Chain Mail

In the Middle Ages men and women who fought in battles generally wore chain mail, which was both lighter and cheaper (because it was easier to make) than plate armor.

Sixteenth Century Plate Armor from Germany (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City)

Chain mail shirt
(reproduction)

In fact, chain mail is so easy to make that you can do it yourself. Just go to the hardware section of a department store, or go to a hardware store, and buy some a bunch of small springs, about 1/2 inch (one centimeter) in diameter. You want them in galvanized steel. A typical shirt needs about 10,000 links! (But for a school project you might just make a sort of chain link handkerchief!)
Get a couple of pairs of pliers to hold onto the springs with, and a wire cutter to cut the links apart.

Now, sit down and use the pliers to P-U-L-L the springs apart a little (make them longer than they were). Then sit with the pliers and a wire cutter and cut one link at a time off the main spring. Cut lots and lots of them.

Now all your links will be open. Take the pliers and squeeze most of them closed, like this:

An open link

A closed link (there will still be a
small gap)

Now loop four closed links onto one open link, and close that open one. Do that a bunch of times, so now you have a lot of little bunches of five links. Then link each of those bunches together using more open links.

For great instructions on how to make your own armor, check out this site.

And here's a video showing somebody making chain mail:

Or, if all this sounds too hard, you can buy reproductions of chain mail or plate mail (or swords) ready-made from By-The-Sword.

Or, you could do the same thing, but without having to cut metal, by using small sections of pipe cleaner, and just twisting them together to close the loops.

Medieval Europe
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