The Armour Archive

Sean M

A middle way is a footnotes along the lines of "items NN and NN in the FamousMuseum have been identified as ... by Dr. ... (cite). However this interpretation can be questioned because ... reasons .... Therefore they are not included in this study."

Sean M

I am teaching myself tailoring as I go, with advice from Mac and from books ... but you might want to try cutting the lining and interlining of the upper sleeve more 'natural arm shaped' and letting just the black cotton velvet mushroom out. I did find a Burgundian pourpoint "for arming above" lined...

Sean M

I am glad that you are continuing this project!

Sean M

Yes, it is a very nice farsetto! And that style might have had some raw cotton in the shoulders ... the only way to know is to spend a lot of time reading Italian documents from the middle of the 15th century.

Sean M

My first arming doublet has between 1 and 4 layers of cotton batting and 3 layers of linen or linen-cotton and weighs around 1300 g. I put the most cotton in the shoulders and breast and the least in the lower sleeves. I had no problems training in it in the July sun in Bavaria, but I don't fight al...

Sean M

Sean, are you maybe quoting from this thread? http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=181664 I haven't read the actual book but it seems more likely for me that that is an ordinary (civilian) doublet and not an arming one, while the aketons mentioned are arming garments. One pou...

Sean M

Then concerning the form and fashion of their doub∣lets, I would that they should be of a conuenient heigth in the Collers, aswell to defend their necks from cold in win∣ter, as from heate in Summer. Then I woulde that they should be narrow in the shoulders, & so smal in the sleeues, and with so li...

Sean M

Unfortunately the intersection between "people who buy and use good replica armour" and "people who work hard to recreate a style of clothing which is completely lost and requires fitting in person and dozens of hours of hand-work" is pretty small. It can seen bigger if you are in the right subcultu...

Sean M

It could also be a typo. The used book market online is pretty ruthless, and all it takes is a clerk misplacing a decimal point to turn $50.00 into $5000.

Sean M

Your focus is a century later than mine, but when I look at the sources in Late Fourteenth Century Arming Garments II: The Upper Body , it seems like they managed to fit those puffy sleeves inside their sleeves of mail and their bracers. There are some posts which discuss the doublet of Pandolfo III...

Sean M

Slit the seam allowance at the neck and re-sewed it down and made a plan of attack for the buttons in the sleeves. I am planning to core them with 6mm wooden beads or maybe a lump of cotton quilt batting ... I think that self-stuffing cloth buttons will not provide enough friction, and that the line...

Sean M

Also, here are some nonviolent things you can do (and I think we agree that sharing secrets can be violent): - Focus on making your work and the sources which you have rights to available. If others chose not to be so open, that is up to them. - Follow the path of least resistance. If the Museum of ...

Sean M

"Ask first" is always a good policy. Suggesting that someone send Dr. Z page 3 of their draft on flibbertigibets and ask if he has any comments is much safer than telling them that Dr. Z has a rare violet flibbertigibet. Analog is safer than digital. So if you tell someone face-to-face about somethi...

Sean M

Wade, do you own any armor that could be considered cheap? Yes. I expect all of the bits that live in the shed in more or less incomplete states aren't really worth anything. They rust away nicely. I also have all of the stuff that lives under the guest bed. Some of it is OK-ish, but not used for a...

Sean M

If you want to understand how things like that can happen a good post is "Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 book about flies" http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358

Sean M

I could just say "screw it," fold and pin the hems, and run a line of machine stitching in white thread along them ... but that is obvious if anyone looks. What other solutions do people use? We all draw our "authenticity lines" in different places. For my part, I'd rather just run a sewing machine...

Sean M

As I make up my 14th century 'boxer short' breeches, inspired by some art and Mac's pattern, .... Hold the presses, Sean! I have made some changes in the "boxer" pattern since the patterns you probably have. The most important modification was to make the crotch much wider. This dramatically increa...

Sean M

https://bookandsword.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/p1000236_left_sleeve_assembled.jpg??w=800&h=600 The left sleeve is fully assembled. I decided to give it an intermediate number of buttons (up to the join between the upper and lower arm, rather than 3/4 of the way down the lower arm or half way up t...

Sean M

As I make up my 14th century 'boxer short' breeches, inspired by some art and Mac's pattern, I have been thinking about how I would go about speeding up the process with a machine. Breeches are not visible from the outside, so there are other things which would be better uses of my hand-sewing time....

Sean M

Hm... cutwork in the shoe to allow ventilation? Or maybe a fabric-covered shoe with breathable vents hidden by the outer layer? Openwork is surprisingly common on soldiers' shoes in German art. But just the fact that 1360s-style shoes are one layer of medium-weight leather in the uppers, without th...

Sean M

My shoes by Dru work fine for fencing on wet grass in half armour http://65.110.66.9/medievalshoes.com/ They work in a different way that modern waterproof shoes with thick textured soles work though ...

Sean M

There are also jobs at the potash mines in Saskatchewan ... I knew someone who worked 10 days on, 4 off as a medic there.

Have you tried writing to the local Canadian embassy?

Sean M

Also, someone who you might want to read about is Dan D'Silva. He's been in a difficult situation for a while now (graduated then lost his job as an editor and has not much money) and blogs about how he makes room in his life to reconstruct things at https://xerxesmillion.blogspot.co.at/

Sean M

Truth is...i can´t know. I haven´t got any place to work on wood or steel, even on more complex cloth patterns since we lost our house 6 or 7 years ago... Well, that is why Vater Staat created Volkshochschulen (or whatever the German equivalent is called), and Mutti EU is funding a lot of makerspac...

Sean M

So over on myArmoury, Peter Messent has heard of "strickles - a shaped wooden stick (the strickle) coated with tallow and sand. I've mostly heard of it used for sharpening scythes." Does that ring a bell with any of you? I am a city kid and did woodworking not metal shop in high school. It seems lik...

Sean M

Some Montefortino helmets had it around the 3rd/2nd century BCE, can't think of any 14th century examples.

Sean M

The re-drawn drawing above reminds me of those detachable nasals from the middle of the 14th century. Here is British Library, Cotton MS Nero D I so people who are interested can look for that drawing themselves. I don't have time, sorry! https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_nero_...

Sean M

In Glasglow the Burrell is shut down for maintenance but the Kelvingrove is still open and supposed to be pretty accessible. I never looked at apartments or bought groceries when I was there, but its also a post-industrial city. But how to get out of Germany for a couple of years is a bit of a diffe...

Sean M

Canada seems to allow for skilled people, but I don't know how you get that. There is a complicated points system http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/index.asp In Calgary I knew a house painter from Ireland (maybe he was under the Temporary Foreign Worker program which chains you to an employer), and a po...

Sean M

I hoped to have time now for pursuing my one great interest, armouring. But it turns out i´ll never, really never have enough time to spend on what i want to do while teaching. Thus I find it harder every day to keep up working. It feels like wasting my time, and after these years of study, there i...

Sean M

Mac wrote:Pennsic was good this year. The weather was very clement, and that promoted shopping.

Mac

Maybe all of the Pennsylvania thunderstorms are taking a vacation in Tirol this August? That would explain the weather here, and it worked for the PM of Great Britain ...

Sean M

Cut back one lower sleeve, basted the folded seam down, and tried it on; attached one lower sleeve lining to the upper sleeve lining with backstitch and sewed the long seam of the sleeve lining with running stitch; started to attach the other lower sleeve lining to the upper sleeve lining.

Sean M

Thanks for the thoughts Antipodes! I will look into crowdfunding and services like lulu when I am done my degree ... it would be nice to be able to sit down and translate some of the Paris armourers' rule, or that contract from Florence from 1369. And a couple of people on the Archive will get PDFs ...

Sean M

Also, one story ... I would like to finish my not-so-secret project on armour and submit it to an open-access journal, but the problem is that the time I spend writing it is time I don't spend writing things which pay in jobs or cash. So it moves very slowly. I could tell my landlord or my grocery s...

Sean M

Some of those books like the one on Rhodes are out of print, secondhand ones are hard to get at any price and don't remain available for very long. That being said these pirate copies have peaked my interest enough to make me want to buy new originals copies (or second hand if necessary). Its alway...

Re: Scratching an itch....

Re: Fitting the arm harness to a farsetto

Re: Armour development in XIVth century Europe.

Re: Fitting the arm harness to a farsetto

Re: Fitting the arm harness to a farsetto

Re: Fitting the arm harness to a farsetto

Re: Fitting the arm harness to a farsetto

Re: Fitting the arm harness to a farsetto

Re: I know "Medieval Armour from Rhodes" is scarce but...

Re: Fitting the arm harness to a farsetto

Re: A doublet of white linen

Re: Lock up the data

Re: Lock up the data

Re: How to prevent rust for display armor left outside?

Re: I know "Medieval Armour from Rhodes" is scarce but...

Re: Cheats for Hemming

Re: Cheats for Hemming

Re: A doublet of white linen

Cheats for Hemming

Re: ISO fighting turnshoe recommendations

Re: ISO fighting turnshoe recommendations

Re: breaking free...but how?

Re: breaking free...but how?

Re: breaking free...but how?

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Roping on armour

Re: visor without a helmet?

Re: breaking free...but how?

Re: breaking free...but how?

Re: breaking free...but how?

Re: Dusting off the cobwebs

Re: A doublet of white linen

Re: Some books online on medieval armor

Re: Some books online on medieval armor

Re: Some books online on medieval armor