Why don't I write "gauntlet"? Well, I suppose I could, but I wouldn't want to disappoint the folk who come to this page expecting to see a fancy gauntlet made of many plates of metal, and so I write "mail-backed glove" since this is undeniably an accurate description of what I have made.
Here you see the whole glove. The glove itself is a leather one I made, lined with fur, based on the pattern of a modern traditional man's glove. The mail on the back does not look very shiny. This is because I used galvanised wire. I was young then, and knew no better. The pattern of the mail is quite clear. Most of the glove is just simple European pattern. The fingers have no missing rows of links between them, but instead have rings which in a continuous sheet of mail, would have been linked together. There is a line of hiatus in the pattern at the base of the thumb, but I'll hope that you'll agree that this is not too messy.
A close-up of the mail, which illustrates the main point which I want to make about mail-backed gloves, which is relevant to plenty of other mail garments. The mail itself is not attached to the glove at all. Instead, lengths of leather thong have been threaded through the mail, and the thonging has been sewn to the glove. Be sure to leave slack in the thonging, where the glove will need to bend. I used ribbon-like thonging, with a flat surface through which I could pass a needle and thread if I wanted to. This sort of thonging also lies flat, and has a finished upper surface, and I recommend it.
MAIL ARMOUR MAKING