MAIL ARMOUR MAKING
Basic technique

I shall assume that you are right handed. Many people have developed their own ways of making mail, but from what I've seen, what follows below is more efficient than most. Some people open all their links first, then link them and close them, but this involves putting them down and then picking them up again, which strikes me as wasteful of movement. This is the way I did it:

1. Take up a pair of pliers in your left hand. If one of your pairs of pliers is stiffer than the other, make this the stiffer of the two.
2. Pick up a link in your right hand, and place it in the jaws of the pliers in your left hand.
3. Pick up the other, perhaps floppier, pair of pliers in your right hand, grip the other side of the break in the link and use both pairs of pliers to twist the link open.
4. Put down pliers in right hand, keeping open link in pliers in left hand.
5. With the link still in the pliers, link it onto the mass of the mail you have already made.
6. Pick up other pliers in right hand again, and close the link in place using both pliers.

So far as I can tell, any other way involves a greater number of actions per link.

• Linking patterns
• Garment patterns
• Materials and equipment