Chain mail was generally made using drawn wire or, on rare occasion, forged wire. It is not made by punching rings from sheet. This would be pretty wasteful of time, material and labor. First the iron would have to be forged into uniform sheet, then punched, twice, (this is not an easy process) then linked. Then all the scrap would have to be salvaged for reuse. Charles Ffoulkes (The Armourer and his Craft, Methuen, 1912) says:

[Evidence] points to the fact that sometimes mail was made of flat rings, but whether cut from the sheet of metal of merely of flattened wire it is impossible to say. (p.45)

• The wire is turned or coiled on a mandrel of the desired diameter.
• Then, individual rings are cut from the resulting 'spring' (they can be chiseled off, or a wire cutter can be used).
• One end is flattened and punched, the other end is drawn into a tenon. The tenon is turned 90 degrees (perpendicular to the ring).
• The rings are then linked and the tenon is inserted into the punched hole and peined.

Alternately, both ends can be flattened & punched; a rivet (frequently two!) is used to 'close' the ring. Some evidence exists that special tongs were used to punch a small hole in the rings and flatten them at the same time.

Another technique is to forge weld the rings. This technique can be combined with the others since only half of the rings need to be open to 'knit' the mail together. Forge welding is much faster (especially if you master the Daryll Meier 'welding with tongs' technique!)

Lapped or butted rings were never used except for ornamental mail.

Most all of the chain mail on display at the Higgins Armor Museum in Worcester, MA is welded link. It is highly probable that the "flat mail" was flattened after welding, so that it would lie flatter against the body. Flattening made the links more protective, i.e., covered more surface area than the same weight of round wire.

It is possible to engrave each link using an engraving die set. The "finished link" was put into a die with a hole like a donut in it. The inside of the die surface was engraved. Striking the top die forced the ring into the mold of the die, engraving it, piening the rivets, and incidentally, making each ring the same size, exactly. Alex Bealer's "Art of Blacksmithing" has a section that describes the process quite well and is reasonably historically accurate.