common sense, plenty of spare time and most of all patience. Another misconception is that mail is heavy and cumbersome to wear. The weight of a mail shirt will depend on the thickness of the links, the length of its sleeves and its overall length: a knee length Norman one is probably going to be a lot heavier than a short fifteenth century one. The heaviest shirt I know of is in Edinburgh and weighs 14kg; most surviving shirts are lighter than this. This may sound heavy, but when worn the weight is well distributed and the mail is flexible, so it is quite comfortable if tailored correctly. Medieval mail was normally constructed of iron wire, sometimes decorated with brass edging rings. Plain iron wire of useable size is not easily obtainable these days; however, galvanised iron wire is. This is in fact a beautiful material for making mail: it is inexpensive, easily obtainable, nice to work with, and only rusts on the ends where the links are cut. The cheapest way to buy it is from builders merchants (as fencing wire) or large ironmongers in sizeable coils (5kg is a convenient weight). If you buy it from your local hardware shop in 0.5kg rolls it will cost a lot more. For particularly impoverished armourers coathanger wire can also be used. A coathanger will give about three feet of strong, non rusting wire of about 13 gauge thickness. Unfortunately not all coathangers are of the same colour or thickness and