Most modern maille is a t-shirt like tube. I've seen many extant coats of mail from the middle ages (c1300-1600 in most cases I believe) that are all tailored, tightening up in one spot and letting out in another.

Was the the norm for most of the middle ages? What about before? All I've seen on the post-Marian legions leads me to believe they were using tube coats (sans sleeves until later on in the empire). Were, say, the coats of mail amongst the forces of Charles Martel (how overlooked a man sometimes) and Charlemagne tailored? From what I understand, the arms and armor of the migration period and early middle ages were all very personalized, and not something generally bought in some kind of "arms market" or procured from stockpiles (probably wrong).

I open this discussion to all mail-wearing peoples, from Portugal to China.

M.

There have been different techniques. The Butted Mailemakers Guide you can find by growsing through google is refering to a maileshirt from the Wallace collection, it uses gores and row expansion and contraction. Then there are those reports about some extant shirts from the maile research society. Buy browsing the links on Erik D. Schmidts webpage you can get accces to those. There is the exact tapering shown, because they did ounts off rings giving you an exact idea how to tailor your maile.