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DracoLoricatus — scale mail vest front
Published: 2009-07-01 07:04:41 +0000 UTC; Views: 22408; Favourites: 57; Downloads: 12131
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Description
Scale mail vest I made over a long period of time. This is the only really large chainmail project I've undertaken so far. I finished it in the winter, but only now got off my butt and got some good pictures of it. Looking at it now, I'm going to mess with a couple of the details again, and make it longer (because I see now it's too short).I wouldn't part with this particular piece for the world, but if you want to commission something similar, message me.
The scales are stainless steel, connected with galvanized steel rings. The line of yellow scales are brass.
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Comments: 28
ok im currently working on a vest for myself and my question is how did you get your angles for the shoulder piecesi keep running into an issue of it not clowing correctly or leaving a seem going down both shoulder blades. if you could email me it would be much easier for me to respond. hardly on the computer due to travel but i do alot of emailing from my phone. white.alex1313@gmail.com
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Really digging the scale mail, surely it's more robust compared to ring-mail?
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I think as made it's slightly more prone to scales slipping loose from rings and needing repairs than standard chainmail without scales is. But I also think it would do better against a sword, so it's a tradeoff.
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I wanted to thank you as a writer, scale mail is one of the harder types of armour to find images of. As such I always shied away from it, not knowing how best to write it. This image alone has helped me decide to clothe the main character of my next novel in scale mail rather than plate armour as was previously planned.
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how many rings and scales did it take to make that
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Where might I procure some the scales used in this piece.
Preferably with a weathered copper finish.
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I get the scales at www.theringlord.com
They have a variety of metals. Bronze might be what you're looking for, it weathers rather nicely. They've got anodized aluminum in a brown color that might do. Actual copper not so much, it's too soft to work well for the scales.
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Thank you very much.
And I'm well aware of coppers softness,but was the only example of anything close to the finish I want.
Any nice dull finish Earth tone will do tho.
Thank you,once again.
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They do have bronze, which starts out shiny-penny color and goes to slightly-dirty-penny color.
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Do you know about how many scales you used? And did you buy the vest kit from TRL? Thanks! (I'm thinking about making one myself).
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I'm kind of guessing I used about 1500-2000 scales. This one I did back when I was still making my own rings, so I bought the scales and wrapped all the rings out of galvanized steel.
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This is *GORGEOUS* I love it at the length it is now! If I had the money, I'd commission you to make a piece exactly like that for me only in an unusual color, if that color would be possible I mean (dark/navy blue).
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Realistically, I wouldn't do this sort of thing for commission unless the person were in the area and willing to sit there for hours while I built the thing onto their hand, or made a plaster cast of their hand to work from.
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That's entirely understandable and reasonable. I'm just saying, it's a really beautiful piece of metalwork and I wish I had it myself. Lol.
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Oh, wait, sorry, I saw the comment on the stack of comments and thought it was attached to the glove thing I did. My mistake.
Yeah, I could do commissions of this sort of thing. It would be on the order of $500.
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Awesome to know.
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For how much would you sell one that has chain sleeves?
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I'm not sure exactly. It would be more of course, but I don't know what the extra area would amount to. If you are thinking you might want one I could work out an estimate if you like.
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That would be cool!
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I'll send you a message when I work out the areas.
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So a this vest is about 8 square feet I think, and a reasonable price for the labor involved in it would be about $500. A rough estimate is full sleeves would add about half again more area, so I would put the labor cost of a shirt with full sleeves at about $750.
The cost of material depends on the metal used. This one is stainless steel, which runs $50 per thousand scales, and a full shirt would take approximately three thousand scales, plus twice that many rings (rings run about $10 per thousand) equals about $200 in materials. Aluminum scales would put the material cost at about $150, blackened stainless $250, yellow brass $350.
These are all kind of approximate numbers, but I think they're about right. I might be slightly overestimating the areas, but I'd rather overestimate a price and then reduce it at the end than underestimate and have to ask for more money.
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Wow, that's expensive. An all steel one would come out to a total of $950.00 by your estimates. Mind if I compare that price to other armour retailers?
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This is a really incredible piece I think it would be a lot of fun to wear around town or...anywhere, even if you did get a lot of stares.
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