[Pieter B.]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I realize mail armor was still out of reach of most people but I wonder what factor in price difference there was. Do we see mail armor from this period a few percent more expensive than the next best set of mail or should we think in: 'this extremely well made mail is worth the same as a couple of similar sized garments?

As for this

[Dan Howard]

[Mike Ruhala]

[Pieter B.]

[Timo Nieminen]

For a little insight into mail prices, consider this list of prices:
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm

Mail costs 5 years rent on a craftsman's house, or 300 gallons of cheap wine, 1000kg of cheese, 2000 dozen eggs, 50 pigs, etc. Which suggests to me on the order of $10-20,000 in modern terms, based on what else you could buy with it. But people spent a much larger fraction of their income of food back then, so Dan's $150-200,000 sports car is about right compared to working-class wages. Unaffordable. Scale to costs of basics, or scale to wages, and you get a big difference in the modern equivalent cost.

[Mark Griffin]

As someone who owns stacks of mail and has mail at many museums as handling items and on interpreters I'll say this.

Mail that's used regularly cleans itself. Its self abrading, as Dan has pointed out. Mail that I've imported from Indian years ago that arrived greasy and black is now bright and shiny. Simply de-grease with a solvent, tumble for a bit with hardwood chippings (chaff/bran has been noted) and wear.

One shirt at the Tower of London that's been worn very regulalrly for about 8 years has links around its edge that are wearing very thin. Another year or two and i expect them to start shedding.

[Andrew Gill]

I know that I'm beating a dead horse, but:

Since they were mentioned earlier, here's a link to an old thread about eyelet-doublets: http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=222875
Some of the linked photos show what it looked like - lots and lots of very small rings/eyes, very closely joined together (one photo shows part of the doublet and some mail nearby, and the eyelets are much smaller than the mail rings). I don't know why this would have been used in favour of a coat of plates or brig, but I think that the combined effects of quilting several layers of cloth and the fact that the rings are so small and close together is what made it viable as armour.

However, most "ringmail reconstructions" (like the original poster's attached picture) use much larger rings than the eyelet doublet, with bigger gaps - if an arrow or strong spear thrust could sometimes break a ring or two in real mail and pierce a hauberk, the same weapons would make mincemeat out of someone wearing armour composed of similar rings stitched independently to a cloth backing with little or no overlap, with its relatively large unprotected gaps between rings. In short I don't think comparing it to eyelet doublets makes sense.

The cost arguement also doesn't make any sense on closer inspection. Whatever the reduced cost associated with using a smaller number of rings than for proper mail, it would still have been easier and much quicker to hammer out small metal scales and stitch them onto armour - and the resulting scale armour would offer considerably better protection than "ring mail" because the plates are solid and overlap. We know that for some reason the west and northern europeans didn't use scale armour in the viking-era, but it was widely used by other cultures and in other time periods, and the vikings of the varangian guard might have at least seen it. Other than eyelet doublets, the only historical example of anything even loosely similar to "ring mail" armour is a single obscure garment from somewhere in Asia.

So why would anyone bother to make a more expensive, time-consuming and ineffective version of scale armour?

[Niels Just Rasmussen]

[Niels Just Rasmussen]

[Matthew Amt]

[Dan Howard]

[Mike Ruhala]

Oxidation and polishing is a consumptive cycle, you lose a little metal every time and that is undesirable no matter what age you live in. You're also not going to abrade away a lubricant anywhere near as quickly as coarse, crumbly rust. Heck, almost all of my indoor cooking is done on a cast iron pan and part of the cleaning process involves vigorously scraping it with a stainless steel spatula or scouring it with a stainless scrubber.... it doesn't do anything to the seasoning. You don't have to take my word for it though. That inherent self-polishing action of mail is actually good for this kind of finish. The resources to do this would be constantly available and it works as well with animal fat as it does with plant-based oils. As a matter of fact Vikings are known to have cultivated flax, flax seed oil is regarded by many as the very best oil you can use for the seasoning process.

Even if we opted for some kind of wax instead all the rubbing would do is redistribute it, some would come off on the garment worn beneath the mail but that would just help weatherproof it. I'd be shocked if the Vikings weren't aware of the concept of oilskins. Ooh, then it would work both ways... waxes or oils from treated cloth would be picked up and redistributed by the natural rubbing action of the mail.

Whatever approach they may have taken it is hard to believe a Viking would spend the equivalent of $200,000 on a meticulously crafted mail shirt and then not take even the simplest of steps to protect his investment using materials that were readily at hand.

[Niels Just Rasmussen]

[Len Parker]

Close up of eyelet armour with rings: http://middenmurk.blogspot.com/2015/09/body-armour.html I don't know if the close up is the doublet shown above.
The Japanese and Tlingit coin armour looks simple to make.

[Dan Howard]

[Dan Howard]

[Philip Dyer]

Is it possible because mail e it was that mail and armor was an item that was passed down until it was worn out? It was item that the son would inherit from his dad and so on until it was just worn away from use and that is factor in it's archaeological rarity?

[Matthew Amt]