LOTR Chainmail Production a Two-Year Odyssey

“There’s a lot of chainmail in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” Men’s Journal journalist Griff Griffin writes. “Think of the hundreds of soldiers who wear it into battle, from Orcs to Uruk-hai. You’d assume director Peter Jackson bought the chainmail in bulk from a Medieval Times or something. Nope – it was all handmade.”

“And as we see on [a] behind-the-scenes clip taken from the film’s DVD extras and posted to Twitter, two men did the whole thing,” Griffin writes. “They are Christopher Smith and Carl Payne, and it took them roughly two years.

“According to Smith, each suit is comprised of 13 thousand metal rings, which each have to be interlinked with pliers. With every suit representing three days of work, it caused the pair to developing thick calluses on their fingers. But there was an even more damaging psychological effect.”

Original article by Griff Griffin, Men’s Journal, August 3, 2023.