychwood Show more

Re: Chainmail arm rows

Philipppp 18 Sep 2007 20:10

In which case, I shall play around with different possibilities and if it doesn't work out I just unroll the arm again and stick it to the bottom end of my shirt. I will probably wait with the arms until I'm back because I've almost run out of rings anyway, so I'll just use up the few remaining ones at other places.

I will also go through the mailmaking sites again (at least the English ones) to see which ones don't have links on our Wiki yet.

Re: Chainmail arm rows

Dominic 18 Sep 2007 21:52

on mine i've got a 90 degree turn for the arms, again neither proven or disproven, but it makes the links hang well and looks ok with the spacing of the links. i'd have to say it's pretty much up to you though…

i look forward to seeing the jingle in a few weeks!

Re: Chainmail arm rows

Jon The Elderly 08 Nov 2007 21:40

There is a later shirt in the museum at Bayeux, and the sleeves just extend from the body (so rows all going down if laid out like a t-shirt), and a simple right-angle join at the bottom. However, caveat fabricator- if you have made the sleeve-hole big enough to move comfortably, you will probably have to reduce the number of rows in the sleeve quite quickly, otherwise it will be a drop-sleeved shirt- tres chi-chi for the C10th, but not so butch! Anyhoo, that's how I made my first one, and I liked it so much, I did the same for the second.

Re: Chainmail arm rows

Olaf I 09 Nov 2007 19:22

The museum examples I've seen (and they've all been C14th onwards) have arms on which the grain simply continues along off the shoulders - ie no 90degree rotation.

This said, I'm changing to 90degree rotation. I find it gives me better shoulder articulation.