Chainmail is a type of armor made from thousands of small metal rings linked together to form a flexible, protective fabric. First appearing around 300 B.C., it was one of the most widely used forms of body armor in history, worn by Roman legionaries, Germanic warriors, medieval knights, and Spanish conquistadors over a span of nearly two thousand years.
How Chainmail Is Made
Each piece of chainmail starts with wire. Historically, armorers drew iron or steel wire through progressively smaller holes to reach the desired thickness, then wound it around a metal rod called a mandrel to create coils. Those coils were cut into individual rings, each one linked through its neighbors and closed to form an interlocking mesh.
The most common pattern, called European 4-in-1, connects every single ring through four others. This creates a dense, flexible sheet of metal that drapes somewhat like heavy cloth. It was the standard weave for European armor throughout the Middle Ages, used for everything from full shirts to hoods and leg coverings. Denser patterns like 6-in-1 (each ring passing through six neighbors) offered more protection but added weight and required significantly more rings.
The way each ring was closed mattered enormously for strength. Butted rings, where the ends simply press together, are the easiest to make but the weakest. Riveted rings, where a small metal pin locks the ends shut, are considerably stronger. Testing at MIT found that welded rings yield at a force at least twice as high as butted rings and 1.5 times higher than riveted ones. Historical armor almost always used riveted rings, sometimes alternating rows of riveted and solid punched rings for extra durability.
What It Was Made From
Most historical chainmail was made from iron or low-carbon steel. European smiths relied heavily on bog iron, ore found in wetlands and marshes across Northern Europe, though their ability to smelt it effectively didn’t fully mature until roughly 870 to 1000 A.D. The carbon content of medieval European steel typically ranged from 0.2% to 0.75%, which produced metals with varying degrees of hardness and flexibility. Lower carbon made softer, more workable rings. Higher carbon made harder, more brittle ones. Armorers had to balance toughness against the risk of rings cracking on impact.
Parts of a Chainmail Suit
A complete suit of chainmail wasn’t a single garment. It was assembled from separate components, each with its own name:
- Hauberk: A long-sleeved mail shirt reaching to the mid-thigh or below. This was the core piece and typically weighed around 27 pounds (12 kg).
- Haubergeon: A shorter version of the hauberk, ending closer to the waist.
- Coif: A mail hood covering the head and neck, weighing about 7 pounds (3.5 kg) as a standalone piece or 5.5 pounds when built as an extension of a hauberk.
- Chausses: Mail leggings protecting the legs from thigh to foot.
- Voiders: Smaller pieces of mail covering gaps at the armpits, elbows, or other joints.
Beneath all of this, the wearer needed a gambeson, a thick padded jacket that cushioned blows and kept the metal from digging into skin. Without a gambeson, chainmail offered far less protection because the force of a hit would transfer directly through the rings into the body.
How Well It Protected the Wearer
Chainmail excelled at stopping slashing attacks. A sword edge sliding across interlocked rings couldn’t easily cut through, making mail highly effective against the most common battlefield strikes of its era. It also provided reasonable defense against glancing blows and helped prevent cuts from arrows at longer ranges.
Its weaknesses were piercing and blunt force. A well-aimed thrust from a spear, a crossbow bolt at close range, or a heavy mace strike could defeat mail. The rings might hold together, but the concentrated force would still injure the wearer underneath, causing broken bones or deep bruising even without penetrating the armor. This limitation is precisely what drove the shift toward plate armor.
The Shift to Plate Armor
Between 1200 and 1400, European armor went through a gradual transformation. Knights didn’t abandon mail overnight. Instead, they began reinforcing it with individual plates of steel or hardened leather at vulnerable points: a knee guard here, an elbow guard there, a faceplate attached to the helmet. Over two centuries, those supplementary plates grew larger and more numerous until full plate armor became the standard for heavy cavalry. Even then, chainmail survived in the gaps between plates, protecting joints and other areas where rigid metal couldn’t flex. A suit of late medieval plate armor often contained significant sections of mail underneath.
One of the oldest surviving examples of mail, the Vimose coat, dates to roughly 200 A.D. and was discovered in Denmark in the late 19th century. It belonged to a high-ranking Germanic warrior and weighed about 22 pounds, offering a rare physical record of how mail was constructed nearly two millennia ago.
Keeping Mail From Rusting
Iron and steel rust quickly, and chainmail presented a particular challenge because of its enormous surface area. Thousands of tiny rings meant thousands of places for moisture to collect. Maintenance was constant and labor-intensive.
The primary cleaning method involved tumbling the mail in a barrel filled with sand and vinegar. Historical records show wages being paid to workers for rolling barrels of mail armor for weeks at a time. When no barrel was available, soldiers stuffed their mail into a sack with sand and vinegar and shook it vigorously. The abrasion scrubbed rust from the rings. Afterward, the armor was coated with oil to create a moisture barrier.
Preventative care mattered more than cleaning. Keeping mail oiled and wearing it over a gambeson created a kind of constant low-grade polishing, as the rings rubbed against each other and against the padded fabric during movement. Some armorers also treated their work with bluing. Hot bluing involved quenching heated metal in oil to leave a thin protective coating on the surface. Cold bluing used a controlled flash-rusting process (sometimes with urine) to create an even layer of oxidation, which was then sealed with oil. Cold-blued mail came out dark brown or black rather than blue, despite the name.
Modern Uses of Metal Mesh
Chainmail never fully disappeared. Butchers and meat processors wear stainless steel mesh gloves to protect against knife cuts. Shark divers wear full mesh suits for the same basic reason medieval knights wore hauberks: interlocking metal rings resist slashing and biting. Industrial versions of wire mesh show up in aerospace filtration systems, pharmaceutical manufacturing, food processing equipment, and automotive vibration damping. The underlying engineering principle, that linked metal rings create a flexible yet protective surface, remains as useful now as it was in 300 B.C.
Hobbyists and artisans also keep the craft alive. Modern mail-makers work with materials ranging from stainless steel and titanium to aluminum and even rubber, producing everything from historically accurate armor reproductions to jewelry, dice bags, and decorative sculptures. The European 4-in-1 weave remains the starting point for most beginners, just as it was the foundation of medieval armoring.