The Armour Archive

Konstantin the Red

Instructables is always full of rather interesting stuff, including a surprising amount of amateur armoring. Some of it's even useful. At least, it's a fine ole pile of the DIY spirit.

Konstantin the Red

And if we borrow an architecture term for a description of an armor detail -- so be it.
"A sharp edge formed by the meeting of two flat or curved surfaces."
For, I reckon, a certain value of "sharp."

Konstantin the Red

Already have loaner helms, mainly looking for other stuff :P So what of all these wonderful methods do your guys figure to implement, having weighed costs to benefit? I wanna see how this superb plan is shaking out. :) With helms out of the way I bet your strongest need is now kidney-plates/belts (...

Konstantin the Red

Center cuts in cowhide should show properties midway between belt leather and stretchy pouch leather. You don't have to hit any of these zones dead center; close is good enough.

Konstantin the Red

Nosing around looking for cheap reenactor voulge blades/voulges for sale, I ran across this genuine historical piece priced for the collector: http://www.faganarms.com/products/rare-swiss-voulge-c1400-96-476 An auction house's page, scroll halfway down. Has detail shots too. I was intrigued by its o...

Konstantin the Red

Typically I think the skull might be the place to divide the items here but it is trick. Is it just he skull we want to use as the key to the typology. It is tricky. The other is that sugarloaf is a vic term. RPM The skull might be -- were the skull indeed a particularly distinguishable part of a b...

Konstantin the Red

Exactly. Right around that wide. And if you don't get that buff stuff in from England, there's always the SCA-Engineered school of design: double up the leathers, two lighter-ounce leathers, stacked, in place of one thicker, from the softer, belly part of the hide. Up near the spine, leather is dens...

Konstantin the Red

Wow. Fruitful Thread-Resurrect! [Snoopy dance]

Konstantin the Red

losthelm wrote:if it is a odd shaped handel you get to buy a few more tools and begin making your own handels with a spoke shave . . .

He wasn't remarkably odd shaped.
For which I guess we can all say together "Haaa-lelujah! Haaa-lelujah!"

Konstantin the Red

Pigface is the long, pointy nose ones. Traffic cone visor might be a more obvious description. The rounded face was reffered to as a starting shape to raise the cone from I believe. At least one French armour authority writing in Les Armes et la Vie compares the rounded GB visor to the muzzle of an...

Konstantin the Red

Suzerain is saying they are proportioned more like Mauser bayonets -- and older, long bayonets of the late nineteenth/early twentieth fashion, quite heavily built to resist breaking. Even the most modern bayonet is often Bowie-knife thick in the spine for that reason. Makes it a better jabber than a...

Konstantin the Red

The argument the other way, against hybridizing between helm and bascinets' skulls, is that you don't see a great deal of following a basc's point's lean-back. This of course may be accounted for in that the more extreme examples of lean-back are later than the heyday of the sugarloaf and in particu...

Konstantin the Red

All purpose polearm training aid!
http://www.hentschke-keramik.de/rmh/bil ... corbin.jpg

See, the soldier in charge of whipping the new levies into shape can point to the varying parts of this... Bull Guisarme, to tell the newbs what sort is which.

Konstantin the Red

Fabrication by welding up is fine, AFAICS. Fabrication by classic forgewelding, even finer, though of course this wants the ability to do a solid-state fusion hammer weld in the first place -- the classic smiths' method of joining up a couple pieces of bar stock -- though here one of the pieces invo...

Konstantin the Red

An early thread on apartment armouring

Konstantin the Red

'LERT 'LERT 'LERT RESURRECT-O-LERT
Too bad nobody's ever heard of a "blockhead" coif. Poor guy di'nt git no help back then in 2000.
'LERT 'LERT 'LERT O-LERT

Konstantin the Red

P. 858, a many-posted thread on Birka lamellar and its lacing. Back in the year MM. P. 857, everything old is new again: Bascinet Pattern , and look at the points OP (here, that'd be Ooold Poster) Holger raised. Camail Construction Advice from Steve S. and Mad Matt . Word! Buy your wire by the 1/4 m...

Konstantin the Red

^You know, Atli, somebody ought to do more of that. That way word gets around and more people hear of it sooner.

Under "Quoit Brooch" in Wikipedia there are some belt fittings which might easily adapt from book hardware.

The Net is not copious on the topic, at all.

Konstantin the Red

You could make the downturns into rings. I think you're trying for a graceful, yet stern, delicacy of appearance.

Konstantin the Red

Not on that list are scrounged 5-gallon HDPE plastic buckets. Ordinary, mundane, and useful even if smashed all to heck. Those are even salvageable no matter how wrecked if you're prepared to heat such a contorted mess to 300 F and do something with the plastic mass before it cools.

Konstantin the Red

It's almost easier to cite stuff you didn't use instead.

Cyclotrons head the list.

Konstantin the Red

The other reason for generality is there is no sealed pattern even in history for a halberd head, a partizan, and especially not a bill. This is one you take the standards for minimum curve radius for the points and the corners, standard for max and min all-up weight, and design to those. Do about t...

Konstantin the Red

Indeed. I was seeking that form of breastplate to show Wade what I had in mind.

Konstantin the Red

Aussie, I think you meant "Almain Collar."

Don't believe Almain rivets ever got fluted to the Max, being munition armor for foot. They were decidedly budget-friendly.

Konstantin the Red

So a few weeks on, anything further of note with the gorgets?

Since SCA minimum on kidney belts is basically sole bend (some flex) backed with 1/4 inch padding, probably either recipe, rigid or not-quite, satisfies the Armour Standards.

Konstantin the Red

Minions appear to have been used . . . http://minionslovebananas.com/images/check-in-minion.jpg AutoSuggest, you're dethspicable... So are you, typo. If there's ten of 'em, and they're all observant and orthodox, you've got a minyan of minions. Speaking Minion Hebrew during worship... not usually a...

Konstantin the Red

There's some thought there: you may be going a little more complex and less straightforward than necessary. I don't roll my hems in shell and liner over like that, certainly not in the shell. The shell fabric just gets laid with its right sides (the outsides) laid together, back to back as it were. ...

Konstantin the Red

Ah, center- or high-point -- still pretty early on; consistent with the early-type tunnel vervelles, succeeded later in the century by posts.

Konstantin the Red

That's the kind I mean -- the German-originated kind used with munions. Come to think of it, is there a more accepted term, or are we the armouring community still using a descriptive phrase?

Konstantin the Red

Ontario's 1095 is an effective blade steel for heat treat, and no doubt has that heat treat -- plasma cutting or water cutting may be more the thing to obviate losing the temper that went in at the factory by grinding stuff off. You can feel a hard blade's temper on a sharpening stone or V-stick sha...

Konstantin the Red

The beginners do need hammer know-how and forewarning of hammer pitfalls. Very nearly as much if not more than they need patterns, bearing in mind what Wade did with hammering a hexagonal blank into a breast. I imagine that works without cutouts if it's a sixteenth-century lo-rise.

Konstantin the Red

Mobility is very good, though if I had an extra half-inch in a few places, I know I'd be completely unrestricted. That'll teach me to drag my feet finishing things. This! And you're still a lanky fella. Though yes, you've come to that awkward age where you're no longer college-slim, but are approac...

Konstantin the Red

That's news, everything else being equal. How does that work?

Konstantin the Red

Aha. I was misreading the circle centered on the boss, which is an ink line, as an edge! http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=60005 Lots of decorative opportunity at either end of the metal reinforcing strip there: ravens' heads, wolves, dragons... Yggdrasil. Broccoli. If you'...

Konstantin the Red

I did live in the midwest -- as I think Rapid City SD counts. Sure, it was going on forty years ago, but really... So far, Leonardus, I'd call it a "mystery to some." A lot of us, I think, can and do teach the "mysterie" here. It's an ongoing thing, the educating. I think we're here for these new fe...

Re: HMB-Legal Polearm Heads-Anyone got a pattern?

Re: Deburr / Finish edges?

Re: Loaner Gear

Re: Articulation leathers...

Re: HMB-Legal Polearm Heads-Anyone got a pattern?

Re: Sugarloaf Typology

Re: Articulation leathers...

Re: About you PEOPLE here. . .

Re:

Re: How do you raise a pigface visor from a welded cone?

Re: grinding a fencing grossmesser from a machete blade

Re: Sugarloaf Typology

Re: HMB Polearm Heads-Anyone got a Training Aid? Yeah...

Re: HMB-Legal Polearm Heads-Anyone got a pattern?

Re: 30,000 topics in D&C

Re: Coif HELP..........

Re: 30,000 topics in D&C

Re: Interesting DIY Input Needed

Re: Making a legal crossguard

Re: Interesting DIY Input Needed

Re: Interesting DIY Input Needed

Re: HMB-Legal Polearm Heads-Anyone got a pattern?

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: Laminated canvas for hidden/covered armor experiment

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: A vision of a dream - help me perfect my kit

Re: Dressing up a bascinet

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: grinding a fencing grossmesser from a machete blade

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: A vision of a dream - help me perfect my kit

Re: Round shield handle?

Re: Round shield handle?

Re: Let's talk about templates.