Awesome Chainmail

We’ve always been fascinated by the properties of chainmail armor and how it can flex around a body while still offering protection. Now, researchers at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and Caltech have come up with a new kind of fabric that can be tuned from a flexible to a rigid form in an instant.

Located in Scotland, The Hill House was created by architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Unfortunately, the damp climate has been unkind to the home’s experimental construction. Tom Scott shows us how conservationists are working to save the house by surrounding it with a box made from 34 million chain links.

Evan Snider walks us through the process of crafting a completely handmade chainmail shirt, painstakingly assembled from thousands of copper rings, individually opened, then linked over the course of 66 hours. The finished shirt weighs in at about 25 pounds.