ArmouryStory

Here, greatly shortened, is the development, commercial history, and utter failure of my little armoury. Yes, this is about failure, and yes, this is depressing reading, but if you're going to get into the game then I have some worthwhile points to make.

I'd become interested in chain mail again after a murder. A cabbie had been killed by a fare over a ten-dollar ride. The man had been drunk, couldn't be bothered to walk home, and had drank his cash earlier. He'd hailed a cab anyway and the resulting dash, chase, cornering, confrontation and fight left the cabbie dead and the fare in prison for twenty years.

Anyway... I looked at the possibilities. Scale armour would show, kevlar was too bulky and could be cut with a knife, but chain mail seemed like it could work. At this stage I already knew that it would be very expensive to buy, but I was fascinated with the technical problems and started playing with scraps of wire. It would have to be welded to work acceptably.

I bought some wire and tried TIG welding, gas welding, high-strength solder and riveting, but they were all far too slow. I let it slide for a while, then I found a welding manual in the library with a description of the equipment and process used for industrial welded chain. It was simple - a high current across the join of the link.

I found a basic transformer (from work) and a variac (from work) and started playing. I made a first, crude arrangement to hold the electrodes and link, and successfully welded my first looselinks. Nine months had gone by since I'd started. The links were, I thought, unique. Nobody else was doing this. If I kept this quiet, well now, it could be worth something.

It made sense for a cash-poor startup business. The maille didn't have to meet any troublesome legal requirements or fit with international standards. Tooling was basic - after all, I'd built some on a bench. Best of all, there was virtually no competition.

My original inspiration largely forgotten, work on the commercial armoury started in earnest. The product would be the best. Welded link chainmail! Rapidly produced, it promised to be much more affordable than the earlier efforts I'd read about. I got into the woodwork, parts sourcing, designing and prototyping in earnest. There were delays with available cash which would stop me buying parts, sometimes for weeks or months, but I never gave it away. Not after having come so far. Getting time away from work to go hunting for new suppliers or parts was a problem as well, but I'd take quick trips out during lunch.

Starting to spot the mistakes yet?

Development work continued. I found the fastest ways to wind coils, to cut high-quality links. I looked at all fields of commercial supply: as-cut looselinks, welded looselinks, everything. I built the first welder. That took another few hundred dollars, quite a bit of luck - I got the variac for free - and another six months.

I started welding with the table and jig I'd made. I set up my first website, with pictures of the first scraps of maille completed. Over a year and a half had gone by since I'd first started.
I bought a drier for the polishing. It was second hand, very cheap, and didn't go. A weekend and another $30 were spent fixing it.

Doing the welding itself as well as everything else was starting to really cut it. Even sped up as it was, it was very time consuming. I decided to free myself of this routine job so that I could work on the other aspects of the business, like documenting the procedures used. I had a friend who was unemployed and paying a mortgage, so I offered what money I could and he started welding for me, a few hours a week. That's the reason for the scale in the photos of the setup - it was to measure output.

I'd offered free samples on my website and got requests for these in a very short amount of time. They started getting sent out; I was pleased. I was building up a presence, getting my name known. I got my first order and had to seriously consider pricing - I hadn't yet made a shirt. My customer, in another country, wanted me to send the goods and let him pay me off over the course of a year. I said, I'll make the shirt, then pay me, then I'll send it. I never heard from him again.

Things with my sole employee weren't going well either. I'd hired a friend because it had to be someone I could trust - he worked in my place while I was out - but it wasn't playing out well. He wasn't interested in the work. It wasn't done as well as I would have done it. Worse, there was maille produced which couldn't be sold, but which had to be paid for.

It had been two years, over fifty free samples (I'm not kidding), about $1400 spent, and there had been no income. I shut the armoury down, signed off on the website, and heaved a huge sigh of relief. All I'd done had been to give myself another job to do in my spare time. Even if I'd been trading, I'd have made less than I would have working in a video/DVD rental shop.

Then I had a great idea - I'd make the welders themselves and sell those to armourers. I asked around to find out if people were keen. They definitely were, so work started again.

At first I thought that a variable reluctance transformer would be what the commercial welder needed. This is a transformer that deliberately varies its efficiency by mechanically opening a gap in the magnetic circuit. I spent another $400, just buying old transformers and getting another custom welding transformer made. This took another six months, and was a failure. I'd ignored my instincts at the beginning again, which had warned me about the clunky mechanical controls needed for this approach.

I talked to a few people, having wised up about secrecy by now, and tried lamp dimmer switches. This was the technical and economic solution I needed. Widely available, cheap, and easy to install, they made the commercial production of a welder look as though it was possible.