Making Mail Armour - part two: triangles and expansions

now what I'm doing here is I'm making a big triangle of male uh rather than just linking all the way around and gradually adding to the the size of the circle I'm expanding in triangles and I do this for a number of reasons uh the first is orientation uh I know exactly where I am with these triangles this one I'm working on for instance at the moment is the center of the back of the koif so I can Orient myself which is useful another is that triangles enable me to keep track of the expansions and contractions much more readily so uh if I want to say uh expand by five links in so many rows I can create a triangle and within that triangle do those expansions contractions and then once I've done all the expansions and contractions with various triangles I can just link all the triangles together um and then I know exactly where I am but the third and most important reason is morale you see if I just link all the way around a great long Edge it might take me an hour or to do that and at the end of it I might not be able to see what I've done it looks no bigger than when I started but if I create a triangle then at the end of my session I can I can think to myself well good I got somewhere I did that triangle today and having done one triangle I might think to myself well that didn't take very long I'll just do another one on the other side just you know to make it symmetrical just even it up and um that way you do end up S of egging yourself on to do a little bit more and uh each time you finish you've got something that seems to have a bit of shape to it a bit of sense to it and you can pick it up and admire it and maybe even wear it if you're making for instance a Burnie you could do a dagged bottom Edge and then you've got a dagged shortish burnee and then you fill in the gaps in between all those dags and now you got a a straight bottomed Burnie and then you can put more dags on and so forth so it's it's wearable in all the different stages so um yes it's good for morale working in triangles I put it on white card so you can get a a better look at the pattern so you can see that there are links leaning that way on one row and then the next row the links link that way and so forth and we've got a row here that's going that way of four and then I've done the first two and the last one linking there goes in like that and with this way of doing things each one is only ever linked to two other ones which makes life very simple if you decide as some people do to make your koif or Bernie or whatever it is you're making in several separate bits you then have the horrible task of linking them together and there's no way of doing that without at some point having to link a link to either three or even four other links which is a swine to do so I would avoid that if you possibly can so put it into the pattern oh it's going to be awkward just cuz I got the camera running there we go and close it now these links are browned and you can see that the ends of them actually overlap slightly that is quite deliberate they were cut not not overlapping then they were put into an oven and held at a fairly high temperature for a bit and that relaxed them a bit and then they all overlapped as a result you then open one close it again and it then with a satisfying click closes exactly on itself so there's no Gap uh there's no daylight to be seen uh in these joins in fact some of them are actually pushing into each other into themselves slightly which makes these links much smoother and more comfortable less likely to snag on your clothing um and a bit stronger too so there you go one finished triangle now it's a 3D Dome of a thing so if I try to lie it flat on the table it won't actually lie flat it can't do but each row around the center is uh longer than the one closer into the center because I've put in loads of expansions how do you do expansions well I'm going to show you if I want the next row added onto the edge here to be longer than the row that you're looking at what I'll do is I'll add a ring to a single link like this rather than as is more normal two and then the next row added on after that will be done in the usual way so now what we've got is a link here which is as normal link to two a link here which is as normal link to two but in between them a link which is only linked to a single other link so when I do the next row this one links to two as normal and this one links to two as normal but this one here in the middle only links to three so if I were to complete this row and this row then there will be an expansion so what do we do if we want to put in a contraction rather than an expansion well it's exactly the same but the other way around so here I'm going to link not two as I would normally but Three Links together three like that whoops okay so that's gathered it in slightly I then finish the rest of the row as normal and then the next row as normal and hey Presto I've got myself a contraction there's a contraction or an expansion in this pattern here which I'll show you so this link here is only linked to three other links whereas this link here is linked to five other links so this here is a contraction if you're thinking in terms of that direction but it's a expansion if you're thinking in terms of that direction it's actually the same right so get linking uh have patience and let me know how you get on send in pictures of your finished [Music] items Indy oh

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 210,004

Keywords: mail, maile, maille, armour, armor, chain, chainmail, link, links, patterns, contraction, expansion, linking, pliers, tools, technique, method, rows, diy, make, making, your own, how to, Do It Yourself (Hobby), home-made, home, made, self-made, craft, byrnie, hauberk, coif, rings, ringmail, pattern

Id: ANr5WmGY_hM

Length: 6min 10sec (370 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2015