Gamers with Hobbies: Chainmail (image heavy)

See, now we just need pics of you fighting orcs in that stuff.

No orcs in Canada. Although.... There IS a real authentic swordfighting academy just a bus ride away. I've been meaning to look into it for a while now.

I've been messing around with my camera settings again trying to get rid of that yellowing. From what I've read the problem is in the colour balancing. Cameras react to artificial light by upping the red filter. This gives everything a yellow/gold tint. Turns out my camera has a setting that prevents this.

Here is another view of the buckle using the same lighting as the last picture.
IMAGE(http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/966/belt37.jpg)

So with that taken care of I got up early this morning so I could catch the sun. However I forgot to turn off the indoor light filter and my first picture ended up blue.
IMAGE(http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/6074/belt38.jpg)

So, finally, I got a good picture of the belt under natural sunlight.
IMAGE(http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/8383/belt39.jpg)

Behind red and black. This is my favourite colour. That sort of silver-but-darker mirrored shine. Like polished hematite.

I gave my belt a good shakedown cruise today. And in about 6 hours of use it came undone on its own 3 times or so. Bouncing motions tends to wiggle the buckle loose. Running for the bus or taking the stairs 2 steps at a time for instance. I think part of the problem is I didn't make the strap long enough. The belt doesn't have enough slack to line up properly. So its sort of always slightly un-done.

I'll be tweaking it for a while.

http://www.academieduello.com/index....

Its a neat place. And literally just one bus ride away from where I live. They teach fencing. But its not the olympic style of sports fencing with fake swords. This is the "real" kind with bladed rapiers. They also teach how to use various other weapons. Primarily longswords but also quarterstaffs and other various arms.

Chainmail is not really armour in the sense that it protects you from harm. All it really does (but does well) is change sharp impacts to blunt impacts. Cuts become bruises. Severed limbs become broken bones. The real protection comes from the padding you wear under it. In fact back in the medieval days this is exactly what people wanted. How to set broken bones was fairly common knowledge. What was not well known was how to treat infection. Preventing cuts in the skin that could become infected was the main priority.

Speaking of wearing stuff.
IMAGE(http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/5734/belt40.jpg)

After looking at this picture for a while I think I've identified the problem. This is how the belt is supposed to work:

1. Both the buckle and the tongue of the belt have hooks. When the belt ends line up with each other the hooks engage and prevent the belt from becoming loose.
2. The buckle end of the belt has a strap. Its function is to stop the belt ends from bending outwards and undoing the hooks.
3. Gravity takes ahold of both belt ends and applies torque by bending them down. This forces the belt against the strap, pulling the strap tight.

Now where it falls apart is the strap. The part I highlighted in yellow is why the belt keeps become undone. This is the achilles heel if you will, the moment you pull upwards on this spot the belt falls apart. What should be happening is the buckle end of the belt rotates downward. But instead it bends upward, leaving the top end of the strap hanging.

IMAGE(http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/2313/belt41.jpg)

I think where the problem starts is the seam I made to reverse the weave direction. The area highlighted red is a small patch of european weave. This is a lot more flexible than the hard chunky tiffany the rest of the belt is made from. And it is what allows the buckle to bend upward.

If I can make that part of the belt rigid again it should work better.

Well, when I fight with chain, I have a linen undershirt with a 4-ply cotton gambeson over that that ties to pourpoints through my chain shirt to keep it in place and runs through my gorget and helmet so it does not shift much. The chain acts as a 'reactive' armor - in fact, when I lean forward in a fighting stance, the chain hangs off of my chest, so that when I get hit low (which is the likeliest spot, around the hips, legs, or arms) the chain basically bounces, diminishing the force of the blow upon my body proper. I'll tell you, that it works quite well. The downside of it though is that it takes a ton of training to be able to stand and fight in chain for longer than 20-30 minutes at a stretch with any sort of fighting stance. Add a heavy shield to it (or any damn shield) and that time drops rapidly.

We've fought with hand-and-a-half, mace, spear, glaive (all padded practice weapons or rattan) and rebated hand-and-a-half swords. If you ever have the chance, I'd definitely go see the guys down there. I'd be wary of the SCA if that's what they are (though they don't sound like it), but there are quite a few more traditional and historical (at least as reconstructive as possible) societies out there that do the best they can from what few primary sources are available.

If you also get a chance and are interested, check out "Reclaiming the Blade" (on Netflix instantwatch) which does a sort of review of the more popular groups out there, including the style fencing you describe, which is using the 'off' hand as a shield and parry weapon as opposed to holding it behind you for, erm, 'balance.'

Tamren wrote:

http://www.academieduello.com/index....

Its a neat place. And literally just one bus ride away from where I live. They teach fencing. But its not the olympic style of sports fencing with fake swords. This is the "real" kind with bladed rapiers. They also teach how to use various other weapons. Primarily longswords but also quarterstaffs and other various arms.

Wow, $100 for an 8-class beginner's course. Rapier, heavy weapons, or a heavy weapons-focused physical workout course. I am very intrigued.

I should be working out or doing something physical regularly—I only grow horizontally now—and fencing is something I've always thought about (because it is awesome, and aerobic). The ongoing mastery/warrior programs look pricey, but maybe that's no more than a martial arts program or gym membership.

Going to see Falstaff at Bard on the Beach tomorrow (starring Felix Gaeta), maybe that will get me super pumped for trying it out. They even offer a free lesson—I'm running out of excuses not to check this out.

If you take that up I'll join ya. I'm thinking of trying it out after PAX when I have the time. The fencing sounds like a lot of fun. The longsword in particular looks interesting as well.

Back to the belt. The first idea I had to solve the curving problem was to make the belt longer. Tiffany doesn't like to bend in a curve. So by extending the buckle away from the floppy european section it should make the belt work a bit better.
IMAGE(http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/47/belt42.jpg)

In the process I figured out a really easy way to stiffen up the euro section. By adding a single ring to each side it becomes completely rigid. It doesn't want to curve even the slightest bit. I also noticed that those side rings would be the perfect spot to attach the buckle strap. It even slants the right way!
IMAGE(http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/3774/belt43.jpg)

With that knowledge in hand I came up with a new design. This version has 2 european sections, for a total of 4 side rings. These will be used to attach the buckle strap. The strap will then sit directly over a pair of hooks.
IMAGE(http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/5957/belt44.jpg)

Seem to be the right direction to take things. Test results to come soon.

As it turns out the final design was a mix of old and new.
IMAGE(http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/9089/belt45.jpg)

I also figured out a good way to wear the belt. Before I had been a little fixated on making sure the strap was centred properly. In the absence of a buckle it kind of made sense to display it in the middle. However this approach left it without support and it kept falling apart.

With the new belt design the strap is offset a bit to the left. The little tab beside the strap where the buckle would normally go fits under the belt loop. However, instead of doubling up inside the belt loop, the rest of the belt fits overtop. Then through the strap like so:
IMAGE(http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/972/belt46.jpg)

This new configuration is quite stable. I'll have to take it out for a spin. But after a little testing its obvious that this is the better way to wear it.

Revised belt stats:
Weight: 2 pounds 1 ounce
Length: 41.5 inches flat
Ring count: Small 93, Medium 916, Large 495
Total: 1504 rings

PAX is coming up really fast and I'm going to be busy preparing for it. So this will probably be my last update until afterwards.

A little while ago one of my Wubbers pliers broke. Nothing serious, but the little metal springs that push them open broke off. They snapped in clean lines so it was probably metal fatigue. That particular pair had a little flaw I noticed early on. The springs were not lined up properly and made a click sound whenever the pliers were closed. That was probably what led to the break. WUB, the company that sells em was quite surprised and offered to replace them.

So this morning I received a package. Upon opening it I discovered not one but TWO pairs of brand new wubbers.
IMAGE(http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/7589/wubbers2.jpg)
Thanks WUB, you guys are awesome!

When I get back I should be free to go full steam ahead on my fedora project. Hopefully it will be done in time for the next PAX. Well see what happens.

Bye for now!

Tamren wrote:

PAX is coming up really fast and I'm going to be busy preparing for it. So this will probably be my last update until afterwards.

A little while ago one of my Wubbers pliers broke. Nothing serious, but the little metal springs that push them open broke off. They snapped in clean lines so it was probably metal fatigue. That particular pair had a little flaw I noticed early on. The springs were not lined up properly and made a click sound whenever the pliers were closed. That was probably what led to the break. WUB, the company that sells em was quite surprised and offered to replace them.

So this morning I received a package. Upon opening it I discovered not one but TWO pairs of brand new wubbers.
IMAGE(http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/7589/wubbers2.jpg)
Thanks WUB, you guys are awesome!

When I get back I should be free to go full steam ahead on my fedora project. Hopefully it will be done in time for the next PAX. Well see what happens.

Bye for now!

Dude, those pliers kick ass. I bet they make a way, way cleaner cut than my other snips.

Are you going to wear the belt to PAX? : D
Make sure to take it off when you go through customs, heh.

FALCONRY, you guys!!
Heh...the Bartitsu looks kind of cool, too.
Not that I could ever afford this. Still. Good to know it'll be nearby.

Amoebic wrote:

FALCONRY, you guys!!
Heh...the Bartitsu looks kind of cool, too.
Not that I could ever afford this. Still. Good to know it'll be nearby.

You just gotta start saving.

The Ultimate Knight

Give that special person in your life a gift they will never forget. Transport them back in time to learn the arts of knighthood with professional sword master Devon Boorman.
The recipient of this gift will receive the full training and trappings of knighthood from custom fitted armour and weapons (from world renowned blade maker Angus Trim), to over 30 hours of training in armed and unarmed combat, as well as the court skills of a knight.
The package can be delivered over a schedule of 6 months or in a single intense and immersive week at the Academie Duello facilities in beautiful downtown Vancouver, British Columbia.

Equipment included:
• A custom fitted suit of full plate armour
• Padded Undercoat
• Custom fitted leather boots and gloves
• Full unarmoured combat gear, includes
• Mask, throat protector, and combat jacket
• Angus Trim Sparring Longsword
• Angus Trim Sparring Arming Sword
• Angus Trim Sharp Longsword
• Quarterstaff
• Sparring Poleaxe

Combat Training:
• 30 Hours of Private One-on-One instruction with Sword Master Devon Boorman. Topics covered include:
• Longsword
• Arming Sword
• Sword and Shield
• Spear and Pole Axe
• Full Armoured and Unarmoured Techniques
• Wrestling and Grappling
• Fitness, Endurance, and Strength Training
• 6 Months of Unlimited Access to Academie Duello Facilities, Classes, and Fight Nights

Training in Knightly Arts:
• Medieval Dance
• Courtly Love
• Political Intrigue
• Rhetoric and Wit
• Military Strategy and Tactics

Additionally:
• Custom design of your personal coat of arms, for marking your armour and weapons.
• Full videos of your private training sessions
• Final combat expose and professional demo video
• Photo portfolio
• Certificate of Excellence in the Knightly Arts, signed by Academie Director Devon Boorman

Cost: $13,000

Well, it depends on who his Armorer is. For someone like Robert MacPherson or Ugo Serrano , that would be a steal.

That said, I've always wanted to train with Jeffrey Hedgecock but I'm a horrible horrible horseman.

koshnika wrote:

Well, it depends on who his Armorer is. For someone like Robert MacPherson or Ugo Serrano , that would be a steal.

That said, I've always wanted to train with Jeffrey Hedgecock but I'm a horrible horrible horseman.

My guess is, and I'm just guessing here, is that it isn't.

I would be impressed if it were of at least the standard of Icefalcon Armory.

I've always pondered reloading brass, but I've never had the space for a proper setup so I've never done it.

Tamren wrote:

*Pic of Tamren's awesome belt*

I will be going and I demand to see this awesome creation!

Wow. That's quite expensive. I wonder what quality armor that would include. The training you can get from a lot of places. I don't know how he exactly teaches 'political intrigue' either.

My kinghtly armor (leather with coated plates, gambeson, and an extra set of chain armor, leg greaves, gorget, helmet, gauntlets, and spaulders) was all told: $350-$400.
My actual sword (not a replica, but a sword, designed to really kill -- not for show) $500
The training weapons you can get for cheap, $75-100 for a decent one.
The shields you can make or buy the cut-outs from aluminum (or make a wood one) for about $50-$100

$13k seems high, but then again, it does seem like some sort of adventure as well.

Nothing to see here... move along.

Well I'm back from PAX. I had a great time.

The belt passed all tests with flying colours I'm happy to say. It managed to keep my shorts up over 3 days (and nights) of hard PAXing. Never came loose once. I haven't yet submitted it to the belt contest on M.A.I.L just yet. I consider the belt a good proof of concept. It looks cool and it works, but its not as practical as it could be. I'm working on a revision that would fix a couple of the flaws in the design.

The requisite changes would be:
1. Making the belt thinner, its rather thick for a piece of clothing that is supposed to lie as flat as possible.
2. Reducing the weight. This belt is over 2 pounds of metal, it could knock out a moose! However if I ever try to sell these someday I'm pretty sure everyone but the nerds would appreciate something lighter.
3. Improving the buckle. The current design works quite well. But I think it could do with one more refining pass. When you put the belt on the section that doubles up under the buckle takes up a lot of space. But solving issues 1 and 2 would mostly ease the problem.

What I am doing at the moment is constructing a second belt. The design is almost identical, but this time I am using 18gauge wire rings. The aspect ratio of each ring is maintained by using smaller ID rings. I am also using aluminum which is only a third the weight of steel.
IMAGE(http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/715/belt47.jpg)

Since everything is smaller the design changed a bit. Instead of 3 rows of chainmail, the belt is now formed of 5. There is a lot more space for the rings to fit now. A new problem that cropped up is the rings not sitting flush and even. They tend to bunch up and overlap each other and that looks pretty ugly.

Right now I'm fiddling with the design. Trying out different sizes and configurations of rings to try to keep the outside edge smooth and even. In other news my fedora project is still going ahead. In fact one of the original reasons I started this belt project was that I realized I didn't know enough. Its hard to practice on the hat itself because of how heavy and awkward the whole thing is. The skills used to make the belt are almost identical to the stuff you need to be making hats. So its been working well.

I also stumbled upon something really cool. When I was at PAX on the last day I wanted to find a good souvenir to bring home. What I decided on was some polyhedral gaming dice. These things are awesome. This company called Chessex had this big booth set up with trays of dice stacked all over the place. They had all of the different kinds and colours you could possibly imagine. 50mm giant cube dice, 100 sided dice, tiny micrometal dice for travelling, lots of fun stuff.

What I ended up getting was a fairly basic set of gaming dice. I picked out all the colours that I liked and bought a d6 of each. Then went back and picked out some polyhedrals of my most favourite colours.
IMAGE(http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/5445/paxdice.jpg)

Just after I got home I was checking out the belt contest thread. And in the same forum I found someone making an Icosahedron. A 20 sided platonic solid shape. Better known to gamers as a D20.

http://www.mailleartisans.org/board/...

That thing is effin cool! Looking at the design it seems that any shape can be made as long as it can be composed of triangles. That would mean all of the polyhedral dice I just bought could be replicated in chainmail. And the donation drive is coming up soon...

But don't worry. Either way I WILL have my fedora ready for PAX 2011.

EDIT: Oh and forgot to mention. I've been looking into getting some tumblers to help polish my rings. A rotary tumbler with steel shot for burnishing. And a vibrating rotary tumbler for polishing. Anyone have experience with these things? I hear they are quite common as people who reload gun cartridges use them on the brass to clean it up

This dice idea has been eating my brain for a couple of days now.

So here we have the original article:

IMAGE(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/4575/mailleicosahedron.jpg)
Image and dice created by member CShake of the M.A.I.L. Forums. (used with permission)

An icosahedron is a platonic solid. This status entails all sorts of unique properties that I won't go into here. Although if we have any mathematicians in the audience feel free to chime in. The important part for our purposes here is that all of the faces on the solid are the same size and shape. This regularity makes it very easy to calculate the number of rings used. (1660 in this case)

The dice pictured above is made from a weave called "orbital hex cage". I'll explain orbitals in more detail later. This weave is constructed out of triangular units and thus can be assembled into many compound shapes. In this case an icosahedron composed of 20 panels.

When you isolate one panel from the rest you can count the number of rings that make it up.
IMAGE(http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1649/dice1.jpg)
In order to change this icosahedron from a simple geometric shape into a D20. It needs a number on each face. Each panel has 68 rings in all, of which 48 are oriented edge-on towards the viewer. These 48 rings are the most visible and form the canvas for any and all markings.

After a little work in Paint I extracted the grid from the above picture. As you can see each panel can be divided into 16 separate triangles.
IMAGE(http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/7606/dice2.png)
Figure 1 in this drawing is inaccurate. The smaller size of the green triangles in the grid is a little deceiving. In reality they are the exact same size as the red triangles. Although in practice when viewing the pattern. The points on each green triangle are overlapped by the rings that form the red triangles. This results in a view that looks more like Figure 2.

My challenge for this project is to figure out some sort of numbering or marking scheme. It is not so simple as adding a number of coloured rings. Each of the 20 faces on the dice has to have a unique mark that can be translated into a number. Dice have to be readable the moment they land. So whatever pattern I use has to be recognizable almost instantly.

I expect this task to take a damn long time. Should be fun!

Did someone say falconry?

IMAGE(http://imgur.com/OIrvo.jpg)

For a bit less money, and a bit less medieval experience, Mrs. Tanglebones and I went to this guy a couple of years ago:
http://newenglandfalconry.com/

Now of course any endeavour like this starts with small steps. Instead of jumping right to the Icosohedron I'm going to start with something a bit smaller. Most polyhedral dice are made from platonic solids, namely the D4, D6, D8, D12, and D20. Almost all of these can be made from triangles. Even the D6 using a triangular dipyramid. The one exception to the lineup is the D10 because most manufacturers make it out of kite shapes. But I'll tackle that problem when I come to it.

For now I'm going to design a D4. 4 sided die are generally shaped like a tetrahedron. There are some exceptions, like "barrel dice" but thats a can of worms for later. When a tetrahedron is thrown and lands on your gaming surface. It always lands with one point facing the sky, like a caltrop.

The Icosahedron made by CShake is just over 3 inches (or 80mm) measured between two flat faces. The triangular panels of Orbital Hex Cage that make up the Icosahedron are all 4 rows high. Because I only need 4, if I were to make a tetrahedron shape out of these panels. The resulting D4 would be tiny. Probably smaller than a regular plastic dice.

This isn't technically a problem. Dice come in all sorts of sizes, some of them 10mm or less. But when making a dice out of chainmail the markings are a bit harder to read. So we want something with numbers discernible from across a medium sized table. If we were to make a tetrahedron about 3 inches tall, the required panels would be far larger than 4 rows tall. Exactly how large I won't know until I try to make one.

When marking the numbers on a tetrahedron shaped D4 you have two choices.
IMAGE(http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/5135/dice3j.png)
As in Figure 1 one method is to put the numbers on the points of the dice. All 3 sides of the top corner carry the same number. So when the dice lands you read the number pointing up, regardless of what side you are looking at. The other method as shown in Figure 2 is to put the numbers at the base of each triangle. You then read the dice the same way.

Figure 3 shows 2 possible methods for marking the numbers. Because we are working with such low numbers. We can simply mark the same number of rings as the number we want to display. The design on the left is the simplest I could come up with. Each number is marked by how many coloured rings are displayed. As well the rings are positioned in such a way that each number forms a unique symbol. The other design on the right uses chevrons instead of single rings. The increase in size would make it easier to read at a distance.

After those two designs I ran out of room for further variations. But again, the canvas I have to paint on will be much larger than simply 2 rows tall.

In order to give the dice a bit more visual contrast I want to make them out of coloured rings. originally I thought of just using plain silver rings and marking the numbers in black. Black and Silver don't mix very well for this kind of job. Under bright light the glare can make it hard to pick out the black rings. And under poor lighting you wouldn't have enough contrast to pick them out either.

So to solve that problem I plan to make the dice primarily black. The material would be anodized aluminium. AA is fairly hard wearing, but the coloured coating can be scratched by hard surfaces. Anything that would scratch a plastic dice. The rings on the edges, the ones used to attach panels together, will probably be made out of steel. This is because they take the majority of the impact whenever you toss the dice. The numbers would be marked in Red and Gold. Red for odd numbers, and Gold for even numbers. This means of course the number 1 would be red, and 20 would be gold. Seems appropriate.

Pretty nice, when you first posted the dice design a couple days ago I went through and colored out actual physical representations of the numbers using the patten as best I could. I ended up with some serviceable designs, but it really didn't look right. I think this is a much more elegant way that matches the medium better.

I also think that not coloring the bottom edge is a good idea, as it will hopefully give a bit more of a boundary between the chevrons for the higher number dice. I think that you might want to make an exception for the 20 though, maybe color not only the bottoms of the "black triangles", but the grey ones as well. that will really give you that solid wall you want, and pop it out from the 18.

You could also consider making the 1 a solid wall of red instead, which will make it more immediately distinguishable from 2 and 3, and the lack of any black at all will probably distinguish it from 19 pretty readily.

Mwahahaha! Remember when I said this would take a long time? Yeah, I lied.

Check this out. The panels on the Icosahedron are going to be 4 rows tall. Any smaller than this and I doubt I would have room to mark the numbers. Any bigger and this dice will end up gigantic!
IMAGE(http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/5382/dice41.png)
The first two things you will notice about this number system are: 1. There are only 10 variations, and 2. All of the numbers are even.

I know what you're all thinking. "Wait what?"

This is how it works. Each symbol is composed of chevrons shaped into 10 unique patterns. Each chevron is composed of 2 coloured rings. If this is not visible enough I can add a third ring to make each chevron into a triangle. When you want to read a number on the dice, you count the number of chevrons on that face. Then you multiply that number by 2.

What about the odd numbers? Well it would take twice the screen space to show you in the diagram, but even and odd numbers will be marked using different colour rings. Even numbers will be coloured gold. So when you roll a gold number you count the chevrons, multiply by 2 and you're done. Odd numbers are marked using red chevrons. When you roll a number that is NOT gold. Count the chevrons, multiply by 2, and then add 1.

In this fashion, the numbers 2-3 are represented by a single chevron. 4-5 are marked by a double chevron, and so on all the way up to 18-19. You might have noticed that the only two remaining numbers, 1 and 20, don't form a pair. The reason I designed the system like this is simple. I wanted the numbers 1 and 20 to be as distinct as possible. After beating my head against the wall trying to come up with 20 unique symbols. I cheated a bit and made this one, which uses only 10.

Under this system, 20 is the only number that shows a solid wall of 10 chevrons. Combined with the gold colour, its pretty difficult to mistake it for any other number.

However! On the other hand. The number 1 has NO chevrons at all. When you roll a 1 you are simply greeted with a blank triangle. *evil laugh*

How cool is that?

It sounds like a good idea on paper but it might end up confusing.. And it doesn't have the same snappy contrast as All Gold vs All Black.

And there is something deliciously evil about it. If you roll really low you will see a lot of black. So you already know it means bad news. And then everyone will lean in and go "does it have a chevron? does it? does it?! Crap."

Then again. Making 1 a solid red is even MORE evil. Because it makes you think you rolled high and then you realize its a one.

In other news I've been working on the belt a bit more. I managed to find a design that fits together nicely.
IMAGE(http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8746/belt48.jpg)
It doesn't look any different from this side. But it has nice clean lines and no overlapping rings. All good. The strip of belt shown here is 8 inches long.

Here I am working on another 4 inch section. I've found that making the belt in pieces and putting them together later is more efficient. This is true enough of all chainmail. The more rings you add onto a project, the more awkward the object becomes.
IMAGE(http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/3677/belt49.jpg)

I'm going to halt work on this project for now. I actually ran out of rings. The other belt I made was 42 inches long. I calculated that to make this belt 40 inches long it would require two sizes of ring and over 1500 of each!. 3000 is just about double the amount of rings I used in the first belt. And thats without including the buckle.

I currently don't have to cash to order in some new rings yet. So in the meantime I'm going to be working on other projects that can work with my existing (and pretty extensive all told) stock of rings. Namely my fedora, but also some practice work with orbitals to warm up for the upcoming dice project.

Did I ever introduce you guys to orbitals? I'm pretty sure I have described them before but I don't recall pictures being involved. That ends now. Starting at the top left. In this picture we have: a couple basic orbital links, a doubled orbital link, and a small patch of Captive Orbital Hex Cage.
IMAGE(http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/3751/orbital1.jpg)

The simplest form of an orbital is composed of 3 rings. Two rings are linked together and the round outer surfaces of both rings combine to trap a third in between. This third ring does not pass through any other rings. The only thing holding it in place is the position of the rings around it. Hence, we call it an orbital.

When you double some of the rings that form a single orbital unit you can splay the ends out. Then make connections to each ring separately. 3 units forms a triangle shape which can be assembled into larger weaves such as COHC.

Orbital weaves are fairly restricted because the rings have to be of a certain size. The minimum AR is about 6 (meaning the inner diameter is 6 times the size of the wire used). So quite large. This results in weaves that tend to form a loose mesh with lots of empty space.

As to why its called CAPTIVE orbital hex cage. A captive ring is similar to an orbital as it doesn't link to any other rings. Only captive rings are different because they don't have any other rings pass through them at all.

In other words. Orbitals are rings caught between two objects. Captive rings are caught between two layers.
IMAGE(http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1676/orbital2.png)

Tamren wrote:

Then again. Making 1 a solid red is even MORE evil. Because it makes you think you rolled high and then you realize its a one. :P

Yeah, I was thinking about that yesterday and decided solid red was a bad idea, because you go from wanting a lot of color, whether it's red or gold, to wanting a lot of color, whether it's red or gold, except for completely red.

Although I still do think that you should use gold for every ring on the 20 face.

I agree. The 1 face is completely black. So for maximum contrast it makes sense to make the 20 face solid gold.

I took a little time and drew out all of the numbers using the right colours. It turned out like this:
IMAGE(http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/619/dice5.png)

Hmm, Couple more thoughts:

1. It seems a little odd that of the faces with the same design, the red color is higher and more preferable than the gold color. Of course if you simply flip it then your 20 will be red instead of gold, which isn't what you want either.

2. A bigger issue I think is the fact that you are making people count up to 9 separate chevrons. I read somewhere that most people can only instantaneously count around three objects, after that they have to slow down and count individually. That's one of the reasons that the tally system works so well, you can have one, two, or three dashes and count them right away. Then four dashes is too many to count but there isn't a line through it so that you know it's 4. Five has the line through it which makes it immediately distinguishable from anything else. What if you did something like this:
IMAGE(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/5873/yonderd20design.png)

Of course you could break pattern for 1 and 20 to go all black and all gold, and I think I'd probably recommend that for the 20 at least, I fooled around with some other ideas for the 20 and never got perfectly happy with it.

Well ideally no one would have to count the number of chevrons more than once. I kept that as a backup plan because if you *really* had to. You could count the individual rings and it would still add up to the correct number. I arranged them in specific patterns so that you can recognize them as one symbol. The only two that look remotely alike are 10-11 and 14-15 and one is larger than the other. Your system uses 20 unique symbols compared to my 10. The mechanics behind it are far more efficient on paper but in practice its still twice as complicated.

I'm drawing up a little diagram that would let me plot the numbers on a dice and then replace them with symbols to see how everything fits together. In the meantime if anyone else would like to try making a number scheme. Here is the blank version of the number scale. All you need is an image editing program with a flood-fill tool.
IMAGE(http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/4126/dice6b.png)

I gotta say I like Yonders design quite a bit.

Here's what my simple mind came up with:
IMAGE(http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7798/dice6brenji.png)

What can I say, I saw ten triangles with two colors with the goal of counting to twenty

Edit- Also bonus feature, ignore the color and you have a D10!

Hah! Neato.

Its really interesting to compare all 3 designs. We each had a certain theme in mind when making them. I started out using chevrons, so all of my symbols are variations of them. Yonder used a tally system with "dashes" and "lines". But Renji's set is probably the closest you can get to a traditional D6 with dots for numbers. He also didn't colour the "interior" triangles at all.

Here is that dice plotting template I was talking about:
IMAGE(http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/8084/dice7.png)
The grid shown here is all the surfaces that make up an Icosahedron flattened out. To make it easier to visualize think of the top and bottom 5 triangles as a pentagon. These two pentagons form the top and bottom of the dice when held between two points. The remaining triangles form a "belt" between them all around the dice.

This is how to use it. First you need a simple image editing tool to copy and paste the numbers into the boxes. In order for a dice to be "legal" the numbers on opposing faces must add up to the highest number on the dice plus one. So when you put the number 1 on the dice somewhere you also have to put 20 down in the right spot. The arrows show how to find opposing faces.

Here are some examples I made earlier:
IMAGE(http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/3370/dice8.png)

Someday, before I attempt final assembly of the dice panels. I will have to make up a little blueprint like this. There are a bunch of things to consider. The mix of high and low numbers. (so that you don't end up with big blobs of empty space. And the mix of even and odd numbers. (so that you don't end up with big blobs of the same colour either)

The pattern on the right was pretty basic. I just started with the odd numbers and filled in the evens later. The pattern on the left took some thinking. If you examine it closely it divides the dice faces into two halves. Colour wise these two are mirror images of each other. This gives it better distribution of numbers compared the first design.