Here we get to the good stuff, now this is without a doubt the hardest weave I have in terms of difficulty to put together, time spent to make even the smallest piece, and even hardest to acquire materials. It is however conversely bad-ass. I’m officially calling this the beginning of the 7th Gen as it’s an entirely new style from TabMail, and even the PlateMail I’ve made with cans. This will grow into a piece on the newly designed and engineered armor. Make sure to follow the Prep steps as you will need quite a lot of scales. This uses 16 ga 1/4 AR 4.2 Bright Aluminum Rings I purchase mine from TheRingLord, but as long as they are 1/4 and 14-18 ga any ring should work fine. I chose Bright Aluminum to match properly with the aluminum can tabs.
- Difficulty: 5/5 – When it requires it’s own Prep tutorial, and a custom tool you have to know it’s a bitch.
- Flexibility: 3/5 – Not as bendable as steel scale-mail due to the way it’s made, but it bends outwardly much like TabScale
- Tabs per sq. ft: ~425
- Rings per sq. ft: ~775
- Scales per sq. ft: ~350 x 3 Chads per Scale = ~1050
1. Prep your materials see PopScale Prep here to get your scales ready.
2. Place 2 rings through the scale like so, but do not close them.
3. The tab layout will be like this (so you understand before you start adding scales)
4. So we need those center rings to go through 2 tabs facing the other direction at the bottom.
5. Then you add the tab and scale with the ring going through the new tabs middle, and the lower tabs bottom.
6. Then you continue out down the line. (go as far as you wish for this, I don’t show it, but this is much easier to do at all once rather than piecemeal.)
7. Now we start adding for the next row. Add a scale such that each side goes through one of the upper tabs top part, and a single lower tabs middle part.
8. It should look like this from the back.
9. Finish out the row.
10. Add a new scale going through a new tabs middle, and connecting through 1 side each of the lower row.
11. It should look like this from the back.
12. Finish out the row.
13. You can follow 10-12 for the alternating rows, but the initial steps cannot be repeated as they were done as the first ‘row’ and have a bit more structure. So for this row add a tab much like step 10. However have the tab facing the other direction and go behind the current row.
14. It should look like this from the back.. Note how the section below has tabs going to the bottom part, this is to ‘lock’ in the row to make it easier to work on and handle if you plan to extend that section you will have to unhook rings.
15. Follow step 13 to finish out the row.
16. See how the row is floating above the lower, this gives the tab scale the freedom to move like scalemail typically does, while not being too loose.
17. Keeping going up row by row until you desire.
18. Just a look at the backside of a completed swatch.
