0 Chain&plate armor progress report 3

Right, mind you thats from several hours ago, I've started the sleeves now. I'll adjust the sides though, not very comfortable. Another note, avoid scrap metal as a whole. You never know if its not hardened steel under that thin coat of rust. I nearly broke my drill and they don't grow on trees.

My gf was here to take the photos, but this time she refused to put the armor on :). Instead, she opted to try and make something for herself.

0 Chain&plate - Reasonable female armor :)

Or at least better than the battle thongs, and it still looks good.

Its much easier when you can find someone to try it on. Now I  need to close the sides with another set of plates. Maybe leave adjustable straps.but I might enclose it after all.

0 Chain&plate armor progress report 2

Right, just a small progress report here. I got shoulder straps and the back plates done. Its wearable at this point. I'm already making notes for the actual production model. The lower back can be covered with plates easily, that leaves only the 1/4 of the torso - the belly covered with maille only, and the 2 sides of course. Can't use scrap though, I'll need a big sheet for this, since, as I found out, a large quantity of similar plates will be better than several types&sizes. That means finding a car and so on...annoying.

0 Chain&plate armor progressing

Right, so that's a nearly finished frontal section, next i need to do the back, the shoulder straps and the sides. sleeves will be for the last. Ran out of sheet metal though.

Few words of advice here for those following in. Sheet metal will ****** cut you. Use gloves all the time. And you won't find it in the Tools4Us, you need a warehouse, unlike the wire.

0 Chain&plate - time for mass production

Recently I've started a rather big project here - making munitions armor - that is fast to produce average quality stuff from the "one size fits nobody" cathegory. While maille is good, its slow to make - a set taking several weeks to produce. I will need a whole year to equip a squad of 10. So I went on with something different, which is easier as a whole, though it takes a bit more instruments.


Chain&plate armor is made from small overlapping plates, joined together with rings. Its not dissimilar to lamellars, scale armor and brigantines, except that the plates here are held together by rings, not by rivets or laces. Its a typically eastern design, as the local reenactors from Chigot would say - "Turkish job".

This here is a test piece made for about 1 hour and a half, hopefully soon to become the full prototype. Right now it covers the chest, and I will stretch it a bit more to cover the abdomen and then wrap with chainmaille. The full kit will look like a weird hybrid between a roman lorica segmentata and a lorica hamata.

Chain& plate is surprisingly easy to make requiring only a bit more in terms of tools and supplies. A drill is needed to make the holes,  and sheet metal of at least 1mm thickness for the plates. Even scraps will do as you can cut them up into small plates. To cut sheet metal, a throatless shear will be your best friend.

Here is what they look like:

Of course those are rare to find and expensive to buy so a jigsaw is an acceptable substitute.


Chain&plate armor is quite maneuverable and light too. It bends easily both ways. You have to pay a bit more attention of course - with maille worst that can happen is losing a few strands of hair - with plate you got sharp edges that must be filed away, and you should make sure its not close enough to your throat to actually cut you if you make a backflip or something.

Chopped up plates, ready for rust cleaning and drilling.

It terms of speed, it took me 1 hour to cut 30-40 plates from pieces of scrap, and another 1.5 to make 1/3 of a torso front by myself. With a couple of friends, it will be easy to make an awful lot of these.

0 Chainmaille Turtle

Ok, so in the comments on the previous post, Razzy asked for a turtle. Now being such a nice guy as I am(NOT) I made him one.

Well, like with the puppy it takes a bit of an artistic eye to see the animal of course. I made it by modifying one of my Celtic stars. What I can do here, is try and secure the shell tighter to the body, bit of a problem so far, but I will try to solve it soon. Used the gold, and copper plated rings for it. Taking more suggestions on! Come on, I don't bite, and its not as if I want you to pay for it or something, just keep it simple - no Taj Mahal/ Big Ben/ Wall Street/ whatever made from chainmaille.

I promise to do my best.

0 This should keep my engines running for a while.

Bought a new batch of tiny links. Copper, gold-plated and  rhodium plated rings too. Should be a while before I have to visit that store again to buy more. Question is what to make with them :)