A heavy canvas roll, bound with leather straps and nearly as weighty as a mail shirt itself, holding an armorer’s hand tools: two pairs of mail pliers for opening and closing rings, a ring-closing form, a brace of steel dollies and stakes in graded curves for dressing plate, raising and planishing hammers, an armorer’s knife, several awls for pricking through leather and linen, a rivet set with drift and snap, tanned strap stock, spare buckles, a bundle of ring wire, and a tin of linseed oil and wax. A village armorer works from his own bench; this kit is what a retained armorer takes into the field with a retinue, and a fighting man who can afford to keep one does so without hesitation.
A suit of mail or plate is a machine of straps, rings, rivets, and lacing, and every week of use loosens, breaks, or rusts some part of it. An armorer with a proper kit can reclose a dozen burst rings in an hour, reset a sprung strap before it parts in combat, and planish out the dents of a day’s fighting by the evening fire. Without the kit — or without the supplies of rings, rivets, and strap stock that it steadily consumes — even the finest harness rots apart on its wearer over the course of a hard campaign.