I'm ordering a round riveted haubergeon by cap a pie and they don't have the 54" sized hauberk, just haubergeon, so I will get half sleeves, not long sleeves, and I need long. I need the hauberk soon and can't wait for hauberk to get in stock so I though about ordering 1000 solid rings, 1000 round rings with round rivets and a riveting tool. But I have no idea how difficult is it to rivet rings with these tools so I would like to hear experiences of those of you who tried it... Thanks!

I've been considering DIY mail as well, and thought I'd throw in a question too (sorry). Which loose rings are the most durable for sparring and actual use? I care less about the historical accuracy than the strength of the rings and rivets, though I'm guessing the more accurate (whoops--less inaccurate) rings will probably be stronger. I realize much of that depends on construction but I think I'd end up doing a 4-in-1.

My personal experience is tailoring wedge-riveted maille. I can't speak specifically for round riveted maille, but I can't imagine it being incredibly different labor-wise. I've tailored the sleeves of a haubergeon so they taper properly down the length of my arm and I've done a lot of tailoring on an aventail. That being said, tailoring maille is in no way hard to do. It's just incredibly tedious work. It's not really fun or exciting in my opinion, but once you get the hang of it, it goes smoothly, but it goes slowly.

To finish off the sleeves of your hauberk will not require you develop a very involved skill you do not yet possess, it will just take a while to do, but it's 100% doable. Now, properly building your own hauberk or haubergeon from scratch and making sure everything is designed like a historical hauberk, that's another feat entirely, and does require a high level of skill. Small tailoring jobs like reshaping your arm, or lengthening the arm etc should be no problem.

In terms of round rivet mail, it's just as easy as wedge rivet mail. Just hold the ring closed with the left pliers and crush the rivet with the tool in the right hand. I don't think making a haubergeon is particularly difficult, I made two using plans easily available on the internet. Making the armpit seams is probably the hardest thing about it besides the monotony. The two main things that are better about making a shirt from scratch are the quality control you can put in and the money savings. The big trade off, though is the hundreds of hours necessary to rivet thousands of rings together.

As for the most durable rings, the ones I used for my first haubergeon are the 16ga 8mm id round rivet rings from gdfb. These combined with the 16g 3/8 punched rings from the ring Lord makes for probably the strongest riveted mail I have seen. The 17g flat round rings from gdfb are also very good, and the kult of Athena wedge rings look very good as well. Basically stick with anything thicker than 18g and you should be fine. Honestly though, if I hadn't made my shirts yet I would get one of the new kult wedge hauberks and skip the tedious work. Hope this helps.

Thank you for your advice, Jonathan! It was really helpful--the GDFB you mentioned is exactly what I was trying to decide on!

its fairly simple however its extremely tedious and labor intensive to make your own form scratch. i suggest if you do go with this idea that you get flat rings of any type wedge or dome and buy solid washers with it will take about half the work off the amount you will have to do

Thanks to all. I ordered the mail and some loose solid rings and round rings with rivets so I will try to lengthen the sleeves...

Hello,

Best of luck with your mail project! I'm doing a similar tailoring project right now with flat rings and round rivets from eBay seller all_beststuff (great customer service by the way). The riveting itself does not take a lot of strength, but it takes practice to create a clean link. If the tiny rivet is not lined up correctly in the tool it will either twist to the side and fall out or mash unevenly and create a ragged overlap which needs to be trimmed. It probably took me 100 repetitions before I got the hang of making consistently good rivets.