Oh, I think it will turn out great.  It looks good as is.  I'm just interested in this as a general mesh building problem.

I looked at the Blender solutions for this type of problem, just because I was curious.  I thought I'd pass along what I found in case you were interested in the methodologies for other projects. 

The most interesting by far was using particles for chain mail.  You make the particle mesh the 2 or more rings you need to for your chosen interlocking pattern to work (there's lots of different chain mail patterns), and make sure the emitter emits one particle per vertex and has as regular a topology as you can make.  It's not absolutely perfect, but it works most of the time.  The benefit is being able to clothify the emitter and have the chain mail automatically follow the cloth.  I've seen people sim that sort of mesh with rigid bodies, and it was generally more involved.

The second was pretty simple, but I think it works the opposite of what you did in the first one (though I'm not sure).  You make the flat mesh shape first, then you bend it.  That was naturally the way I would have done it, so I thought maybe you had avoided it because it breaks.  But seeing it in action, it seems to work OK.