Chain Mail rusts easily and can be a pain to care for, so I set about doing some research on how to clean and maintain a mail shirt. The $114 mail hauberk I received was covered in oil and grim, apparently a result of a graphite spray applied by the manufacturer, and I really wanted to clean it before wearing it. But how?
Historically, mail was cleaned by putting it in a barrel with sand and rolling the barrel down a hill, but this seemed a bit dramatic to me so I reviewed my options. Some people recommended a barrel of sand on a treadmill, others recommended kitty litter. One person suggested using a bath tub filled with soapy water, rinsing well in a shower and placing the mail shirt in a 200F oven for 10 minutes to ensure prompt drying. Through all the chaos, one person's voice of reason rang clear: degreasing was a no-brainer: put the mail shirt in a 5 gallon bucket with 1 gallon of mineral spirits, let the shirt dry and then soak the shirt in acrylic floor polish (such as Future) to prevent corrosion. Ok, I thought: done and done.
But I was not completely satisfied with the nice shiny appearance of my mail shirt. I wanted something that looked old, and lived-in. Fresh off the success of my shield boss experiment, I figured heat-bluing a chain shirt would be a great way to add some depth to an otherwise uninteresting piece, and also protect it against the elements...
Photos: mail cleaning process with bucket, mineral spirits, and towels. Note the amount of grime removed during degreasing, and my failed attempt to filter and reuse the mineral spirits.
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