Hello, everyone! This is my first post. I do not know if I am posting in the right area. I am currently finishing a chainmail(le) shirt, but typically, I need something more. I got started making chainmail(le) because a friend said that making it a certain way was impossible. So I had to prove him wrong, and I got hooked. The reason I need something more is because I just recently started learning poleaxe and I have found that blunt trauma from poleaxe leaves some really nasty bruises. I found that the shirt works well for defense against lighter weapons (single stick, sword and buckler, etc) but once your on the receiving end of bigger stuff it starts to hurt a little for just a wee bit too long. So I decided to make some scale mail. However, to do so I will have to sell my current shirt. It is made out of 410 stainless steel welding wire. The wire diameter is .062 or about 16 ga. It is only butted. I have about one year in it. It weighs just over 16lbs. I was wondering how much it was worth.

Unfortunately not enough to warrant selling it; I bought my used hauberk from a moving reenactor for 50 bucks.

Personally I'd keep the shirt (especially if it is tailored to you), then augment it with a self made coat of plates and cheap, fitted arm and leg armor. Instead of buying $200 worth of supplies for a new ahistorical mail shirt that will still not provide hard defenses against polearm strikes, put that cash towards flushing out a full kit to fight in

http://myworld.ebay.com/armourereric?_trksid=p2047675.l2559
http://jamesriverarmoury.com/
this guy make decent quality, fitted armor on the cheap

http://www.roughfromthehammer.com/
^ makes unfinished, but fitted breastplate blanks if you feel like getting a later period chest defense instead of making a COP

I concur with Tom. You can buy one new butted on ebay for 100€ or even cheaper (mine was 52€).

What type of protection do you wear under (or even over) it? You can add a gambeson/aketon or two without much expense (only a lot of work :p ), even steel chest/arms armour.