The Armour Archive

Thomas Powers

On costs: for much of our period armour was the mark of the rich; folks eating off of silver and gold plates might not complain if the cost of their armour includes a bit extra to allow it to be made "pretty". Also a large charcoal forge will probably scale less as it will have a reducing "cloud" ar...

Thomas Powers

*Geese* Josh not chickens. There have been some interesting discussions on what this would accomplish, (adding of Phosphorus---used as another hardening agent in *early* swords (Pleiner "The Celtic Sword") removing bad bits---though the slag is more likely to be resistant to digestive acids than the...

Thomas Powers

As far as "elemental" metals goes Zinc was a very late one. The problem is that zinc smelts above it's vapourization temp so you start with zinc ore and smelt it and you get zinc gas that re-combines with oxygen immediately and you are back to step 1. The medieval indian method was to smelt it in re...

Thomas Powers

Ron Reil's website is the best starting place to get info on building propane burners from plumbing parts.

Thomas

Thomas Powers

There is some very fine *butted* parade maile in "Heroic Armour of the Italian Renaissance" (Hope I got that right---it's the Negroli book)

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Ah yes fun with SCA names...reminds me of the time when I got a message from my wife that Aethelwulf had called and I asked "which one?' her reply was "How many Aethelwulfs do you know?"---it was about 4 back then...

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Did they list "executioner"? Being ostracised by the community your wife and kids not allowed to associate with other members of the village. *If* you are allowd in the local tavern you have your own plate and tankard. Not being allowed to hunt except for things like wolves. And if you miss the cut ...

Thomas Powers

On my monitor that sure looks like "24" radius" making for a most imoressive mushroom!

Is that 2 point 4 inches?

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Let's see there have been several accounts of daggers being made using a rather "personal item" as a core. ..

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Looks great but please folks don't get the terms etching and engraving mixed up. The difference helps date armour sometimes...

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Strongbow are the ends of the wrap overlapped and forgewelded?

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Lorenzo2; can we say rather that some *dead* women were burried with arms? Otherwise we should also comment on the large number of egyptians who during life had their organs removed and stored in jars...

Thomas

Thomas Powers

You won't be bladesmithing for theatrical stuff, work cold stock removal. I'd suggest a nice tough Al alloy as they won't rust, won't tend to break either and can be buffed to a high shine and are lighter for the actors. Remember to make a *wide* edge for safety and that *you* are now liable if some...

Thomas Powers

Yes, Wi, especially the lower grades will get a glassy look to it when heated hot---this is the ferrous silicates in it melting. if you need a bit more some clean quartz sand will add to it. WI will also tolerate much higher temperatures than mild steel this is helpfull since scale melts at a high t...

Thomas Powers

James it also depends on how heavily the silk has been weighted with metalic salts too.

Thomas

Thomas Powers

You may well profit from looking for a copy of "Justice Through the Ages" a publication of the medieval Criminal Justice Museum in Rothenburg ODT, Germany. They have quite a bit of information on executioners---not one of the better career choices back then BTW---and several pictures of execution eq...

Thomas Powers

Mike, they were using real wrought iron back then and didn't *need* a borax based flux to weld the stuffs d**n near self fluxing and clean quartz sand works at the higher temps it can take when welding. There are renaissance discri8ptions of using borax for soldeing flux IIRC (I'd hunt through Birin...

Thomas Powers

Mike we bought 100 mesh magnitite from a pollution control supply corp---the shipping was more expensive than the ore. IIRC it was somewhere in Indiana.

Made for a beautiful bloom, 60% is pretty low for an early style smelting where a lot of it goes into the slag.

Thomas

Thomas Powers

"If you want to coat an iron object with tin, first file it and, before touching it with your hand, while it is freshly filed, throw it into a pot of melted tin with tallow and stir it about with tongs until it becoes white. Then take it out, shake it vigoriously, and clean it with bran and with a l...

Thomas Powers

Remember that sunlight degrades silk so a silk banner should be expected to need replacing on a regular basis---very good for conspicious consumption purposes!

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Would not a 14th century crossbow most likely have a composite (word/horn/sinew) prod and not a metal one?

Thomas

Thomas Powers

You didn't mention "go back and look for any other pieces" At that price even if you can't use it *sombody will* and pay you a nice bonus for it.

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Talbot, if you carry some good Mongol artifacts I might be able to get you an antartic sale...ther is an SCA member who spends quite a bit of time down there whose area of interest is Mongolia...

You may have seen mention of him in the "user friendly" web comic.

Thomas

Thomas Powers

There was a mead tasting at the 37th ICMS that was very illuminating; of course I ended up promising a researching in England some metal casting to show a possiblbly better varient to lost wax for the brooch they were researching after going through the line a couple of times and trying all the vari...

Thomas Powers

I knew there had to be a link that just got left out somehow! My neighbor makes his own goat cheeses; lots of goats out here in NM; I'm looking for someone who still makes sheep milk cheeses locally though---I've heard rumours... Tastes are very specific to diet and molds used, there are some cheese...

Thomas Powers

Trevor,

Na*Cl* is table salt, NaOH is lye; please don't take this badly but I'm going to skip any feasts you cook at for a long time Thomas said bitterly!

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Karl your post got truncated and so the link to medieval and renaissance research and authenticity was lost.

Thomas

Thomas Powers

I remember talking with Dominic Tweedle from York about their recreation of the goldsmith's house where many of the rooms did not have a fireplace but did seem to have an area reserved for a brazier. You may want to check on how they handled it. Also check out books of hours for the winter months, e...

Thomas Powers

The soot is a temperature indicator it 'burns off" at a certain temperature that is ok for annealing some alloys of Al.

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Of more concern---is it a sealed motor or will you have grinding dust building up inside it?

Thomas

Thomas Powers

Fleamarket, Fleamarket, Fleamarket, buy old hammer heads and grind the face to a slight curve. A nice dishing hammer should cost you about US$2 and a bit of time. Keep your eyes open for block hammers and other "weird" shaped hammers that can be adapted to doing other armouring tasks. You are in a g...

Thomas Powers

Ahh sand paper is a pretty modern thing. using loose abrasives with wooden or leather over wood forms would be a bit closer to how they did it in earlier times---a selection of natural stones is handy too. I've done some knife work using no modern items. On one I recall spending 5 hours of smoothing...

Thomas Powers

Since they were made from wrought iron they would probably have the socket forge welded. I have a quarrel point from the 1500's that shows the construction method clearly---the dealer couldn't understand why I wanted the one that was the most decayed of the ones he had for sale---it showed the flow ...

Thomas Powers

Medieval version of "Sap" gloves...just add pearls, jewels, etc...

Thomas

Thomas Powers

The "prune people" viking book has some info on viking locks.

(It's called "the Vikings" but it has all those lovely line drawings and the people all look like prunes---as opposed to all those other books called "the vikings" with fuzzy photo's.)

Thomas