I haven't seen any Ulfberth mail for a couple of years. People have said that their recent mail is improving and is now better than the Indian stuff. Does anyone have a close up pic of some of their recent mail? Is it getting better?

I just bught some Ulfberth loose ring bags with rivets and solid rings kfrom GDFB.
When you get it pre assembled it has the usual flaws, mainly the rivets are rounf head on both sides and the front side sometimes has this matchstick head shape which is the pre shaped end of the tiny rivet.

The material needs to be sorted as some rings aren't useabe (about 20-30% of the rivetable rings) but if you accept that the rest has great potential when put together meticulously. I'm experimenting with grinding the rivet head flat and putting it in from the back side. Then I rivet with my one sided dome plier. Then I grind the riveted ring to get the teardop shape. These actually look better than my own rings but still lack watershed of course.

The solids are a bit thin but better than anything else commercially produced today. I put together some weave with my own solids to compare. They do lok better of course but for what it is it's quite nice looking.


I have photos but on my phone. Will try to post some when I get home from work tonight.

Dan, did I mix these up? I bought some GDFB roman maille. They sell a lot of ulfberth stuff. Is this the one you meant?

Don't care. I'm curious if there is anything on the market today that more closely resembles historical mail than what was available a couple of years ago. If there is then the "riveted does not equal historical" thread needs updating.

Not everything on that list is true for the Indian maille I have seen. I will post photos of a burst link to that thread to show what the maille that FindIt Armoury was selling in 2009 looks like. I would have written it something like "Riveted maille made in India today is quite varied, but all of it has a number of differences from late medieval maille. Depending on the manufacturer and date of production, these can include: ..."

Edit: I would also add the lack of tailoring to the list, since whether your maille is tailored properly is a "three metre problem" while rivet shape is a "thirty centimetre problem" and alloy is a "under a microscope or in a laboratory" problem. Its irrelevant for testing, but you don't just cite that thread for armour tests.

I am looking to make some of my own riveted mail but been looking myself Dan. I'll have to watch this thread.

RPM

Sorry it took me a while to edit the photos.

Here's a sample of what can be done with the GDFB roman maille loose rings and some modifications.
Note that just getting it pre-assembled in a weave won't be at all as well put together as I did here though and the rivets are non-historically double headed. I also have to sort the rings, about 10% are not useable out of the 1 kg bags. But those that do work save me a lot of time and are easy to grind into the attractive teardop shape seen on many historical artifact round ring mailles.

http://imageshack.us/a/img844/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img853/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img132/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img69/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img7/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img833/4705/gdfbromankittogjermundbh.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img832/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img402/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img651/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img402/4320/gdfbromankittogjermundbt.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img40/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img194/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img856/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img705/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img716/6346/gdfbromankittogjermundbf.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img20/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img716/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img845/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img833/1865/gdfbromankittogjermundb.jpg

About how many mm of material is there in the overlap? Would it be feasible to create watershedding and/or the secondary drift bulge around the rivet with pliers or a press? Or is the ring just too thin at that point to bother with it?

In short, yes you can! :) Pics on phone, will try to post them tonight if I'm not too tired.

Kai, you already found your way there, but for the rest of you guys I posted the stuff on my Gjermundbu thread.

But in short, yes, watershedding post riveting can be done with a second plier pressing. From my most recent trials It seems it's even the most likely way that the original gjermundbu links were made.

Some time ago I bought Ulfberth mail at this Dutch webshop http://www.celticwebmerchant.eu/c-1748088/chainmail/ I think it’s almost the same as GDFB (they sell GDFB mail too). I think it doesn’t make a very big difference. Although the distribution of chaine mail to the European market is sometimes scares.

---

 Attachment: 81.97 KB

So Ulfberth maille is flat with round rivet, or is it like the GDFB that have all sorts of variants available?

All of them
http://www.battlemerchant.com/Chain-Mail:::5....416809a942

Have any of you worked with the loose riveted rings offered by SPQR? I ask because I might buy riveted rings soon and I too am looking for the best quality.

---

 Attachment: 16.17 KB

Dan,

If your question extends to tailoring, not just riveting, then Robert Macpherson, Wade Allen, and Andre Sinou are currently working on a project to make mail sleeves available: http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewto...p;start=70

One thing I'd like is a link that doesn't remind me of a soda can ring tab.