A Brief history of Chainmaille

      Chainmaille was a type of armor that originated in the late Iron age; many theorize that it was first introduced during the Persian empire( although no one really knows). Maille was used all over the world for thousands of years (good news for those of you researching personas). Although the weaves vary drastically from country to country the basic overall aspect of maille remained the same. That was they were; all a lot of little rings interwoven together in a certain pattern. Although used for decades before, maille really reached it's height during the time of the Vikings and the early middle ages( A.D. 700-1100), but it was worn all the way up to the 1500 hundreds as a way of covering the gaps that plate armor couldn't. Unfortunately with the advent of gunpowder and firearms came the downfall of the use of armor, and maille was all but forgotten. Luckily the designs survived for the years in between and in the modern age maille has seen somewhat of a revival and is now used in shark diving and delis to protect the hands, and  it's also used to make jewelry.

An Introduction to making Maille

        The process in which maille was truly made has been lost to us through time but here at JR Smytheries we pride ourselves on making chainmaille in the most authentic way known to the modern world. Below is a list of the steps we go through to make maille along with some descriptions of what we have to do. Enjoy!

1. Spool twisting. What we do in this step is; we take raw wire we bought at a hardware store or other retail store, and we wind the wire into several spools (they resemble springs) we use a machine called a mandrel (called so because it uses a hand powered crank) to wind the wire, and then we cut the spools off the mandrel, then they are ready to be cut into rings.

2.Ring cutting. We take the spools we just made, and hand cut them using a machine saw cutting system. Then they are ready for weaving.

3. Weaving the rings. This is the third and final step (it's also the longest). What we do here is take all the little rings we just got through cutting and weave them together to make something useful (depending on what it is, this can take anywhere from 20 minutes to four months; i.e. finger ring vs. shirt)

That's all, and thank you for your time.
Ryan Myers (Resident Historian)