Dark Age Ring Mail

Please refer to the excellent article on Dark Age Ring Mail at
Russell Scott's The Viking Experience under "Arms & Armour"

To help me better understand the dimensions of the mail rings presented in the article, I converted the metric units (mm) to English (inches) and plotted the results below. The plot shows the wire diameter and inner ring diameter of discovered dark age mail rings. A line has been fitted through the points to show the mean trend of increasing ring diameter with increasing wire diameter.

As an aid to reconstructing authentic looking mail, I've replotted the points with the wire diameter converted to wire gauge and the inner ring diameter in units of sixteenths of an inch. Two systems of define wire diameter appear to be in use in the United States--British Imperial Standard (SWG) and American. For the same numerical gauge value, the SWG is heavier than the American. The following table compares the wire diameters in inches for SWG and American gauges for common mail ring dimensions.

In the two above plots, heavier mail (smaller rings and thicker wire) is to the lower left. Typical dark age mail would be, using 1/2" rings with 12 SWG gauge wire; 7/16" rings with 14 SWG gauge wire; and 3/8" rings with 16 SWG gauge wire. A range of ring diameters (+/- one to two sixteenths) is observed for a given wire diameter. 

My hauberk, made of 5/16" rings using mostly 16 SWG wire, is definitely on the heavy size of the line for the recovered Dark Age mail samples, even though it appears to be light to many. It is not as serviceable as period mail since the links are butted rather than riveted or welded shut. (No examples of Dark Age butted mail have been found.) Some increase in the wire diameter is justified to provide additional strength for butted mail, but this comes at the cost of appearance and greatly increased weight.