The Armour Archive

Mac

Takeyama wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 10:47 am I found this quite interesting, and was curious about everyone's thoughts on Ilya's interpretation of armor aesthetics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l1jpFjXv4I&t=1922s

Let's start by hearing your thoughts.

Mac

Mac

A Roper Whitney punch is a really good investment. The knock-offs do not last as long. Drilling is slower and inherently more dangerous. A knee lame spinning around on a drill is no joke. Sure, you will "always secure the work".... but realistically, you won't. Even when the work is secured so it wi...

Mac

Over the years we have talked about how sometimes mail voiders at the knee and elbow may have been attached to the plates rather than sewn to the doublet and hose. Mail fringes on 15th century Italian armour are some good examples. Could your old way be related to that? They would have been used to...

Mac

How did you deal with the spreading while forming the roll? My attempts to keep that under control seem to be the root of this being harder for me that it really should be. I've rolled stuff before without much fuss, however this, where it is almost all roll, is fighting me like hell. To some exten...

Mac

Doing detailed pattern seems mostly counterintuitive to me. Ive made one gorget, started with top lames. I took two almost straight strips, bend them, did a roll and then I did hinges and all the cutting. It went without fuss and its OK as far as I can tell. I have always used starting pieces which...

Mac

One of the issues I had with Mk II was the metal wanted curl in the center and flair on the sides. Some of this, I am sure, is due to my inexperience and technique. That said, it seems like I am stretching things too far no matter what. The ends of a hem of any sort always want to behave badly. The...

Mac

It it best to form those pieces without any of the hinge or overlap detail, and then cut away what you need to after they are hemmed and curved into shape. I would also recommend making them a bit longer then you think you need. The hem at the ends of the plates never goes as well as the rest, and i...

Mac

I think I would make the tail of one piece. I've shown it attached in back just under the point where the back of the skull is more or less straight. This put more of the burden on templating and less on subsequent shaping. Alternatively, the tail seam could be made lower. That would divide the back...

Mac

Hi Mac: Wonderful work. Thank you! Should not the codpiece have side flanges and articulated plates that slide in behind the tops of the leg harness. I just cringe at the thought of a sharp point glancing in down there and getting around the codpiece. Ilkka It all depends on what you mean by "shoul...

Mac

I've been a bit quiet while wrestling with this project, but I hope to bring it up to date here. Building the new butt plates over the 3D form worked well, and I think I have a thing which will work. In order to allow the front and back parts to be hinged together at the hip, I needed to mount the i...

Mac

I've cut some lines with files. It works OK on curved surfaces like helmets, but not on flattish things like knee and elbow wings. A triangular file seems best suited to the work. That same range of curved surfaces can be lined with a hack saw as well. You will want a fine tooth blade with the waves...

Mac

I've sketched some lines on that leg from Curtatone di Mantova. The profiles that are slightly concave are in blue. The profiles that are slightly convex are in red. The lines that are fundamentally straight are in black. These knees are just about as "curvy" as they come. Most are somewhat straight...

Mac

Hello guys, I'm back at knees. It has been established that a leg is not straight, and leg armor needs to follow that curve. It's true. Legs are not straight. If the armor is to fit closely, it must follow the shape of the leg through the knee joint. I have been looking at originals for hours. More...

Mac

Whatever you did, the pics are working now!

Great project!

Mac

Mac

Well, after some years I've decided to resurrect this thread. For some reason, the images are not showing up :cry: When I copy the image URL and try to go there, I get an image-shaped gray rectangle with a barred circle in it. I wonder if your security or sharing settings need to be changed. Failin...

Mac

I don't have a lot to show for the last week, but I am slowly making progress. Having reshapesd the butt several times, I finally started drawing some lines on it to represent the lames. I wish I had not had to use any bondo at all, but I fell short in my guesses about the shapes of the infill piece...

Mac

Having more or less shaped up the infill in the buck/form, I spent some time trying to compare what I had to the images. Here, I'm sitting so that the armor can be view along the same line as one of the photographs. I'm comparing it to the photo on my tablet. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ABL...

Mac

Otto von Teich wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2024 10:58 am This is an amazing feat of engineering! And beauty. I'm...amazed, as usual.

Thank you! It's only amazing if I get it to work...

Mac

Mac

These are the types of projects that i absolutely love. Been keeping my eyes on it like a hawk. Keep up the amazing work Mac. Thank you! Do you mind showing a picture of the inside? Last we saw of the butt was the cardboard cutouts (with some black magic sliding rivets that i dont quite understand)...

Mac

I made what appeared to be good progress on the butt plates over the last two weeks, but it turned out to be illusory. The whole assembly will be replaced in the next week or so to correct some problems Here is a list of the things I hope to address... --I failed to start curving back in soon enough...

Mac

It's good to see this beginning! I recommend closing that seam in the middle of the facial and welding it up, even if you plan to cut it away later. A few blows with a cross peen at red heat will close it enough to weld. Once welded, it will serve as insurance against the sort of seam failure that b...

Mac

Hey folks. I found this image 3f28a1d1-bf05-43fd-9b3c-34609127e264.jpg - a bro brandishing his gothic pauldrons. Looks great at first, but I wonder: Is this what they are supposed to look like? The first 2 lames by the neck are entirely folded under with quite some gap and the spaulder lames look s...

Mac

I wonder if there is a way to do this with a more tractable material than spray foam. Plaster might be easier to control, but it's heavy. Perhaps one could make up much of the volume with something light and empty and apply plaster over that. I saw something, somewhere, at some point (yeah, really ...

Mac

I'd be a bit surprised if the hooks on that liner were original. Not because hooks like that didn't exist. They certainly did. But, because they don't seem like a very reliable way to hold the lining in. They will easily come unhooked if they are given any slack. That's OK for a helmet that is sitti...

Mac

Question 1: Order of operations for top ring construction It seems that the consensus here is first roll the edge of the flat plate, then curve it to shape; which makes a lot of sense for the reasons everyone illustrated in Kristoff's burgonet thread and seem to have turned out quite well in the pi...

Mac

] So, my working theory is hidden rivets holding a strap in front, it crosses over the head diagonally, and gets laced in the rear. That's how things seem to work in the examples where we can see the inside of the helmet and extant straps in place. These holes, however, being so up near the visor p...

Mac

This is certainly a radical approach! It looks like it going well. I wonder if there is a way to do this with a more tractable material than spray foam. Plaster might be easier to control, but it's heavy. Perhaps one could make up much of the volume with something light and empty and apply plaster o...

Mac

The thing in the sculpture of the martyrdom of St Andrew is a civilian garment. What may appear as gauntlets are those flared cuffs that we see sometimes in the 1370s or '80s.

Mac

Mac

Yes, the doublet. You see many modern studded doublet/gambesons like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/386053289397 That's why I'm curious as to whether the studs were likely to be cloth or metal. To me, the most likely thing is for them to be made like buttons. That's probably a fabric covered constr...

Mac

https://www.flickr.com/photos/roelipilami/50521611317/in/album-721 I guess there’s no way to tell from a sculpture but which is more likely? I can’t find anything from the period to compare it to. Do you mean the fellow on the right? This does not look like armor, but rather a padded/quilted civili...

Mac

First of all, this is an ambitious first project. Armor for the lower legs is always difficult. Making pieces of steel fit together is difficult. Making pieces of lower leg armor fit together is more difficult that the sum of the difficulties. It's been decades since I made any suneate, but I rememb...

Mac

In attempting to illustrate what I am seeing, I just found another mistake in the drawing I've been working on for the past two days. :oops: If I ever find the photographer who shot the newer pictures for The Met, I am going to show him something else he can do with whatever goofy fisheye lens he s...

Mac

So, my new mode of thinking is taller rather than shorter on the gorget. Here is my basic reasoning. I'm pretty sure you want to keep that gorget below the helmet everywhere but directly in front. 2. I can get 6 1/4", no problem, monkeying around with the slope of the top edge in profile, which is ...

Mac

I am a moron. I now have a pile of shame drawings. And Mac is a witch for seeing all of this instantly. And I am twice as dumb since Mac pointed all this out and my troglodyte brain kept thinking I'd fixed it :D Ah well. It's a heck of a lot better than realizing this after I'd cut and shaped a bun...

Mac

Wow, I'm very curious about the intrusion of the voider lames into the back of the knee. It seems a bit limiting from the mock up despite all your efforts to optimize the variables. -Adair You are quite right to be concerned. I've just come to a better understanding of the problem, and there will b...

Re: What are your thoughts on this (Aesthetics of Arms and Armor)

Re: What do you use to punch holes in your plates?

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"

Re: Need Help: 16th Century Gorget Top Ring

Re: Need Help: 16th Century Gorget Top Ring

Re: Need Help: 16th Century Gorget Top Ring

Re: Need Help: 16th Century Gorget Top Ring

Re: Help Needed: Coventry Sallet - Can/House Construction

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"

Re: Maximillian Fluting by Hammered Tooling

Re: Angle through Knee Articulation

Re: Angle through Knee Articulation

Re: Experimental helmet forging

Re: Experimental helmet forging

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"

Re: Burgonet build (welded, shaping coming up)

Re: Björns Junkjard

Re: Burgonet build (can construction patterning in progress)

Re: Help Needed: Close Burgonet- Can/ House Construction

Re: Help Needed: Close Burgonet- Can/ House Construction

Re: Help Needed: Close Burgonet- Can/ House Construction

Re: Burgonet build (can construction patterning in progress)

Re: Cloth or Metal Studs?

Re: Cloth or Metal Studs?

Re: Cloth or Metal Studs?

Re: help on tsubo suneate

Re: Help Needed: Close Burgonet- Can/ House Construction

Re: Help Needed: Close Burgonet- Can/ House Construction

Re: Help Needed: Close Burgonet- Can/ House Construction

Re: The "Nurenberg butt armor"