Building MASSIVE Medieval Chainmail.

out of the forge to the anvil [Music] quick bit there rollers and around we go grab the ring back to the anvil tidy up the ends just a little bit power hammer typically this is on just for audio sake quickly over to the fly press to flatten it all out back to the forge put it in grab the next one that's heating up over to this machine here line it up carefully as we can [Applause] over to the anvil now back into this machine line it up once again easy does it [Music] there you have one ring 250 more to go here we go welcome here everybody tim the blacksmith so it's not clickbait today we are attempting to make the world's biggest chain mail but i thought quickly before we jump into that little trip down tim's memory lane with that real chain mail i built this when i was just getting started in blacksmithing which was around the age of 13. i actually haven't put this on for years it would be kind of i built it to fit you know i was like i want to be able to wear this when i get old so i think i'm going to try it on i think it should fit still it's always a bit of a trick to get into this very cold proof oh it fits it fits it's still wait wait of course it fits i haven't changed at all since i was 13. you know what it fits but it doesn't fit like it used to i'll tell you that right now okay i'm gonna take this thing off and then we're gonna talk about what we wanna talk about so here's a close-up of the chain mail and this is about the original size that chainmail would be except this is called budded chain mail original chain mail the ends get folded over a hole gets punched in it and then a little piece of steel gets inserted into that it's called the rivet squished closes the ring and makes it strong so i thought that would be pretty cool if that's how we did it on our chain mail so here is one link of the big chain mail that we're making today and you can see the hole and then this is the rivet that gets pushed in there and then this will get heated up squished down and that closes the link so you can see the insane scale difference here i'm going to start by heading over to the foraging area cutting this the material for these set up the tooling and then we're going to make these [Music] wow so just over here by this machine that we've set up to make the rivets gonna quickly show you what's going on okay so this is the machine here it's very small relatively speaking but it is an absolute beast this thing just stomps the living daylights and anything you put under it so i won't go into too much detail on this machine because i've done a video on when i got it the only thing i will say is we haven't changed anything of how it's set up so i haven't technically set it up proper yet but you're gonna see it still performs great today so we've got two setups here and basically how this works is this head will come down and we'll create the rivet head i'll show you that in a minute and we go to stage two and that will push it out you control it by using this lever here and if you just gently [Music] it'll just slip down but if you push it hardcore it really throws a good thump super cool tool i'm gonna get a hot piece of steel and actually martin's gonna get a hot piece of steel and show you how this thing works [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] okay check this out oh this is all the rivets about 300 and some we made some extra because the time to set up the tooling if we're short a couple is longer than making a couple extra but these turned out so good it's so fun using that tool to make these rivets wanted i wanted a little bit of like a aggressive looking rivet because typically they're either domed or flat so that's why we've gone with this kind of peak to it because i think it's going to look a little bit more aggressive and mean and we want that on this chain maille you know at least i think that'd be cool so i'm having a little bit of anxiety now because each one of these rivets needs this huge ring that we got to make with it so we've definitely uh sold into some serious work here but i think it'll be good so we're going to now start making the tooling up which is going to create the hole that this will slip into the ring so that we can rivet this on to the ring now so hopefully we get this tooling figure out pretty quick and then can start making the rings and get going and see this done so we've just got some tooling set up that we've made this is going to be to punch the hole in the ring and this is the first one so lots of question marks on how it's all going to work but let's uh let's give it a shot here we go and now i'm gonna kind of just get set up a little bit here gently hopefully that's pretty good i'll have to line it up again oops easy does it there mr tim yeah okay that's amazing so you can't see it because i actually put the plug right back to the other side but that's going to work for us we just got to knock that slug out dude that thing is the beast just not even slow down for that we're ready to rock and roll man that's awesome wow that is a good feeling wow incredible so i just got back from town picking up the steel for the rings one inch round bar solid look at this 600 feet 1600 pounds all going into rings yikes it's crazy looking forward to it this is going to be awesome so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay that's all of them 250. can't wait to see this all come together now so it'd be like a good refiner recliner chair let's just uh let's just take a seat here it's actually not too bad you know except there's a hot wood on my bum oh oh there's something hot down there i'll tell you that right now okay so we're just in the midst of starting to rivet the single links together to show you what's going on here so this is the first step in putting the rivet into one of these rings so martin just grabbed it here a rivet and he's just going to push it in [Music] sometimes there's a little bit of cleanup that has to happen and whatnot so he's taking care of that once that's good and he quickly throws it in the forge we're actually pretty full right now but we have these just preheating and then i'll just give the camera to martin here so then i grab a ring bring it over here we're just using the forge to do with just a little bit of preheat on it and then i use the torch and just heat this side up the rest of the way then quickly bring it over to our favorite tool up setter and oh yeah love that thing could do it all day long i guess i am that's a closed ring and uh we got a whole bunch more to make so we will see you when we've got this all done [Music] okay so this is the pile here that's like 50 all closed up got another pile there and another pile right here and that is pretty much should be all the ones we need to close individually and now they finally get to start weaving making these sets up so we're going to take four of these rings down here put them on a open one put them together close it and then i'm hoping that i can make that set under uh do the rivet under here on the upsetter so let's see how this goes so this is gonna be our first set right here i'm gonna figure it out as we go see how this opening up you okay there cameraman just walked his head on that i got a gouge on my head that's that gouge right there i actually did a video right after i'd done it and that gouge is from running into the corner of our lights here i was running mach 1 came right up hit the corner and i literally lost a chunk of my head that's never coming back you say yeah you lost a lot of your head a long time ago oh boy anyways that is nothing to do with what i'm doing right now i probably lost my heat talking too let's maybe just put it back in and try it again so we got this figured out a little bit better i'll show you our process here so we put this in here this is a tool that i'm using right here is called a bending fork it's just used for bending steel throw four rings on and then close it up and then use this long tapered punch and then i just give it a little bit of a tweak oops with this oh it's holding it okay oh that totally did not work well like i said we're still figuring this out almost killed the cameraman right there luckily that was not gonna be so bad got cut redo oh my goodness um yeah a little bit just about wiped him out that's fun to laugh about when it's uh okay wow okay that's a set and then i just let it go and then we get the next one going just like that folks it's just that easy okay so once we've got these guys all put together we've kind of rigged this system up here to where we just slide these rings on and then ring that has to be riveted just sits there so i don't have to support the weight or have my hands in it and then i'm just gonna heat this up okay that'll be good for the heat all right and that one is done so now this is a set and that's as much of the work that we can do under this machine the rest of the rivets will have to be done by hand so i'm going to take this down and then martin and i will both be going at this one guy will be putting the rings on and the other guy will be stationed here riveting and then we're getting close to the hand work so it'd be exciting to see this all come together look at that eh gnarly man [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so i thought i'd quickly just show you the pattern of chain maille that we're making we're making the most common pattern and it's called a four in one and that's because one ring goes through four rings so here you can see it this is the one ring that we were heating up and bending and then we put these four on and then close it up so that's the pattern so when you have the riveted chainmail like this you kind of get these lines running like this the flats go this way and then this way and when it gets into the bigger spectrum of everything it starts to look kind of cool so what we'll do is we'll make this this is one set or pack another one comes in here and then we'll take an open ring if this was a ring that was open and then this would feed through these two here and then if this was the next pack here these two would go into there i just thought this would be a great time to show you because it's easy to see it when it's huge like this rather than the itty bitty links that you typically see okay new day super excited because we finally get to start putting these guys together this is a pile of some of the packs we got rings everywhere though pile here pile there i'll show you this other pile got these guys here this is where it's gonna start to get tricky because we're gonna have to start heating these up opening it up and then once it's opened up slide it in between the two sets close it and then rivet it so it's going to get hard because we won't be able to move much because it's going to get heavy and all of these guys have to be opened up and put in so it's going to be fun looking forward to it hard work still yet though so this is going to be our first one we're putting together here we're just going to be martin's running with the ring he's going to heat it up and then quickly bend it and we're going to put it through here probably be a little bit fumbly here but we'll see how it goes just because it's our first one so we've just got it fed through and now we're just figuring out our setup to support the rivet so that we can heat it up and rivet it here in place here we go [Music] okay it's pretty good a little bit rough room for improvement but not unbelievable okay that was a little rough but we'll get our smooth out as we continue to do a couple hundred of them [Music] okay so we're just setting up for our second row to come in here so we're going to start by putting the ring through this one and then we'll put another set in here and then put two rings in you know one here and then one here things are starting to smooth out a little bit better we're getting better flow here [Music] we just realized ah we made another mistake one of these rings went through the wrong loop i can't show you because it's just this huge mess but no what were we thinking we weren't going to pull a rivet out and try to fix this up so we can keep going cannot believe it it's so big how can we make that mistake [Music] okay we're gonna call it there for today that's a full day worth of work for two guys we're gonna pick it up tomorrow and i think it's gonna go a little bit faster so i'm hoping we can get it done but we'll see how it goes see you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] tomorrow [Music] so [Applause] [Music] look at this hey this is this is another day of full work for two guys so we didn't get it done but we're really really close so we're gonna pick it up tomorrow see you tomorrow again [Music] okay last ring here it comes crazy nice grip thank you all right well what can i say it's pretty cool to be on the last ring i feel extremely exhausted been working on this project for over three weeks so it's nice to see it come down to a close excited to see it done and also excited to move on to the next project all right let's let it go last one [Music] there she be done [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] there it is we're gonna try to hang it up it could be pretty cool to see what this thing looks like when it's hanging up wonder which i can pull oh oh come on i could do better than that i can try the corner the corners didn't even it moved like this far that's it i can move like a quarter of it okay recruited the big guns here volunteered by dad to help us out with the mini excavator here to lift this thing up so i got a chain hooked up right here we're gonna pull this thing out pick it up [Music] [Music] [Music] so barton how does it feel to see all that hard work we uh just made get drake through the dirt and rocks so we picked it up it's surprising how much it stretched out in length so we're gonna hang it on this a-frame here you haven't seen that yet but the a-frame is short by a little bit about a foot so we got some big beams over here we're gonna quickly put up on the concrete and then we're gonna weld this a-frame to it and then we're gonna hang it up on this thing i think it'll work pretty good so i'm just gonna get set up with that right [Music] now [Music] [Music] good [Music] it's big it's big seriously look at this that is insane that is one inch round bar 600 feet 250 links and 1600 pounds man that's crazy now i know you're thinking it and i'm thinking it too how strong is this chainmail and wouldn't it be cool if we could test it let me know in the comments below what you think is a great way to do that because i want to dream something up and i want to test this if you haven't subscribed to the channel already click right here so you don't miss out on any of our future projects also if you haven't checked out our merchandise click right up here really appreciate the support in that way and we look forward to seeing you in the next one hey martin that i can beat you to the top yes that's good all right we'll see you at the next one oh man

Channel: Timothy Dyck

Views: 1,306,734

Keywords: blacksmith, blacksmithing, chainmail, armour, world record, guinness book of records, making the worlds largest chainmail, forging, making chainmail, setting world records

Id: xJPDg5Ic8P4

Length: 34min 27sec (2067 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Gibbinthegremlin]

I would ask why...but I already know the answer...because!!! If i had the tools i would do the same lol

[u/TheCarilloneur]

That one shot at 11:55 looks like they're regular 16g rings that are zoomed in really closely. this is crazy! I want to try it!

[u/FalconTurbo]

Not the usual fare for this sub, but it gave me a laugh and it actually cleared up how normal mail is made for me, seeing it at a large scale.