"Dwarf Armor Reference in Hobbit" Topic

"Each one of his folk was clad in a hauberk of steel mail that hung to his knees, and his legs were covered with hose of a fine and flexible metal mesh, the secret of whose making was possessed by Dain's people"

Is there any speculation of that this "Flexible metal mesh" might have been? Are there any visual examples today of what this armor hose was?

I imagine it has very fine scale armor woven together.

Just curious.

Thanks

Wouldn't "flexible metal mesh" be chainmail? Cloth made of interconnected metal rings? And "fine" would mean very small rings? How to make small rings that are still strong into metal mesh could very well be a metallurgical "secret of whose making was possessed by Dain's people".

Here's a tutorial, if you want to make some:
link

There's an article here:
link
with a quote from Gimli's song about Moria,including a line about "metal wrought like fish's mail".

Some of the conclusions seem dubious,especially arguments in one of the linked articles attempting to prove there was no plate of any kind in Middle Earth. That Imrahil's vambrace was not metal strikes me as stretching.

Not to claim that Gondorians were parading around in full plate!

I don't think plate vambraces and greaves should be an impossibility even if mail is the most common army.

Since Tolkien makes a point of differing the "mesh" from the mail hauberk in such a way as to define it as remarkably different from the hauberk, it may well be interpreted that he did indeed mean a wholly different form of construction. Given the height of dwarves (around 4 feet) and the typical length of a hauberk (below the knee), it may well be that the armored hose was actually quite light, and really only meant to deflect minor blows. Consider that, in effect, the exposed leg on a dwarf in a hauberk would be a foot or less in length, and thus a highly secondary target for any creature. One can speculate therefore on a literal "woven wire" hose, or perhaps leggings of wrapped, flexible wire (I'm imagining something like a jacketed hose effect). Whatever Tolkien was imagining, or if he even quite knew what he was imagining, may well be nothing more than a product of "the magical skill of the dwarves--" that is, no real known armor at all, but rather just Tolkien putting forth the idea that dwarves could make "flexible metal mesh hose" as their under armor because they are dwarves, even if mankind of our own antiquity never made anything of the sort.

"Is there any speculation of that this "Flexible metal mesh" might have been? Are there any visual examples today of what this armor hose was?"

Netsearch for titanium wire cloth. (I have my suspicions that mithril was actually titanium… ;-)

Butchers have mail gloves of a very fine linkage, usually on leather inner gloves- it flows like metal silk. Because the rings are so small it it is far smoother than regular mail, and actually really nice to flow over your skin.

Of course because the links are so small it is only really available due to modern machinery. However dwarves are note master craftsmen, so they are able to make it.