The Armour Archive

Sean M

I'm currently using upholstery tacks with the center punched out, but I'll be doing a cloth covering on my next armor and I don't want them to leave rust stains, as they are just plated steel. If you can't find what you want, putting leather washers between the heads and the cover and tinning the n...

Sean M

Lionel Casson, "Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World" (the volume with all the technical details) and "The Ancient Mariners" (the 'chatty'/vacation reading version). There have been archaeological finds and reconstructions since then, but if you just want to read one book on Egyptian, Greek, an...

Sean M

The images are showing up for everybody.... yes? I can see them when I load the Archive in a sandboxed browser without some of my usual anti-tracking software (I am shocked, shocked that Google would redesign something in a way which lets them track people better!) I think we would all rather you s...

Sean M

The Post-Pennsic torpor was significantly prolonged this year by yet another injury. I must have pulled something in my neck while doing the unaccustomed heavy work of disassembling Oakewood Hall this year. By the time I got everything unpacked at home I had pain from the middle of my back all the ...

Sean M

In the period I study, I think that the main difference was the choice of materials and layers. They sure do not often use different language for everyday pourponts and doublets and arming pourponts and doublets. But you can look at the evidence for yourself. Someone I respect says that a very tight...

Sean M

No, no patterns, just "here is what we know about what the clothes under armour were like." It sounded like you were worried about basing the pattern on a civilian doublet. I went through all those threads and pulled whatever seemed useful into the first two posts. I can't give advice on late 15th c...

Sean M

Aside from the Arming Garments II thread (which goes up to about 1450) the biggest thing I would say is that any reasonable pattern can work as long as you take it as a starting point. No pattern based on a single measurement will work on all bodies... but it lets you cut a toille, which you can pul...

Sean M

I did not see any copies of any serious books on armour when I was in Mantova in 2014. They just had some postcards, and some of the general bookstores had the Italian translation of Mann's book. It seems useful, but its not a gigantic tome. I own several books which should be legendary which nobody...

Sean M

There is one of these in Graz published in the exhibition catalogue Imperial Austria . They think that they were worn with elbow gauntlets and mail sleeves, and the staff at the Johanneum know their stuff. That catalogue is not expensive and has pretty good photos. https://bookandsword.files.wordpre...

Sean M

And on that note, here is the Korazin of Jacob vom Embs which is now in the KHM Wien but too badly decayed to display. It has an arrest, and two big plates in the breast, and a velvet cover ... but that does not mean it was used for jousting with the heavy lance, or meets any modern definition of co...

Sean M

The great Boucicault, who later became Marshall of FRANCE, suffered a lamentable defeat at the hands of the pagan TURKS. And what is even more plentiful in a Turkish camp than a French camp? Carpets! Not many years later the Turks suffered a piteous overthrow at the hands of the lame Timur the king ...

Sean M

Yes, and that is why the modern use of "corrazina" needs to be nipped in the bud! Almost every month there is an argument between someone whose archetype of a "corrazina" has to open up the front, and someone whose model just has to be globulose-breasted, both of whom think that their meaning is so ...

Sean M

You are welcome, Kel and Randall! Once I have published the academic version, and had the editors explain to me all the things I have wrong, I might do a Kickstarter to publish simple English translations of some sources. There is stuff out there which a decent number of armour people would be inter...

Sean M

Well what we call armour and period nomenclature aside - manuscript miniatures shows a lot of different brigs and corrazina pictures that look very similar. Many of what they have tagged as a "brigandine" look to be a "corrazina" and a couple of the drawings labelled as "brigandine" look more like ...

Sean M

Thank you very much for this!!!!! I knew I had seen extant pieces with a lance rest (and not just holes for one) - I was arguing with someone about my wanting a corrazina for jousting. They said they were never made for mounted combat - just foot soldiers. I knew I had seen them before (and not jus...

Sean M

Until that Tudor Tailor book comes out, there is all the information you need except for how to find, cut, and sew the soft parts in Ian Eaves' article in JotArms and Armour Society and Thea Gabra-Sanders, “Part of a 16th Century Quilted Jack of Plate Found at Craigievar Castle, Aberdeenshire,” Jour...

Sean M

I always found that WMA communities were friendlier in person than online. (And its way better to decide "do I trust these folks enough to play with them?" by sitting in on a practice than reading a blog or watching a YouTube video).

Sean M

Any ideas for a top layer? I was thinking I could get away with cotton, since I'm trying to save some money, but I'm open to suggestions. I can think of sources for fustians (cloths containing cotton, often with a piled or brushed finish like velveteen or flannelette), silks, hemp, and leather bein...

Sean M

Just picked up Herbert Schmidt's Sword Fighting Volume 2: an Introduction to the Single Handed Sword and Buckler, 2015, Dave Johnston trans. Takes I.33 and reproduces its methods and tactics. Schmidt's Vol. 1 covers longsword. Any comments here? How about SwordForum? By 2012 the only active forum f...

Sean M

I feel frustrated and disempowered. The part that pisses me off is that they have taken away something that I understood and could work with, and replaced it with something confusing and foreign. All this while smiling and saying how much better it will be. Mac You've just described Google's entire...

Sean M

I think that one of the German Fechtbücher with few or no words shows visors with many small round holes but no wide slits.

Sean M

David Sim and Jaime Kaminski, Roman Imperial Armour: The production of early imperial military armour (2012) http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/roman-imperial-armour.html I think that the people on this forum interested in 'how they did it back in the day' will enjoy this book even if the Roman period ...

Sean M

These seem like they might be a good choice for people who want something sturdy to sit on while they wait for their turn at a deed of arms. They are shamelessly modern compared to a simple X-frame chair with a cloth or leather seat though ... Tut had some of those. ... If built right, the X chairs...

Sean M

These seem like they might be a good choice for people who want something sturdy to sit on while they wait for their turn at a deed of arms. They are shamelessly modern compared to a simple X-frame chair with a cloth or leather seat though ... Tut had some of those. Schloss Ambras has a lower-tech s...

Sean M

sadly the arangement on herman historica ist not correct. It was aranged by the finder wo believed to have found a breastplate. Yes, I know. But they provide detailed closeup photos of most of the pieces, and suggestions of the current thickness, which is all the information which anyone except the...

Sean M

You can find detailed photos of the pair of plates from Burg Hirschstein at http://www.hermann-historica-archiv.de/ under no. 52, alte waffen, lot no. 3641. I hope that every craftsman on this forum understands why the team in Ingolstadt don't want to release their work online until they are satisfi...

Sean M

Jessica Findley has been experimenting with different ways to process raw cotton before stuffing it into a jack; there are videos on the Fühlen Designs FB page. Cotton batting is really not what you want. The idea is to have loose fibers with loft, not a compressed blanket. THIS. Although the red ga...

Sean M

They also have the Resurrection painting with the "herringbone" visor, a glove said to have been donated to a town by Kaiser Karl IV. in 1354, a Mary Rose bow and arrow, and the late 15th century Flemish Froissart with all the the colourful armour in the BNF (Français 2643) ... just saying!

Sean M

The last image of an infantry armour with big plates in the breast and lames in the skirt in MMM seems to come from Valencia around 1440 . So I would look at images of infantry armour in Spain and Italy in the late 14th and early 15th century and think about the different solutions that I saw and ho...

Sean M

Another possibility would be an aventail of lames which compress and expand vertically like a fauld of lames. Those show up in many paintings and sculptures, and maybe in documents, I can't be bothered to check my notes.

Sean M

And the French king here seems to have covered greaves as well. http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=61796 I think that comes from BNF Français 2813 which I was looking at recently. Most of the pictures of the King of France in that MS show the greaves and cuisses steel-colou...

Sean M

This is the time of year when a lot of Archivers take long drives and unplug from the Internet. If the news and talk radio is putting you down, you can read about one of the common mistakes making a project with symetrical pieces for the left and pieces for the right here . I have worn the corrected...

Sean M

What do you think of the red leg armor on the figure in the front left? It looks like patterned fabric perhaps. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/saint-vincent-at-the-stake/cwHvAy1WzqQQ2Q?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.23648735411109406%2C%22y%22%3A0.6298930860445056%2C%22z%22%3A9.999991...

Sean M

In my research into Lamellar armor, I've run across how different areas had their own designs for the lamellar plates. I know part of it was cultural difference, but I'm wondering if there is any real performance difference to how the armor functions? Lamellar can be as flexible as fine mail or as ...

Sean M

It would be a fun project to track down documents to show how those harnesses which seem to have a lot of covered parts in manuscripts from the middle of the 15th century were made. Images from them show up in all the books on the HYW or the Wars of the Roses. The sources are in easy languages: Fren...

Re: Looking for decorative rivets/washers

Re: Square Rigged Boats/Small Ships

Re: Dusting off the cobwebs

Re: Dusting off the cobwebs

Re: Need an arming doublet pattern

Re: Need an arming doublet pattern

Re: Need an arming doublet pattern

Re: Legendary book is now mine!

Re: Long Spaulders and Anime Armour

Re: A corrazina question

Re: PSA: Do you have your arming carpet?

Re: A corrazina question

Re: A corrazina question

Re: A corrazina question

Re: A corrazina question

Re: Border Reiver Gambeson?

Re: Book Studying upon Tower MS I.33

Re: Another Corazzina Thread!

Re: Book Studying upon Tower MS I.33

Re: Dusting off the cobwebs

Re: Is this monstrosity for real?

Sim and Kaminski, Roman Imperial Armour (2012)

Re: Mac's new fauldstool

Re: Mac's new fauldstool

Re: Hard one... Coat of Plates 1360 Germany

Re: Hard one... Coat of Plates 1360 Germany

Re: Questions about gambeson stitching

Re: Charles de Blois garment on the road in Europe this summ

Re: Corrazinas and Brigandines

Re: Name for this style of helm please?

Re: Brigandine legs?

Re: A linen armouring project

Re: Brigandine legs?

Re: Do different styles of Lamellar plates behave differentl

Re: Brigandine legs?