How to Make a Lorica

Choose steel rings if you want to feel the heft of the original. If you want the lorica hamata look without all the extra weight on your body, then choose aluminum rings as a lightweight alternative. You should buy four times as many punched rings as jump rings; as a guide, buy 8,000 punched rings and 2,000 jump rings for a lorica hamata, each ring should be either 1/2 inch or 5/8 inch in diameter.

Take one of the jump rings and clamp the needlenose pliers on each side of the jump ring's opening. Jump rings have one small opening while punched rings are solid and have no joints. Slowly twist one of the pliers away from you, bending the metal, so that there is approximately a quarter of an inch opening. The pliers in your other hand are to remain still as they are simply holding the ring in place. Put four punched rings onto the open jump ring and then close the jump ring with the pliers. Lay the rings on a flat surface so that the jump ring is in the center and the four rings form a square around it.

Take two punched rings and line them up vertically on the right side of the square. Open up a new jump ring. Using it as though it were a sewing needle, go under the right top punched ring and under the middle top punched ring, and then over that same middle top punched ring and over the middle bottom punched ring. Then you will go under that same middle bottom punched ring and the under the right bottom punched ring. Next close the jump ring with the pliers, closing the pattern. Repeat this step -- under, over, under, close -- and create many more rows to add width. To add height, simply start weaving from the top or the bottom instead of from the side as you just did.

Create two large rectangles of mail that extend from your shoulder to your mid-thigh, but leave out a small rectangle shape centered on the top front and top back. This will be the head opening. As mail does not stretch like fabric does and is quite time intensive to make, you do not need a pattern but you should try the lorica hamata on occasionally or hold it up to your body so you will know how much more mail you will need to weave. When the mail rectangles are long enough and wide enough to fit you plus some extra space for maneuvering, then join the sides of the mail together -- by weaving them together with jump rings -- but leave wide openings for the arms. Next join together the shoulders but leave the head opening intact.