[Jean Thibodeau]

Ordered a Maille Hauberk from Valentine Armouries and received excellent service: They even replied the same day to my first E-mail sent on our Canadian Thanksgiving day.

Ordered on october 11, received on the 22 of october. (Part of the following is in part a Copy/Paste of my E-Mail to thank "Valentine" for quick and flexible service.)

Got the Maille today, had a quick look at it, too tired to try to struggle to put it on tonight.

My only concern is the size of the arms: They will probably fit but not with any thick padding underneath. (17 inch arms flexed.)
The chest is wide enough for thicker padding. (Gambeson with thick body and thin arms.)
I put my old maille shirt flat on the floor next to the Hauberk to measure the arms, the Hauberk arms seem 1/2" to 1" wider. My old maille was a bit snug around the arm when flexed, so the Hauberk sleeves are at least as wide and probably a little wider. (Anyway the big problem was with the chest anyway.) (Note: Last time I tried on my old mail shirt I weighed 245 and I am now 226.5, "The stress diet plan!)

The galvanized mail came very clean: No messy oil or rust to remove. (It might still dirty a white shirt a bit.)
The rings look very well made with a small flattened part where the rivet goes, rivets have rounded ends with no sharp corners.(Obviously haven't checked all 50,000 rings individually......LOL.)
I have at least on one occasion worn my butted mail shirt without anything else on without discomfort. with the riveted maille this would NOT be comfortable! At the very least, a medium or thick cotton shirt would be needed.
A plush kangarou sweater should work but may be TOO warm.

Although European maille used a different type of rivet and looked a bit different, I think that this is a good buy if you are not a historical accuracy purist! ( As mentionned on another thread on maille and armour)

Weight of Hauberk is 42 pounds, my Maringer (1980) Haubergeon (Much smaller) is only 20 pounds, Maringer Coif 8 pounds, Maringer double mail bishops mantle 4 pounds. (Tom Maringer, Sword maker, who made me these using handmade stainless heat treated spring steel butted ring. )

Oh! any advice about galvanyzed maille: How rust resitant is it? Any maintenance advice?

Also, not having any help to put it on or taking it off, what is the best technique to try putting it on by myself?

I will copy/paste some of the above and send Valentine appreciation of their product, and they may be able to rework the arms if it proves nescessary. (Hope not, or I could loose some arm muscle or fat......LOL.)

Any, general maille wearing advice or experiences would be appreciated and hopefully interesting!

[Gordon Frye]

Jean;

Thanks for reporting on the fine service from Valentine. Always good to hear such things before taking the plunge and ordering something expensive!

I would think that having a gambeson with slightly thinner padding on the arms might be more reasonable anyway, rather than having the same thickness over all, so that your elbows could work freely. Maybe I'm wrong there, my experience with such style of armour is limited.

Speaking of which, in my experience, they only way to take OFF the maille shirt is to bend over and sort of wiggle out of it, unless you have an assistant "skin" you by hauling it off inside-out over your head! And you STILL need to bend over for that. I don't think that there is a dignified way of exiting a maille shirt, sad to say!

Thanks for the report, hope to hear more soon.

Gordon

[Jean Thibodeau]

Gordon;

Thanks for the advice on taking off the maille: I'm not too concerned about being dignified taking it off, but taking off my smaller maille shirt did prove exausting until I finally did the UNDIGNIFIED DEED..........LOL.

Again comments from experienced maille users might be interesting: "Everything you ever wanted to know about wearing maille but were afraid to ask"

Rollon or Spray deodorant????.........Just joking!

[Jean Thibodeau]

Finally tried the hauberk on: Good news it fits very well, the sleeves stop just at the wrist and the edge exactly at knee level. The sleeves are not too tight but I coundn't use too thick a Gambison, the body is a little looser but I am glad I opted for extra wide!
Have it on as I write this, I do find that raising the arms trait up is a bit of a challenge: If I let the sleeves slide back to just above the elbow lifting the arms is only slightly restricted, if I try to keep the sleeves attached to the wrist then I have to lift the whole weight of the shirt to do it and is not very practical.
Not sure what is considered normal for a perfect fit. (Longer sleeves with some looseness might fix this.)

My personnal solution with the sleeves left loose like this(My preference.), would be to cover the forearm with spinted vambrace under the mail sleeves.

Overall, I am very happy with it, I don't see how you could make it any better unless it was individually taylored.
Getting used to the weight right now.

Again any maille wearing advice to the novice would be welcome.

[Jean Thibodeau]

Update on my Hauberk:


OOOOOPS a small problem: One link broke under the armpit, I think it happened when I was pulling holding the sleeves at my wrist and testing my freedom of motion as discussed in a previous message. I guess the entire weight of the hauberk was concentrated in at the one link! The link under the other armpit held.

The link broke open at the point where it goes from being round to being flattened for the rivet. The rivet itself held. Put the link back in place and closed it with pliers.(Temporary fix.)

Question: Does this happen at stress points often or was it just a case of bad luck having a weak(Defective) link at the worst possible place? I am still happy with the Hauberk and see this as a possible learning expierience.

Another question: Does this hole in the pattern in the mail (Armpit) put more or less strain on the remaining surrounding links: In other words is this selflimiting or worse like a wool sweater unraveling?
(I guess in the real world I don't have to worry too much about dagger blade or arrow finding the small gap under the armpit............LOL)

Part of the problem when one link fails is that it put doupt in one's mind about the strenght of all the other links, so I tried a small test: Using a steel spike through 3 different links at the bottom edge of the maille hauberk I lifted and supported the entire weight, 45 pounds, of the the shirt on one link and shook the shirt moderately.

The links held up without damage, I guess if I gave it a really maximum effort I could break a link, but my goal was to see if the link(s) had at least a minimal amount of resistance to stress.( I can do a similar test with one butted link at the edge of the hauberk just for the sake of curiousity and as a comparison.)

There is something about the geometry of the shirt that can create stress on the links at a 90° angle at the bottom of the sleeve (Armpit) when tension is put on the sleeve at certain angles. All the other links are not subject to this twisting (TORK) so they are subjected only to tension instead of tension combined with torsion.

In conclusion: Maybe just a bad link combined with the tight fit of the Maille at the armpit/ shoulder, a looser fit might not have shown this problem . If I put on the Maille often and the problem does not recur then my FULL confidence will return.

I informed Valentine Armouries (First) about this problem and they promissed and sent me some butted rings so the I can make the nescessary repair. (They have replied promptly to all my E-Mails and have been very helpfull.)(Doing repairs myself is MY choice.)

Note: From what I have read on other forums having to do some minor repairs on maille is to be expected.

[Gordon Frye]

Jean;

From your description of where the link broke, it seems that it was more the metalurgy of the link itself that was weak (the old "Weak Link Theory" LOL!) since it broke at the flat, rather than the rivet. Sounds totally plausible to me, anyway.

I suspect that indeed the inside of the armpit is going to be one of the "stress points" of any hauberk or shirt of maille, since when lifting your arm it has to pull up ALL of the weight suspended under it, clear to either your belt, or the hem, depending upon whether or not you belt it. And if you haven't pulled the hauberk up a tad when belting to get that proper "Beer Belly Effect", then it has to pull up on the belt, and anything the belt is holding up, too. That can amount to a lot of stress, I should think. In fact, I really can't think of another area that would have to support that much weight at any given time in the normal course of events. Luckily, one doesn't often have to raise one's arm to that degree, but when you do, you really WANT full protection under your arm!

What you might try is, since you're using butted links to fix the problem that broke a riveted link, you might double up on them, i.e. put in two of them, and in fact you might want to reinforce the entire area with extra links just to be sure. And if you REALLY want some strength, have someone weld the butts together! Welded maille is about as strong as you can get A friend has some welded maille that he made ca. 1966 or so, fought in it for years (SCA of course) and it's still in great shape. It just doesn't break! I should THINK that with the proper riveted maille you would have a similar result.

Glad to get a good report from your experiences with Valentine. I've often admired their offerings (in fact right now I'm drooling over their Greenwich Suit... if only I had a spare $5K to blow right now!!) so it's nice to hear that they are as good as their word. Sometimes it's hard to take the plunge and order something over the internet from someone that you can't just take the goods back to, and dump them on the counter and demand a refund, right in the middle of their Christmas Rush!

Good luck in this!

Cheers,

Gordon

[Jean Thibodeau]

Quick update:

Tried the same test with a butted ring at the edge of the hauberk and a split ring: To recap, the riveted maille easily held the weight of the 45 pound hauberk, up to 6 tries with ramdomly selected rings.

With the butted ring, the ring opened up when the shirt was only 1/3 of the ground!

The split ring slowly unwound itself as I was raising the shirt, I almost got the shirt of the floor before the ring unwound completely and let go!

So in conclusion, unless a specific ring is flawed, the Riveted Mail is MUCH stronger than butted or Split ring by at least one order of magnitude. (Not a scientific test obviously, but it does explain why butted maille was not used for serious armor.)

Anyway, hope that somebody is getting something out of this subject as the response has been minimal, funny how some threads take off and other just lie there ignored!?...........LOL.

So unless I discover something interesting new playing with my hauberk, I guess it is OVER & OUT for now on this subject.