>>59919356>>1000hrs/6m0 workWhich does seem like quite a lot, no? Would you happen to have similar estimates for the time to make plate armour of similar coverage? Because we need both to make a comparison. Lacking that, well, we do have the quoted prices from Williams above.
>many workers can team upThat's completely irrelevant to the question of mail requiring a lot of man-hours to produce. One person working for two hours or two people working for one hours both makes for two man-hours of work.
>and they don't seem to have minded the 'immense amount of labor'. That'd be a good answer to someone claiming no-one in general or the Romans specifically found mail worth the bother. Alas, that's not what I've ever argued.
I do feel though like I need to re-iterate that there doesn't seem to be much of a point to comparing things outside of the period when both plate and mail were around on the market. Surely you don't mean to imply that it was purely economical reasons that made the Romans choose mail over a form of armour that by and large had (quite) a few centuries to go before it getting invented?
As for your German masterpiece, well, six months sure is a lot of work. Now I agree that a regular hauberk probably didn't take as long, but "less than a lot" is simply too vague to be of any use here.
>It also theorizes Roman mail used punched iron rings from a single sheet of metalNo need to pull a theory out of thin air, we do have some archaeological finds here. I don't see it helping you show that mail was cheaper than plate when both were available though.
>it is easier to make and manipulate small batches of relatively good iron than it is to make/manipulate large batches of good steel.Relatively good iron doesn't sound like "the simplest of materials". Anyway, you can make plate armour out of iron as well, both high and low quality material. A lot of it was.
