Well you could go that way, I wanted a riveted aventail as well for more authenticity but couldn't convince myself that being more authentic was reason enough to pay more money for the aventail than the actual helm!
There is actually a reason for this in this case. GDFB is made in the " Stans " ( India, Pakistan, Afghanistan ) like alot or armour and in the case of much of it, MRL and what have you, they use alot of welding especially in helmets. This allows for minimal shaping skills to be applied as you're building helms from alot of smaller welded plates rather than two well shaped halves ( the visors on both GDFB and MRL sallets are made from three seperate parts welded together. The bowls of MRL sallet helmets are made from 8 different welded plates unles they've changed something lately ). With riveted maille, your not getting out of the building process, its not going to be sped up, you're still stuck with putting the ring on the piece, putting a rivet through the holes in the ring, pieing it closed ( pliers, hammer or what have you ) and repeating. The only cost savings there was shipping the manufacture to the third world, vs the plate where theres a double savings, third world manufacture and third world manufacturing via lots of welding and less shaping so the plate comes in lower than the maille.
The GDFB two piece breast plate isn't bad, i've seen it in person and the only problem which is pretty easy to fix is that its not actually two pieces. They hard riveted it together so with out the ability to collapse as it should it can be to long for some people. It takes little fix, removing, the fixed rivets, making a central slot on the top half, filling the old unecessary fixed rivet holes and riveting the top and bottom back together using the new central slot on the top made from the old fixed riveting hole and the original fixed riveting hole on the bottom and like magic you have articulation.
