Then there are samples of Renaissance mail made from hardened, medium-carbon steels.....

The fun thing being that two of the Monthy Python cast are quite knowledgeable on medieval history and played the trope straight (though not everyone seems to catch this).

One thing I have noted in looking at a lot of prices on weapons and armor in the high to late medieval period, all over Europe, is that while weapons like swords got MUCH cheaper (down to around half a mark in the 15th Century in many German towns) and armor including plate harness and various types of textile and plate armours, got much cheaper as well (down to a few guilders), mail never seems to get cheaper. It ranged from expensive to very expensive. In fact there seem to be certain types of mail which are much more expensive than almost any military kit except warhorses. You could buy a cheap cuirass with pauldrons four or five times over for the cost of one mail shirt in some cases. Unfortunately they don't often give much information about the kit in question so I don't know if some of this is that extra fine type mail that you can't fit a pin through or if it's tempered mail or just ordinary mail.

Which makes me think of a question - Dan, what are your thoughts on tempering mail? Could you get a mail byrnie with some carbon content in it and temper the whole shirt? Wasn't that done in period? I never understood how you would quench that evenly.

J

To the contrary, the price of mail drops as Dr. Randall Storey's thesis reveals.

http://virtuabis.free.fr/Technology%20and%20M...ngland.pdf

Quote:

Generations of historians believed that with the addition of mail barding in the early thirteenth century the cost of fielding a fully-equipped knight had outgrown the original value attached to knights fees, .... An additional charge levelled against the high-cost argument contends that the real cost of armaments, especially the hauberk, was actually falling perhaps from the late twelfth century. ------------- Over the course of the thirteenth century mail barding halved in price to 20s or less, but its adoption still varied due to the vagaries of individual assessments. ------------ M. Strickland has already proposed that the lengthening of the hauberk to include the arms and legs at this time probably reflects cheaper costs of mail. ------------ The evidence presented here suggests that in England prices for arms with high iron and/or steel contents experienced the most drop over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In most cases the prices of substantial arms such as hauberks or iron helms fell to a quarter or even an eighth of their price in 1200. A hauberk for instance which commonly cost 40s in 1200 was often valued for 20s during the early thirteenth century and could be found for 5s in the fourteenth century. In relation to the costs of living, arms which experienced such large price drops may have cost one-sixteenth as much in 1300 as they had in 1200. The reduction in the prices of hauberks may have been heavily influenced by the introduction of new technologies such as wire draw-plates, but the overall trend is corroborated by prices of other substantial arms.

Decreases in the cost of raw materials like iron could bring some cost reduction. However, European mail tends to move from a demi-riveted construction in which half the rings are punched, to all-riveted wire rings. This increases labor costs for assembly during a time when the cost of mail is falling. We can only speculate that water-powered wire drawing mills, combined with better organization and specialization by guilds and shops somehow made for greater efficiency in production.

Much that I like the look of even the cheapest riveted mail that's available over most other types (once worn in it starts to get close to some original bits ) for the work i do I swear by my ultra hard butted stainless. Apart from the high end stuff Erik does nothing matches its strength and ability to with stand serious abuse. Some riveted i can pull open with my hands but my skirt is as tough as old nails. Not that its made from nails... I wear it for serious jousting so its an 'authenticity' compromise I'm happy to make.

My understanding very generally speaking, was that there was a kind of revolution in automation technology, especially the water mill but also wind mills, tidal mills, and much more sophisticated use of animal power, and machine-augmented human power (like treadmill cranes and so on) which started slowly in the 8th Century but began to accelerate rapidly in the 10th-11th Centuries.

[ Linked Image ] [ Linked Image ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel_crane

Some of this started under Charlemagne, and later the impetus was continued by the Cistercian Order of monks. They pushed very hard for the spread of the watermill and many other technologies which vastly enhanced all kinds of things from agriculture to textile production. And iron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercians#Comm..._diffusion

From the wiki:

"The quality of Cistercian architecture from the 1120s onwards is related directly to the Order's technological inventiveness. They placed importance on metal, both the extraction of the ore and its subsequent processing. At the abbey of Fontenay the forge is not outside, as one might expect, but inside the monastic enclosure: metalworking was thus part of the activity of the monks and not of the lay brothers. This spirit accounted for the progress that appeared in spheres other than building, and particularly in agriculture. It is probable that this experiment spread rapidly; Gothic architecture cannot be understood otherwise."

Even the 11th Century Domesday census showed something like 5000 watermills in England, and England was not by any means the most developed part of Europe at that time, almost the opposite. Most of these mills were for processing grain but some were used for forges.

Forges with things like automatic (water powered) bellows worked much faster than human powered needless to say. The production of iron increased rapidly as these more formally organized complexes were established

From the 12th -13th Century there were rapid technological advancements, centered on translating Arab and Persian translations of Classical mathematicians and engineers like Euclid, Virtruvius, Archemides and Hero of Alexandria - as well as from the Muslim scholars themselves. This contributed to rapid development in what they could do with all that water-power and led to more and more efficient production of iron (and processing of wood, and textiles, and grain, etc. etc.)

[ Linked Image ]
This one is 15th Century

With the water powered trip-hammers and everything it also meant that products made of iron were cheaper too. This dovetailed with many other inventions like the vice and the draw plate (particularly for mail, obviously) and so forth. It all became an order of magnitude more efficient especially in the Free towns with highly organized craft guild organizations which had complex networks of specialists and subcontractors. Whereas before iron production was done mainly in forests, so they would have access to plenty of fuel, as the cities developed they had trade networks so they could have fuel and ore and whatever else they needed coming from hundreds or even thousands of miles away by boat.

There are some people who have collected numbers for things like the costs of armor and swords in different periods, and you can certainly see a general trend. I don't know any of the numbers for pre 14th Century off hand but I think I remember that the cost of a sword was something like the cost of 30 cows in Carolingian times, whereas by the early 14th C in Germany (HRE) it was down to half a mark in some places (compared to 2 marks for a cow in Lubeck in 1425 and 6 marks for an Ox the same year). You have to be very careful with the numbers though because regions varied enormously (a sword would generally be more expensive in London than say, Cologne) and also currency itself fluctuated enormously.


As for bronzed mail and other armor, you see that in period artwork quite a bit - it appears to be possible to bronze armor a couple of ways, one by simply raising it to a temper (just below the point when it turns purple). I was hoping to learn more about it myself but there is another myArmoury thread about it here:

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...w=previous

Jean

Is anyone aware of any research/testing that has been done on these links re evidence of mercury for fire gilding? On rivet heads its usually a sign that a brass cap was there to carry gold, anyone done xrf testing on these brass/latten links to see if that's the case with them?

if you put linseed oil on steel, and heat it, just like seasoning an iron frying pan, the first couple layers are straw, then it goes a mottled gold/brown before darkening to black.

just a thought...