Editing Mail (section)

== Information about mail ==
[[image:Mali warriors.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A Mali Empire Warrior clad in chainmail]]
Mail is a labor-intensive form of armor to make. Even a mail vest will have thousands of individual rings, each of which need to be hand made one at a time. This is offset by several points. First of all, mail was a form of metallic armor which was made of iron, which is far more common than the alternative of bronze, which involved getting both copper and tin. Secondly, despite the fact that it took a fuckload of work to do so, making individual rings (or links) was not a particularly difficult thing to do. Though eventually you did see specialized linkmakers, the job could be done by your average generalized village smith if he had some appropriate gear and a little practice, and large amounts of labor could be put on the smith's apprentices, as the most difficult part of making mail is following patterns properly. Third, a suit of mail can easily be patched if damaged. Fourth: unlike plate armor mail can flow over the body allowing to protect otherwise hard to defend spots. In a chain-mail jacket your armpits are safe.

[http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html In terms of defense, mail has some advantages and disadvantages.] Its biggest advantage is that it's excellent at defeating slashing sword attacks. Due to the interlocked nature of the rings a slashing blow has its energy spread out among the links, imparting limited energy to the wearer while keeping the sharp blade away from the body. This is double effective since mail is always paired with an undergarment to further protect against blunt attacks (known as a gambeson, an aketon, an arming doublet or simply padded armour). Against thrusts such as spears or arrows it will protect decently, against the attack which of course depends on what type of mail you are wearing, and what kind of weapon your opponent is wielding. A longbow shot or a piercing blow from a sharp sword might still break through (where it would get stuck in a gambeson with its 14 layers of linen). Further mail advantages are that it's flexible for great mobility, and is actually quite comfortable. In a fantasy context, chain mail is one of the only types of armor we know for a fact will work against a monster, since a Shark suit is pretty much just chain mail and it also used as protection when working with tesla coils and high voltage since it's, basically, a wearable Faraday cage. Just make sure your feet are properly grounded and that the electricity has no direct path through any of your vital organs.

Mail's major downside, however, is that it's worthless against blunt trauma. If hit directly by a high-impact weapon, like a hammer, axe or a falchion, the mail, rather then compressing, transfers that energy to the body under it for full damage, which is why it's paired with a gambeson, but a hard enough hit still won't be stopped by its padding. Furthermore, against some thrusting attacks the force would be so concentrated that only a few links would have force applied to them, removing the benefit of interlocking rings, breaking them apart and punching through the armor.
A full size hauberk is very heavy, going up to as much as 20kg. And most of this weight is going to hang down from your shoulders. Whilst tightening a belt around your waist helps somewhat by transferring some of the weight from your shoulders and upper body to your legs, it creates its own set of problems, especially when lifting the arms for overhead swing.

Iron is a very good heat conductor, so mail can heat up or cool very rapidly depending on weather and even burn your skin if you do not put something under it to protect yourself, or over it to shield it from direct sunlight (which is one of the reasons the crusaders wore their signature tabards and skirts). Also don't even think of wearing it against bullets. The bullet just ends up dragging metal rings into the wound. Mail works a lot better against spalling, (small shards of metal thrown off the back side of another metal when hit hard enough) so WW1 tankers sometimes had mail face masks to protect their face and eyes.

Today, mail as actual body armor is mainly for divers as shark protection, and even then, you'd have to be crazy to not at least have an entire steel cage between you and a large shark just to be safe (they've found bits of actual plate metal in shark stomachs at times). It is also used by workers in meat plants who cut up a lot of meat slabs with really sharp knives and for those dealing with predatory animals; and is used [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_mail#cite_ref-61 as stab protection] by some police or military in urban areas. A small cottage industry exists making chainmail for historic recreationists, film (though plastic maille is more common in film as it's lighter - or yarn if they're especially cheap) and cosplayers.