From chain mail to Kaynemaile
The man responsible for the orcs’ aesthetic in The Lord Of The Rings, Kayne Horsham, has developed an award-winning architectural mesh that takes the chinks out of chain mail.
Kaynemaile is a polycarbonate mesh that is manufactured in Petone, using injection-moulding to make large sheets of interlocked rings.
Horsham, its creator, is the former artistic director for creatures, armour and weapons at Richard Taylor’s Weta Workshop.
During production of The Lord Of The Rings, one of Horsham’s first jobs was to equip the majority of costumes being worn by the film trilogy’s expansive cast with chain mail.
‘‘There were very few characters, other than the elves that didn’t have chain mail,’’ he explains.
After ordering handmade mail from India, Horsham tried his purchase on a tunic. The material was so heavy that he knew it would be a problem, as the actors would have to wear each garment for hours every day.
‘‘We got note that there was about to be a major upheaval in Gladiator, which they were filming at the time we were preparing for The Lord Of The Rings.
‘‘Russell Crowe rejected all the costumes with chain mail because of the way he said it impacted on his ability to perform. It was tiring and exhausting, and that was my view as well.’’
Thinking of lighter options, Horsham and his team began hand-assembling rings cut from plastic plumbing tubes, and then electroforming metal onto them.
The end result was a garment that mimicked the eye-catching and fluid movement of real chain mail – or as he explains it, the hardest aspect to replicate.
The labour-intensive process meant people who assembled the mail often damaged their fingertips. ‘‘I felt a little bit guilty and I thought I could make a machine that could develop it,’’ Horsham says.
Five years later, he began a business centred on a machine that created sheets of chains at the equivalent speed of 200 people hand-assembling the same material.
His design’s integrity came from eliminating one aspect of weakness in armour, its joins.
Without a chink, the material became three times stronger – giving it a significant technological edge. ‘‘It’s almost the opposite of everything else, and that’s inherent to the ring; the ring being the strongest form as far as engineering goes.’’
Kaynemaile has since been used worldwide for projects including a Westfield shopping centre on Australia’s Gold Coast, and hefty laser-projection screens at Saudi Arabia’s Medina Airport.
Wellington’s new Sofitel Hotel on Bolton St features the largest single piece of mesh ever created, draped over an exterior staircase.
His work can also be found at Victoria University in a 12-storey, 42-metre-wide protection barrier.
He says it appeals to Wellington architects as the continuous sheet can flex and move effectively between layers, making it more suited to quake-prone areas. It is also less corrosive and requires eight times less energy to repurpose than its steel rival.
Long term, he hopes his mesh will cater for wider applications, such as oil spill recovery, body armour, and shrapnel containment on explosive devices.