Making Basic Armor - eMyTextBooks

Making Basic Armor

This is the beginning of a tutorial on how to make leather armor and chainmail .

Chain mail:

• Chain mail can be made out of just about any wire, 16 gauge and above. This includes plastic coated wire for inlays, although this it is not recomended for "period" armor.
• It is best to use 16 gauge galvanized, or stainless steel wire.
• If the armor will be used in SCA combat forged or riveted links will hold up better. Links made of aluminium will not hold up to combat use. Forged/Welded links are not required for SCA use SCA Armor Standards (http://sca.org/officers/marshal/combat/armored/armor_standards.pdf)
• If it is to be for purely decorative purposes, like for greeting guests at a medieval dinner party, it can be made of butted links of aluminum, to reduce the weight to about two to five pounds.
• For more information seeMaking Chainmail (http://users.frii.com/dnorris/maillearmor.html) and Production Mailmaking (http://ralphandellen.us/sca/chainmail.html)

Leather armor:

• Leather for armor must be boiled before use. The longer it is boiled, the thicker and smaller it becomes. However, the longer a piece of leather is boiled, the more brittle it becomes.
• To make armor-grade leather vambraces, put a thick towel around your arm and mold the boiled leather around it.

Metal:

• Depending on the gauge (thickness) and temper (hardness) many pieces of armor may be made entirely with cold work (no forge required). Generally this is true for 12 gauge and smaller mild steel.
• True period metal armor was hardened using a forge. This allowed the metal to be thiner/lighter the much modern reenactor armor.
• Most metal armor sold today is mostly or entirely cold worked, with the exception of the welds used in some pieces.