What's the difference between square/round section rings? (which provides more strength) What about rivets? What kinds of rivets are there, and again, which provides the most strength?

cheers
alex

Jeez, this was a blown evening.

Now that I've scrubbed it in the sandbox and oiled it, it's finish is now pretty close to the color of the Historic Enterprises maille. The only irritating thing is that there is now a faint line around the shirt's waist where the rings are lighter in color. It almost looks like a seam, or maybe where the maille was folded as it was zinc plated or something. It wasn't the complete disaster that I had feared it was going to be but I can't say that I'm absolutely thrilled either. I'm glad it was cheap.

I'd be surprised if they weren't the same size. They are likely to have come from the same workshop in India. All the retailers are basically selling the same type of mail. You get what you pay for. For the price it isn't a bad product but it should be acknowledged that it has little in common with mail worn by contemporaries. It is meant as an affordable but superior alternative to butted mail and fills that role nicely.

What you need to do is get yourself some Muratic acid. They have it at Home Depot etc. in the pool cleaning section.

Get a couple of 5 gallon buckets while you are there. Pour acid in bucket then dip the chain in. Tie a rope to the chain so you can get it out. Wear chemical gloves as you don't want that stuff on your hands. This is a volitile reaction and will foam up something fierce at 1st. When the fizzing stops, it's done.
*WARNING: DO NOT BREATH IN THE SMOKE FROM THIS REACTION! DO THIS OUTSIDE!

In a second bucket mix water and baking soda. You can get this at the grocery in the baking section. Mix this solution and dip the chain into it after removing it from the acid. This will nullify the acid. after this, hang and oil.

It's a little more of a hassle but works well.

Scott/Camric
http://community.webshots.com/user/grnshield
(my crap)

On a little different tilt here, but also regarding affordable armor I bought a pair
of ring mail bracers from Mercenary's Tailor to give my nephew for Christmas.
Having not opened the box before he did, I was very impressed with the quality of
the pieces, and was doubly pleased to be able to give a 22 year old something
that really wound his watch, a thing I hadn't been able to do since his "He Man"
action figure days. So watch out, in Portland there is tatooed ring mail bracer
wearing two sword having fan of Scandinavian Heavy metal! (All clicks and buzzes to me)

Happy Boxing Day,
Doug G.

First, mucho thanks to Scott Gelpi for giving me the idea in my previous thread concerning the maille shirt I recently purchased from Wholesalearmor.com.

I had less than satisfactory results on giving my bright and shiny zinc-plated maille the vinegar treatment. Apparently the Indians manufacture the Maille in panels that are then put together as needed into various garments. It seems that the zinc plating on the rings used to connect the panels had a different alloy content, because they weren't as affected by the vinegar. This left a distinctly brighter line of rings right across the waist (an area where I need no emphasis), around the shoulders, and vertically down each side of the shirt. Not a huge FUBAR but very irritating to my anal retentive nature.

Scott suggested that I use Muriatic acid to remove the zinc plating. Since the shirt wasn't that expensive I decided to give it a try. Immediately after work I drug my wife around town on a shopping expedition. When I told her what I was going to do I received the typical rolling of the eyes response that all of us married sword lovers know so well.

The results were great! Instead of oxidizing the zinc it appears to have removed it all together, leaving the entire shirt a nice even dark iron color. I'm now extremely happy with the result.

I did learn a few things though.

Muriatic acid is nasty stuff. Make sure that you stand "up" wind.

Muriatic acid is nasty stuff. I was expecting a slow bubbling reaction. What I got was a woosh of a cloud with all of the charm of mustard gas. Again, stand "up" wind.

Muriatic acid is nasty stuff. Don't overfill the bucket because it will spill over onto the metal doors of your storm shelter (which are now very clean BTW). Make sure that you do it right before dark, so your wife can't see what you did to the aforementioned storm shelter doors. :eek:

Muriatic acid is nasty stuff. In spite of it's inherent nastiness your dumbass dog will attempt to drink it. Secure Poochie dumbass in the garage first.

Thanks again to Scott Gelpi for the suggestion.

Did I mention the Muriatic acid is nasty stuff?

Patrick , we'll be taking all this under advisement as Doug's going to be etching his first nickle pattern weld blade for New Year's with ....you guessed it muratic acid (Doug has 2x Poochie Dumbass . better be extra carefull).

Pictures please! Do you have "before" , "middle" (post vinegar) and "after" shots? That would be interesting.

Glad it worked out.

In slight defense of the vinegar method - I think it might have worked if you had left it overnight. The references I looked at (after your series of posts) gave times ranging from 12 hours to 24. All the same - the acid version certainly works faster and produced the right results.

Hmm - you could start a business - Pool cleaning and Zinc removal.
Maybe not.

Gordon

I can't post pics directly here. Anyone who wants pics can shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you some photos.

Bill,

Should I have been more grammatically correct and said "dragged"? :D

Patrick;

Glad you finally got the results you wanted and are not drugging your wife....LOL.
Always scary when thing get weird when doing these "improvements".

Glad to know that you didn't loose half of your lung tissue by actually standing "downwind": Wouldn't standing downwind mean that the fumes would be coming towards you!?(You would want to be UPWIND to be safe.)

I guess I prefer the less authentic look of zinc plating to the authentic rust management of naked iron.

The one I got from Valentine Armouries probably comes from the same Indian makers, although mine has round wire rings and round rivets.

I am more curious or concerned about how these compare to more expensive mail as to strenght, quality control, protective effectiveness.

I assume that one of the reasons for maille to be more expensive is that when historical accuraty is the priority there are fewer or no manufacturing shortcuts.

Patrick, I've been using muriatic acid on galvanized steel for about six months now on some art projects a couple of things you should know if you don't already...muriatic acid will rust steel in hours (which is what I've been using it for primarily) so keep your guard up, with water the effect is enhanced. Second, and maybe not such a big concern since this might be a one time thing, the gas and vapour that apparently burns off of the steel, I've been told, is cyanide.

I use a muriatic acid-based product designed to clean concrete. Sounds like it is essentially a dilute solution of the nasty stuff you fellows are talking about. I use it mainly to take the plating off the various hardware with which I display my collection on the walls.

Immersing parts in the stuff produces a very gentle bubbling action and full de-plating takes several hours. I buy the stuff at Fleet Farm, the local "if we ain't got it you don't need it" emporium.

JSA