Greetings!
I'm contemplating a chainmail hauberk from GDFB. One concern I have is that, as a short person, there's a good chance that the hauberk will be a little too long in the sleeves and maybe in total length down my legs.

Is it easy to shorten a hauberk by removing rings? I'm totally new to this so I don't know if it's an impractical thing. If it is I'll have to go the custom maker route, but I'd rather not spend that much for my first one.

If you have a decent pair of wire-cutters you can remove as many rings as you like.

Would be a bit wasteful but if you wanted to you could turn that full length hauberk into a belly-free top.

Removing is easy enough and done very quickly (you merely have to make sure you stay in the same row of rings, otherwise you are likely to have some dangling off at the end).

Closing holes or attaching cut-off parts isn't all that hard as well, but you need to observe the pattern and you (most likely) will have to content yourself with not having the reattached rings riveted.

I want to follow this. I'm short in stature also...5'-7"...and also thinking of getting some mail armor. I will most likely get a haubergon with half length sleeves from GDFB. Let us know what you get, and how it fits 'out of the box'. I think a full length hauberk on me would make me look like Gimli from LOTR as he was getting dressed for battle. :lol: ...McM

All the people at KOA are fantastic. I just took order of a Hanwei Lowlander Greatsword and they got it to me in five days. Simply outstanding service, ..............McM

GDFB mail doesn't taper towards the end of the sleeve, for me I just have to narrow that part down by cutting the forearm sleeve patch and then redo the rings thus making it narrower. I was using a wire cutter. If you forget how to do the pattern just look at the rest of the mail to see how to insert rings.

One last thing, is that you have to clean the mail before doing any work, if you get cut during the process of cutting a dirty oily mail it can be bad.