Building a Lorica Hamata;

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Your size is pretty much irrelevant to the number of links you'll use, what matters is the size of the links you'll use. If you used 4mm ID links, riveted and punched, 4-in-1 alternating pattern, then it would take you (according to Roman Imperial Armor) approximately 250 Days, and roughly 40,000 links. If you use 6mm ID that's going to cut your link count down to somewhere around 30,000 probably, and if you use 8mm ID maile even less.