I was watching an old video from the Metropolitan Museum of Art called A Visit to the Armor Galleries (http://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/collections/aa/visit-to-armor-galleries) and when showing maille, they show a maille shirt with a ring size smaller than I've ever seen before. The sleeve they show a little after the three minute and thirty second mark has rings so small that I can't even tell individual rings apart. So this got me wondering, how small did the ring size on maille coats get? Did rings that were small in width also have to be thinner?

It depends on how rigid you want the final construction. If you make the rings thicker compared to the diameter you lose some flexibility. You can make mail completely rigid if the links are thick enough.

The smallest links I know about are around 3mm

But in the high to late middle ages, 11th to 14th century. What is the normal diameter and thickness? Of said maille.

To determine what is "normal", someone will have to take measurements of all mail from the surviving period, and then plot the bell curve. It's probably somehere between 8 mm and 10 mm external diameter. The double standard of deviation probably includes rings from 6-12 mm external diameter, with known samples both above and below that range. Thordeman reports that mail ecavated from the mass graves of the Battle of Wisby in 1361 ranged from 4 mm to 17 mm, with the majority having an external diameter of 8-10 mm. Rings from an armorer's shop in medieval Gomel, Belarus probably burned by the Mongols in the mid-13th century fell into three sizes, 6, 9, and 14 mm external diameter. Peter Beatson plotted the Birka mail finds and some other Viking Age mail.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/mail/birka_mail.htm
David Counts had compiled some pre-medieval measurements as well.
http://armourarchive.org/essays/essay__maille_timetable.shtml

I see by your posts that you are mainly interested in the study of historic mail, but if you are interested in buying some---MRL sells a machine-welded shirt with 3-16" rings. Itty-bitty! ;) Just FYI... :) .....McM

Jared, look at the thread on 'authentic mail'. http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=293...aille+mail
I posted some photos of some 'micromail' that I had to do some work on a while back. That stuff behaved more like some sort of heavy fabric than like most mail.

Thanks for the replies! :D I agree with what you said, that there is no "normal" ring size. And that was the answer I was afraid of... :\

And thanks for the link Mart!

Now back to Jared's question.