The Armour Archive

John Vernier

I thought it might be useful to post a comparison of the Roper Whitney Nr.5 Jr. punch with their No. XX. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/70/b7/f8/70b7f8d88e3387761fa78f53f42c8f97.jpg The XX has a much larger throat, reaching up to 85mm deep, which makes it more versatile than the Nr. 5, but that said the ...

John Vernier

Depending on the type of tree, the stump wood will toughen up some as the wood dries. Freshly cut wood is often quite soft but as the sap cures it will harden. This can take quite a long time, however. You can get away with using a fairly soft wood for a dishing form, bear in mind that your dish doe...

John Vernier

I've never thought of asking ChatGPT for historical literature guidance. I may have to try that occasionally and see if it improves. The Wikipedia entry on Guiron Le Courtois is a bit more specific, and has some bibliography. But what I am hoping for is a summary of the different episodes of the rom...

John Vernier

Guiron le Courtois is an Arthurian romance, and so we need to beware of the tale's fantastical elements, probably in the text as well as the pictures, just as with any modern fantasy. The trope of cleaving someone's helm in half turns up fairly often in medieval romances, and I think it became a co...

John Vernier

That seems like a really promising method for modelling and patterning. I take it you made a half helmet? Like a half-hull ship model? I would be tempted to try this, if I can get over my aversion to having foam shavings getting everywhere all over the shop and being tracked into the house, etc.

John Vernier

Try this one too, "An old project returns" concerning liner research for a sallet for Toby Capwell. I think this is his most recent thread about helmet liner construction.
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... s#p2826278

John Vernier

One way to look at it is that jacks and brigandines are made by different craft processes, and therefore were the provinces of different sets of craftsmen. Brigandines require riveting (or at least clenching nails), and are generally made of plates cut and fitted to shape for different areas of the ...

John Vernier

I don't mind, although there are many who can speak more knowledgeably of her work than I can.

John Vernier

I think Sally Pointer is a top expert, perhaps the top expert, on early knitting and many related textile techniques from neolithic Britain up to the Tudor period. I haven't corresponded with her other than ordering a cap from her, but I know she publishes patterns and has some YouTube content. I su...

John Vernier

What a fantastic conclusion to this project! I hope you or Tom will post a video of the gauntlet in motion. If ever there was an object designed to catch your eye with movement... It's only a pity there's so little traffic on this site these days. I see there are eyes on your photo over on FB. Thank...

John Vernier

I'm pretty sure this is a Stephen Bader Co. Space Saver belt grinder. I know they had an active website just a couple of years ago, but I can't find it now so I wonder if they are out of business. These are very large machines, taking belts on the order of 140" long, although with a lot of room for ...

John Vernier

I'm having trouble finding a better image of the jousting helmet in the Goldene Rossl , the ornamental sculpture which was given to Charles VI of France by his wife Isabeau of Bavaria as a new years gift in 1404/5. I think Blair has a drawing of it. It's a precise little bit of goldsmith's work, and...

John Vernier

Apologies for only being able to address your question indirectly, but as traffic is so light here I figured I might as well say something. First of all, there's a touring exhibit of armour from the Stibbert Museum right now at the Frist Museum in Nashville TN. I don't know if it's the same exhibit ...

John Vernier

I believe they are generally exactly the shape you see, but with an extra reinforcing layer in the area most vulnerable to lance strikes, due to the thinness of the metal. Here are a couple of pictures of the Right arm of suit B2 at Mantua, from Boccia's book. It appears that the reinforce overlaps ...

John Vernier

These are all new to me as well, but I have come across partlet as an item of womens' dress in the 16th century. I could see how a garment of this basic form might have some use for adjusting the fit of a difficult harness. The "boulster" about the middle also seems to be about improving the fit of ...

John Vernier

Interesting that the reference to 'paste' turns out to be an error. It's still a reasonably plausible method, though hide glue would work as well. Traditional makers of handcrafted shoes, even in modern times, use a wheat paste to attach leather shoe parts like toe puffs and heel counters to the upp...

John Vernier

This tool came up in a fb group I am a member of. Perhaps it is an decendant to the sticks. In swedish it is called a "Pansarfil". It latest use is filing car panels and such. IMG_20170501_122125.jpg Does Pansarfil translate to "armor-file?" It seems like just the right tool for the job. https://ww...

John Vernier

I lived in Los Angeles for 10 years and spent a lot of time in museums, and I have nothing to report. I'm pretty sure there's nothing even at Hearst castle up the coast. The remnants of William Randolph Hearst's armor collection became the core of the collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts in t...

John Vernier

It's in the Germanisches National Museum, Nuremburg. They are estimating the date as 1420s-30s, and I think the long skirt bears that out. https://objektkatalog.gnm.de/wisski/navigate/55945/view Roel Renmans has more photos in his Flickr stream here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/roelipilami/1468682...

John Vernier

I know that art historians sometimes use the term distemper to distinguish glue-based painting from egg tempera. It is certainly confusing terminology! They are also known as Tüchlein paintings. There are some surviving 15th-16-th century Netherlandish distemper paintings on canvas, and a few Italia...

John Vernier

I realize I have a small copper alloy mount with a bagel washer in my collection. this is pretty small, 14mm wide, with the washer just 4.5mm. I might need to play around with making these myself sometime. I don't draw any definite conclusions from looking at this one, but note that it is rather irr...

John Vernier

If you want the deepest dive into "cordwainer's code" out there you should look at this massive endless thread on the traditional shoemakers' forum The Crispin Colloquy : http://www.thehcc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1028 That site is the best repository of hand shoemaking information but it's bi...

John Vernier

Hi Mac, when you say "homogenized" with 180 grit on a cotton buff, are you speaking of a greaseless compound like Formax Satin-Glo or do you mean a set-up wheel preparation or something else? I'm quite interested in the finishing methods you have been trying out, and unless I'm misreading it seems t...

John Vernier

I saw Peter Galbert, the Windsor chair maker, give a presentation once and he remarked that "projects turn to stone after a month." That sounds about right to me. I currently have a basement full of stones, and I'm hoping to chip away at some of them, but I find it's all too easy to let guilt and in...

John Vernier

Thanks for doing this, Sean, this will be a valuable resource!

John Vernier

Yes, a private board on Pinterest costs nothing. It's just a box you check when you are setting the board up, and you can change a board from private to public easily.

John Vernier

Important to note that a major difference between your two fencing manual images is that the one you have labeled "ideal" is probably two or three decades later than that labeled "reality." The join between hosen and doublet does rise in the 15th century (It's not the waistline, but it does vary wit...

John Vernier

I shouldn't jump at etymological fancies so quickly, interesting as they can be. The first guess is often wrong. I have my dad's old Petit Robert which is the French equivalent of the abridged OED, and it indicates that chape (no mention of chap ), though related to chapeau , goes way back and more ...

John Vernier

I've been perplexed by the "noyau" and"chap" terms but it just occurred to me while looking at your pictures that it might be by analogy with an acorn and its tightly fitting cap. Maybe?

John Vernier

Seems rather steep to me. I haven't used a Vulcan anvil myself but I understand they aren't highly thought of. I think for well over $12 per pound you can buy the best even at today's prices. I admit I suffer a bit from that old timer disease where I bought my tools 30 years ago when nobody cared, a...

John Vernier

Are you tacking the seam before attempting to run a bead along the entire length? I will generally weld a spot every few inches along the seam to hold it together as the first step. The thinner the metal, and the flatter the metal, the more it seems to creep, and so the closer the tacks should be.

John Vernier

I just got one of these thermometers recently and I haven't mastered it at all, but the issue of emissivity settings has everything to do with the reflectivity of the item being measured. Default settings are usually for nonreflective objects, and if your thermometer can be adjusted it's when measur...

John Vernier

That looks very promising! Soot is a pretty delicate surface. I suppose ocher with an egg white binder will be more tenacious, although I'm curious to see what happens to the egg as the mold reaches high temperature.

John Vernier

You could upload your picture to Flickr or any other service for the purpose. I have a secret (i.e. non-public) Pinterest page which I have uploaded photos to for the purpose of posting them here. It is a lot more cumbersome than I would like, but it makes it unnecessary to resize images (Pinterest ...

John Vernier

My guess is that the wooden tangs caused the warp in your mold. The same force which caused the thin sides to break out around the tangs, whether the wood continued to swell or the plaster shrank around the wood, it probably forced the pieces to flex along their length. I vote for leaving flats in t...

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Re: Need help finding a link on here for helmet liners

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Re: Mac's blog

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Re: Mac's blog

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Re: A 16th century reinforce plate for the tilt

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Re: A 16th century reinforce plate for the tilt

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