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Maille? Who, what, where, when, why?

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Ian:
As far as ring types go, flattened ring alternating with punched rings seems to have  been normal through the crusader period.  So, you'd have one row of riveted rings alternating with solid rings (basically iron washers).  Some time in the 14th century it switched to all riveted rings as the norm.  And some time in the 13th century I believe the rivets in many locales were wedge rivets as opposed to the older round rivets.  Round rivets can be found at all times as far as I know, but wedge rivets appeared later and then existed alongside round rivets.

But maille is not a linear progression, a lot of different styles of maille were used at the same time, so it's hard to make generalizations.  Butted maille armor exists too, I believe the Indians used butted maille for protection.  In order for butted maille to actually serve as armor it requires it be made from a significantly heavy gauge of drawn wire, otherwise it will just fall apart  on contact with a weapon, but this makes it significantly heavier than riveted maille.

Aiden of Oreland:
Oh ok, so i was always wondering that. Cool! Thank you for that. I always wondered what the brief history of maille was.

Sir Nate:
Found this today on mail.
http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.php

Sir Ulrich:
I remember reading that celtic and germanic maille was made from all coiled rings, just half of them were forge welded shut the other half riveted. I am not sure if some examples were entirely riveted but I remember reading something like this a while back. The Romans had the ability to manufacture iron sheets which they punched them instead speeding up the process quite a bit. That remained pretty standards though forge welding was still used by some places all the way up to the demise of maille. I also read wedge riveted maille existed because wedge rivets were easier to manufacture than dome rivets and again it sped up the process so most of Europe switched to that in the later medieval period. Dome riveted was used anywhere from Roman all the way to the demise of maille though it was round rather than flattened until the 1300s with flat punched rings. There were also types of maille which you cant get anywhere such as staple riveted maille where the rings are riveted by a staple like rivet. There was also double riveted maille where 2 rivets are placed instead of one AND triple riveted maille where theres 1 big rivet 2 smaller ones.

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