Armor: How effective was Chainmail

[Dan Howard]

In order to mechanise wire production like this you need very high quality bloomery iron. If the slag isn't very finely distributed, the wire constantly snaps in the drawplate. This is also important during the riveting process because slag can cause a link to delaminate when pierced with a drift. This type of bloomery iron requires a lot more refining than standard bloomery iron and is a lot more expensive. The time and cost of the raw materials for mail is higher than for any other type of ferrous armour. The time and cost to make the individual components is higher than any other kind of armour. The time and cost to assemble the armour is higher than any other kind of armour. It is impossible to argue that mail wasn't the most expensive armour ever invented, yet it was the most widespread and long-lived armour ever invented too.

I hope I'm remembering this correctly. If not, then hopefully Erik will pop in here and notice. My figure of 1 link per minute assumes that one person is making everything himself. Erik reckons that he can do about a thousand links per day (10 hours?) if the links are already cut and annealed but he still has to lap and flatten them. If they are fully prepared beforehand and all that is required is closing and riveting, he reckons that he can manage around 3,000 links per day. That would increase to over 5,000 per day if every second row consists of solid links. A hamata with 40,000 links can therefore be assembled by a single person in 9 days (one day for tailoring, fittings, etc) if everything is fully prepared beforehand.