Rob MacLennan

Are you wearing a belt over it?

Well that sucks. I thought that the whole point of paying the extra for UPS Worldwide was that they took care of all the fees.

It's not a question of corrosion. Galvanized steel, like fencing wire, has a zinc coating to make it corrosion resistant. It, and annealed wire, are both rather soft and deform more easily over time (meaning more maintenance) than stronger wires do.

Unfortunately what happened is 6 years. Internet years are like 10X human years. If you check the "Instructions" page on the TRL website you'll see there are a bunch of instructions that are "free with any purchase." https://theringlord.com/cart/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=199&cat=Downloadable+Chainmail+Patterns+%2B+Instructions

Safe? Yes, modern lead free solder would be safe enough to use, however, the composition of your rings is important. If you're using galvanized steel rings then you don't want to heat them, because you'll end up with the "zinc shakes" from zinc poisoning. Solder won't take on metals like aluminum. You may just find it easier to use stronger metals (spring steel, stainless steel), or larger gauge rings. For example 3/8", 12 gauge aluminum rings look pretty beefy and resist pulling open better, over time, but butted ring mail is just plain going to need maintenance at some point anyway.

1/8" shirt. Now there's dedication. For pieces at that scale I haven't gone below 1/4".

You would think that a mod would know how but after the upgrade, I haven't got a clue. Got to dig into it.

I was roughly 200+ pounds when I originally made the shirt, but have since pared down to 150, which is part of the reason I'll be re-making it. It's made to fit over a cheap LARP gambeson. If I had any attachment space left, I'd post a pic.

I got away with doing that for a couple of parties, several hours long each, without repair in between. Then again I'm 5'9" (174cm.), so the weight may not be anywhere near what you're going to be dealing with. *NOTE* My plan is to eventually convert this piece to using steel rings.

Even with that it might take some judicious sanding of the area to which the wire/bolt is brazed.

If they're the armourer's pliers that I think they are, there's no ready facility to which a ground lug might be attached. You might be able to have someone weld a bolt to it and then use that to attach a cable, but I'm skeptical. There's just not a lot of exposed metal, except for the jaws.

Moved to Discussion so it gets more traffic.

You're looking for expansions/contractions and hole-row expansions/contractions, depending upon in what direction the mail hangs. I tried posting a link to the discussion on that topic, on this board, but it errors out. Try searching for those terms.

A cheap plastic storage box from Target or Wal-Mart would do the trick, plus you'd be giving something to store it in at the same time. In the past I've used boxes from IP phones and Dell replacement parts, because they aren't your typical flimsy shirt box. An 8 pound aluminum chain shirt, with scale upper arm, made it from Toronto to Chicago, with barely a mark on the box.

"Furniture Grade PVC" is PVC pipe that is usually coloured, and doesn't degrade badly in the presence of UV light. Sorry, no experience of that particular type, though I've made several archery bows out of the regular stuff, Red Oak, and paracord by using heat forming. I've seen people make armour stands out of metal plumbing pipe though.

I can't answer it all, but I'll give what I can. If you check this link, it states the number of scales per square foot for large and small scales. https://theringlord.com/cart/shopcontent.asp?type=ScaleCalculator If you're going to do a dog shirt you'll have to consider the shape of the dog and the hang of the scales. I did a coif for a cat and first stated out like I would for a human, which was a big mistake. If you make it to run from front to back, as if the dog was to be standing on its hind legs like a human, the scales will tend to slide forward unless they're somehow fixed at the back. That has to be a design consideration if you're going that way. If you make the scales hang down the sides then you don't have the bunching/sliding problem, but you likely want to do something to cover the spine area where the two sides join. Again, just another design consideration.

If you look carefully at the scale shirt kit picture, on the purchase page, you'll see that the top row of scales on the front and back are simply joined with appropriately sized rings. You could get fancy and join them with chain, incorporating scales at 90 degrees to the front and back. I'm currently working on a shirt, using large scales, with 90 degree joins as you are. The difference is that I will be abbreviating the length of the shoulder pieces so that they don't limit shoulder movement, making them wider so that they don't get pulled so much out of shape, and making the top of the arms chain for greater mobility. https://theringlord.com/cart/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=216&cat=Scalemail+Project+Kits

Shave a couple of diagonal rows off the chest and back. Expand the shoulder piece to match. Then see what the angles are like.

I know that I'm a crotchety old man. It's easier if you own it

Distinct possibility, but no spam as of yet. One spam post and everything posted is wiped with a couple of clicks. *EDIT* The account was accessing the forum from two different countries, on opposite sides of the world, so I nuked it.

If you click on the picture, it will take you directly to the page. It's a "wreath kit."

The majority of us here are makers, not buyers.

Facebook definitely took the wind out of the sails, of a whole lot of fora. Pity, too, because a forum is a far better and easier place to have actual discussions than is something like FB.

The Ring Lord sells jeweler's slotting saw blades and arbors to hold them, in their Tools Section. I originally started cutting my own rings by drilling an appropriately sized hole for the coils I was cutting in a block of wood, clamping that to a drill press, then using the slotting saw and arbor in the drill press to cut them. I later built my own cutting rig, but there are numerous ways to use the blade and arbor. There's a commercial solution called "The Ringinator" that operates in a similar manner. https://www.ringinator.com/ This is my rig. The video also shows the hand-run windlass, that I used to use for making coils. I've since made a powered coiler.