The Armour Archive

AriAnson

This is another project that I have been posting about on the archive for 8 years . I wrote a first draft of documentation here . It is made from nickel silver, vegetable-tanned goat leather, and some cast silver-plated bronze belt mounts from Nord Emporium. http://i.imgur.com/4xgdMgp.png http://i.i...

AriAnson

I made another version of this a few months back. Kinda fun - I have now been discussing this project on this board for 8 years. This version is made from vegetable-tanned goat leather and copper wire that I forged to shape. I had to make matching front-and-back frame pieces, which was a challenge. ...

AriAnson

I don't get all that annoyed with people that do ahistorical things. What really annoys me are events that set things up to be ahistorical. Golf carts, man. They are loud, have bright headlights, and are EVERYWHERE at Estrella. At one point last year I could see 8 golf carts just from where I was st...

AriAnson

I put together some coherent documentation for this project:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WV9 ... sp=sharing

AriAnson

I can still see the cached images on Facebook: http://imgur.com/K4cHkhS

AriAnson

It seems like it is $300 for something that you could probably cut with tin snips.

AriAnson

A 12"x24" 18ga brass sheet is $49 at onlinemetals.com to give you a reference. The shipping on something like that is usually like $20-30 from them.

http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cf ... top_cat=79

AriAnson

http://www.currentmiddleages.org/tents/chair3vkbox.pdf

AriAnson

It doesn't matter if lamellar was better armor, cheaper, easier to make, or used fewer materials - people make inefficient choices all the time in the name of their cultural values and prejudices.

AriAnson

Subscribed!

AriAnson

Mine arrived, thanks!

AriAnson

I have some of the first banners that she did that are now about 7 years old. They have held up through Atenveldt sun and Estrella rain and still look like new. Windy Valley banners have always been awesome, but she has really stepped her game up to the next level. The newest banners feature really ...

AriAnson

It just amazed me because of how popular lamellar has become. The last big Atenveldt tournament I went to I counted - 14 out of the 22 fighters I could see had lamellar. I'm actually OK with people wearing it to fight - it looks good, looks like armor, and has a good historical basis. I would just r...

AriAnson

If we have hundreds of graves with well equipped warriors, why do we only have a total of three helmets that have been found? Honestly, our sample size if far, far too small to consider the absence of evidence evidence of absence. As an aside, could you point me at which pages of Carlisle's thesis ...

AriAnson

The frequently-seen manuscript images of the Varangian Guardsmen are from the Madrid_Skylitzes . It was produced in Sicily, not Constantinople. The original author wasn't born until after 1040 and the copy of it that we have is from the 12th century. It is a great contemporary source for what the Va...

AriAnson

One thing that I think a lot of people miss about burials is that the people were buried with objects that the living thought were valuable. There is some good reading about the subject of which valuable goods people were buried with and why in this thesis: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4083/1/2013carlisl...

AriAnson

I will take 2, 4, 6, and 9.

AriAnson

Serious armor porn.

AriAnson

If the helmet is actually crooked/lopsided you should probably be willing to take a refund or create a new helm that is up to higher standards and take back the old helm. It is unfortunate that he padded and painted it before noticing that it was crooked, but you should not have delivered a crooked ...

AriAnson

No buttons.

1) Only one of them was found with buttons
2) It doesn't feel like it needs buttons to hold it shut
3) I didn't have any appropriate buttons

#3 was the deciding factor

AriAnson

Adobe Acrobat is terrible and bloated. I would recommend using Foxit Reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/

AriAnson

My original plan was to make the bag specifically from the second image above, the one with three buttons. I had difficulty finding buttons that matched those closely in bronze or brass and the actual size of that purse is tiny...the "waist" of it is something like 2.5 inches. I wanted to be able to...

AriAnson

Some of the actual bits and drawings I based it off of:

AriAnson

The finished product: http://i.imgur.com/lgdZRvb.jpg I have been looking at this particular style of coin purse for a long time - I made an ugly "armor grade" version of it 6 years ago: http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=78955 Some fantastic discussion here: http://forums.armoura...

AriAnson

I did some looking for bone and horn-handled knives recently when I made a sheath for my seax . Here's my dump of images relating to knives from Birka: http://imgur.com/a/sNNj5 Most of those images are from Holger Arbman. Here is a link to the book on a page with some interesting bone/horn objects: ...

AriAnson

DONE The tip got a simple decoration of little punch decorations around the edges. I made a band to go around the open end of the sheath and decorated it with a corrugated pattern using a really big, dull chisel. I planned out where I wanted to put my rivets, then stitched down the welts in some ke...

AriAnson

Got new brass - cut the tip and the little corrugated piece: http://i.imgur.com/CeUVCa1.jpg Oiled the leather with neatsfoot oil. I think that cow spent all day scratching itself on barbed wire, or something, as a ton of range marks became visible once the piece was oiled: http://i.imgur.com/61RU5KJ...

AriAnson

Here's a huge image dump of pretty much every knife or sheath that I can find from Birka. There were a lot of knives at Birka and most of them fit a particular style. I keep staring at pictures and noticing things, like how the rings that the sheaths hang from are often cast but modelled look like ...

AriAnson

I am planning on putting a bit of leather along the seam to help with that problem.

As for the brass, I am not sure how I am going to treat it. Any suggestions for how to get the incisions to really pop out?

AriAnson

I'm using 22 gauge, anything relatively thin will work. I would use 20-26, depending on how heavy you want it to be and how much abuse it will suffer. You could use thicker, but it will require a lot more work to cut and decorate.

AriAnson

I wet-formed the leather around the knife and cut the handle-side strip: http://i.imgur.com/ZqGdR8j.jpg ...and cut the little "stairstep" geometric designs out like most of the example sheaths had: http://i.imgur.com/MXbDyNA.jpg I'm on pause waiting for more brass, now. The leather took some impress...

AriAnson

I am going for a typical version of those sheaths that will work for my knife. What I consider typical for the knives found at Birka: 1) Leather sheath body folded with the dull back of the knife resting on the fold of the leather. 2) A long decorated metal strip along the "sharp" end of the sheath ...

AriAnson

I bought a seax from Jaeger at Estrella this year and it has just been nakedly sitting on my desk while I figure out how I want to go about making a sheath for it. The seax is Saxon, and I debated making a Saxon-style sheath for it, but I am going to make a Norse-style sheath. I have always been ins...

AriAnson

Doesn't look sassy enough.

AriAnson

I think it boils down to "It doesn't look modern, so it looks medieval." It presents a more barbaric image that strays from present-day cultural standards.

Tarsoly

Re: Norse Coin Purse, take 2

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Re: Norse Coin Purse, take 2

Re: Helm on CL -- possible lost or stolen?

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Re: FS: Brass Sheet

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Re: Lamellar-vikings-normans real or invented for sca?

Re: academic.edu

Re: Shop purging : laser cut knife blanks

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Re: Lamellar-vikings-normans real or invented for sca?

Re: Lamellar-vikings-normans real or invented for sca?

Re: Lamellar-vikings-normans real or invented for sca?

Re: Lamellar-vikings-normans real or invented for sca?

Re: Shop purging: forged knife blanks and a couple sanding d

Re: PDH thesis armour production (photo download links added

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Re: Norse Coin Purse, take 2

Re: PDH thesis on tech of armour production 1350-1500 availa

Re: Norse Coin Purse, take 2

Re: Norse Coin Purse, take 2

Norse Coin Purse, take 2

Re: Bone handled viking era knives.

Re: Norse Knife Sheath - Research and WIP

Re: Norse Knife Sheath - Research and WIP

Re: Norse Knife Sheath - Research and WIP

Re: Norse Knife Sheath - Research and WIP

Re: Norse Knife Sheath - Research and WIP

Re: Norse Knife Sheath - Research and WIP

Re: Norse Knife Sheath - Research and WIP

Norse Knife Sheath - Research and WIP

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