Here's my method for flattening.

1. Squeeze ring into an oval.
2. Pre-flatten the butted half of the ring only.
3. Overlap ends about a 1/4 inch.
4. Finish flattening.

You can leave the wire round or flatten the entire ring. I use a small hammer that I filed the face flat.
The point behind the oval shape before pre-flattening is that the ends are in line, making it easy to squeeze together for the final flattening.

Here are two more Pinterest galleries, one for Japanese mail and one for Indo-Persian mail.

http://www.pinterest.com/samuraiantiques/japa...or-kusari/
http://www.pinterest.com/samuraiantiques/indo-persian-mail-armor/

Japanese riveted mail.
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Indian theta link mail.
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Jonathon, you can make the overlap like you prefer. I use piston and I don’t know make it with hammer. I don´t need to anneal the wire now, I do it when I punch the ring. But yes, If you anneal the ring before flatten, you will make it easier.
Pekka , wonderful mailmaker from Finland, use a modificated knipex plier.
The secret is don´t flat very much. . In my ring the overlap width is about 2 mm if I use 1'5 mm wire, so the difficult step is to pierce the ring. The finished ring has 2'5 mm overlap width or so.
I put photos with the piston ( made by Pekka),the modificated plier and the steps for round and flat rings, and finished rings ( some photo are old and I put it in the forum years ago)
More information in the http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/rivetedmaille/info
The forum is almost dead but has great pictures and information.
Regards
Julio

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Feliz navidad, Julio !

Sorry OT... :)

Sorry Eric, no pictures at the moment. Working on it.

Thanks for the detailed information and pictures, Julio. I found out that the pre-annealed wire I got at Home Depot wasn't quite soft enough, and with a little of my propane torch I found it much easier to work. I pound the ring once to flatten the wire surface, shape the ring overlap around a mandrel, and if the metal's soft enough it's a success. Here is an example of what I was able to create:


I would flatten the ring less like yours, but I am using a 1/16" whitney punch to pierce my rings and there needs to be a sufficient amount of metal on each side of the hole for ring integrity. what wire size and rivet size do you use for your mail, if I may ask? As it is, I am happy that I figured out my issue and can at least create mail from scratch if I want. I don't really think that the extra effort makes them worth it for me over Indian mail though. If I went to create more I would probably invest in some piston and cylinder setups to make the ring flattening more uniform, but the straight hammer isn't quite as uneven now with some practice.

Edit: I can't seem to upload the picture of my ring on here. Hopefully with some help I can sort it out.

Here's a couple of pictures showing ring flattening, and a sample of mail. http://s1228.photobucket.com/user/len102/medi...5.jpg.html
Not museum quality mail, just a simple way to flatten rings. I used rebar tie wire wound around a 10mm rod. A prick-punch and 19g. wire nails for riveting.

Jonathon;

The wire of these rings is 1'5 mm and the internal diameter is 7 mm. The rivet is wedge shaped with more or less 4 mm long and 0’7-0’8 mm wide.

I think the overlap has to be narrow and the hole according to the width of the overlap if you want to get good rings.
Perhaps your approach is wrong, you do a wide overlap because you do a big hole. try to do the opposite, a smaller hole that will allow you a small overlap. If you use wedge rivet, the hole width can be 0’8 mm , of course to being parallel to the direction of overlap

Eric:
My mail isn´t specific time period mail.
I do various diameters wire, 1'5 mm and 1'1 mm, several internal diameters of ring,
round or flat, round rivet or wedge,... but until now never I had imitated none in particular. I guess that when I have time I will do it, mainly because whenever I appear in the forum someone asks me that question :)

Julio

That maille looks like Indian made modern round riveted round ring maille. Hell if I wasnt told it was from the 1800s I would of thought it was. Though seeing the inside would be nice, not sure if it's flat in the back like historical maille or has that double ended rivet that plagues Indian made maille.

Here is another of the same type of Russian armor from the 1800s, on the far bottom left it looks like you can see both heads of a rivet.


European Nicholas I era armor, detail view, from the Caucasian mountains life guards half squadron convoy escort, formed in 1828 by Nicholas I's order, to serve as the Russian Imperial Court's escort, formed from the voluntarily conscripted local high nobility shortly after Russia's conquest of the Northern Caucasus, consisting of a riveted mail kolchuga (mail shirt) naruchi (arm guards), misiurka (helmet) with riveted mail camail

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That looks just like Indian made round ring round riveted maille even more with those photos. It even looks like they "shear" cut the rings off coils too, given the flattened part of the ring where the rivet is at. I guess thats what they were copying when they made that kind of maille, if it's made in the east they could of ended up getting some examples of that and copied it before Forth Armory taught them how to make flat ring wedge riveted maille.
Here are some pics of Erik's maille that some Indian scammer sent to me who Erik actually messaged me about a few months back.:
http://imageshack.com/a/img854/6413/7oor.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img600/7477/yfb9.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img203/7903/wmt3.jpg

Here is some Japanese riveted mail with a similar look,


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http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewto...mp;t=89515

Unfortunately they merely state it is a "random find", but it's currently located in Bulgaria. If I were guessing as to origin, I'd suspect Central European (German, Austrian) over Turkish, but my views are already on the thread (Ernst).

Forgive my imprecision in language, regarding "Bulgarian" vs. "in Bulgaria". In the AA thread, it is stated this is all riveted construction. My limited exposure to Turkish and Persian mail has always shown demi-riveted construction. Perhaps you have an example of a Turkic or Persian mail coif which is shaped in a similar manner for comparison?