The Armour Archive

Konstantin the Red

This bascinet in the Poldi Pezzoli seems to have had a lining strip in the brow, and stitching holes elsewhere. This will be earlier than the Lyle bascinet.

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Mac, I wonder what the little "vortex generators" on the PP basc do?

Konstantin the Red

I advise you make the shield handle the way they used to: by cutting a capital D shape and then another D backwards. The picture helped a lot. Leaving the shield wood intact under the handle was one of those kind of obvious things that you don't think of until you see it done. It's also slightly of...

Konstantin the Red

Being thin, it might work for gauntlets.

Konstantin the Red

In all honesty, as non-metal pusher, I would pay for a video class just demonstrating a couple of things, and the patterns to make those things, especially if there was some way to contact the teacher and ask questions. A/k/a Metal Shop class -- such as may be found in community colleges pretty muc...

Konstantin the Red

Upper edges or lower edges -- I'd say, rarely both edges. The St. George there has an early-model basc and camail headpiece, c. 1320-40 -- you can tell by its round, not-pointy skull and the tunnel vervelles, both early-fourteenth features. Also of note is the curved rather than up-angled camail str...

Konstantin the Red

Schreiber, would that be for close helmets, with their tailoring requirements? Working that hard in house/can for other types that don't fit close in on neck and jaw doesn't seem very necessary.

Konstantin the Red

3xx-numbered stainlesses, generally not magnetic. 4xx-numbered stainlesses, about half as strongly magnetic as mild steels. Manganese alloy steel, not magnetic. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-magnets-work-on/ According to this source you can get 304 stainless, normally nonmagneti...

Konstantin the Red

Arms to match (less the splinting) next pic in the collection ( > arrow) -- cuirbouilli greaves laced shut. Other views follow. Frederik van Drakenborch. 1360-1380AD. The shapes of the armharness are consistent with historical 14th-c. leather limb protection, likely in cuirbouilli. Particularly that...

Konstantin the Red

I bet you're going to switch from drilling the holes to punching them, pretty quick.

Konstantin the Red

Right on, good plan. Good to see you have some support. For bench shears, there's always mailorder, then. Your harness, sugarloaf inter alia, is then more the 1350 end -- that fixes my mind better. Guess you may be calculating to move forward in time -- in time. http://medieval-combat.org/ then? Use...

Konstantin the Red

Separately, but vitally informative: what century are you at least mostly keeping to? Fourteenth is as easy to distinguish from fifteenth as seventies cars are from nineties. Splint and part-splint arms are latest 13th and to mid 14th century. Have you decided on a helm/helmet type? Rib & torso prot...

Konstantin the Red

Two acquisitions will help with the neighbors, particularly the downstairs people: Splithead rawhide-faced hammers (Garland Mfg) only make a dull thump, at worst a muffled tak tak tak used with an anvil/substitute; second, a square of 1/8" to 1/4" balsa wood under the foot of each bench post does a ...

Konstantin the Red

You can think of last quarter fourteenth camail-and-basc plate harness as a rather narrow range of variations on one theme. First thing seemed to be that during the 3rd quarter, every armourer in western Europe and all the way to the Germanies spent their shop time mastering the nearly formulaic sui...

Konstantin the Red

Do you mean Gothic cusping, say to 2-pc. breastplates and down the upper arm as in spaudlers? Began middle third fifteenth. Not even the last decade of the fourteenth. Moderate chevronning was about as radical as they went even then, and the great-bascinet armours of 1400-1430 didn't even go with th...

Konstantin the Red

And in those places you use a bath of a saturated solution of baking soda to neutralize. Then rinse and dry. But of these acidic methods, a daylong soak of white vinegar is the easiest to handle and control; do it out of doors since reacting zinc with vinegar is, I'm told, stinky. But that's the wor...

Konstantin the Red

For those of us without the Russian, Nik, let us note that po-angliiski, a geh-section is an L section. This sort of thing has amused engineers of both alphabets before... western Europeans scratching their heads over "what structural advantage does a "G-section" give?"

Konstantin the Red

...Not unless they're clogged already, and even then cross your fingers. If either HCl or H2SO4 don't have a hair-/soap-/etc. clog to react on, they will start in on the pipe walls, even reported to take the enamel off enameled castiron clogged sinks from a quick read around... plumbers got plumbing...

Konstantin the Red

The problem, I believe, with patterns is that they leave out some very vital information about how the finished piece should look, what important curves a finished piece should have and so on. A typical example is the great helm. Every single person who has made a great helm from a downloaded patte...

Konstantin the Red

I doubt there's much difference at all, since plate limb armor is supposed to fit like a thick coat of paint.

Konstantin the Red

It is an unfortunate thing that we do not all naturally have the ability to ‘armour on the right side of the brain’ (Mac knows what I’m referring to). The tragic thing is that there are so few people who can/do teach it, because it *is* a skill that can be learned, just like shaping metal or sketch...

Konstantin the Red

Trevor Barker over on NTLworld has an instruction page for shirt tailoring in that fashion. You can find a link to there by Search. Yes, you could sure use a little more breadth across the back of your shirt if there's any way you can have it. That addition takes care of a lot of the waisting you wa...

Konstantin the Red

Ceawlin pretty much covers it. "How to do it" gets into the subject of tools pretty quick. Armor pieces are primarily formed over stakes/forms -- like gray steel pipe (the plumbing section of your Home Depot) or the black steel sprinkler-pipe (plumbing section too) to bend splints for example. Or bu...

Konstantin the Red

Gjermundbu spectacles seem rather early-era, and then we don't see any more. Curious; you'd think they might have kept on using and developing such face protection -- for scar control at the very least. So they could still be handsome enough (as well as rich enough) to wed the prettiest women withou...

Konstantin the Red

Anthony, that sounds to me like it's more than a bit too tight. How's your arm mobility forward and across? -- if you can lay one elbow atop the other in front of you it's got all you'll ever need. Your breastplate might take some of that away without too unfortunate an effect. Especially if the shi...

Konstantin the Red

Rod clearly did not; 4-1 mail also hangs away from such divisions despite use of straps and buckles (arming-points are tied thongs). Literally a chink in his armor. There are things he could do to make up for it; frankly it's the very thing I would not do with a shirt of mail, even teamed with a sol...

Konstantin the Red

Welcome and well come, Fiddlerphil! Yeah, I think they've got it. An advanced-model closehelmet, with everything pivoting on stout temple-pivots, can be pretty airy opened up, as can the armet, with its gull-wing-door opening. Similarly, the close burgonet -- its ear/cheek plates can swing out and u...

Konstantin the Red

Welcome and well come, Marauder_Pilot. One poster to ask specifics of is poster Nissan Maxima, who is a veteran of BotN if I remember right. I've not heard that really any one splinted-vamb design has it over any other. Either all-splints-outside or alternating in and out would fail (if it fails) by...

Konstantin the Red

I'm quite sure no one gives Nissan any flack when he shows up in that red Japanese kit of his. One look at that mempo of his and you know he is there to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and he's all out of bubblegum. More like he brings enough bubblegum for almost everybody -- and bubblegum just doesn'...

Konstantin the Red

We may end up suggesting a foam spangen-frame in there as one component in a system -- a last-ditch, strategically located stiffer/no-bottoming layer at that. With the rest of it being quilted linen fabric. With small ear holes in thinner padding on the ears, particularly for hearing. Anyway, awaiti...

Konstantin the Red

Yeah. Quilted linen all the way if it's that close-fitting. As much for shedding heat as for padding. You're building this helmet for which group again? And which type of helmet? Any part of it where there is indeed more space than other parts?

Konstantin the Red

Goll's Obj 1929: You wouldn't nod much but you could turn your head. Looks like it should go with a very low gorget, say a gorget of one lame and no roll to speak of on its top edge; doesn't interlock. Holes for sewn-in lining, or for attaching a bit of mail round the bottom? Two rows of holes, one ...

Konstantin the Red

Would that be St. Martin of Tours, do you think?

Looking at a cross of St. Martin takes you to a well preserved standing cross on Iona. Pix may show the Iona Abbey in the b/g.

Konstantin the Red

Yes that is exactly my issue. The glue gets slick. I leave it so it gets sort of tacky but even then the glue allows the wood to slip and slide all over. The one shield I bent in air, using turnbuckles and cables, I did per The Fighters' Handbook very many years ago now. Glued the two plies into a ...

Konstantin the Red

Yay, patina. It gets authenticity all over... all over your workshop t-shirt. 8) If you're still forming some pieces into 3-D curves: Garland Manufacturing Split Head Hammers. Split Heads sizes 2 through 4 are most popular for working in armor metals. You really don't need a link here, as googling t...

Konstantin the Red

Yes, if you really want a thick portion to the bow in the center, add another leaf there.

Re: Question about the Lyle Bascinet authenticity.

Re: Round shield handle?

Re: Foam mesh for supplemental padding?

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: Dressing up a bascinet

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: Sallet identification/maker -- help requested!

Re: Leather armour in art? (brown with metal strips & rivets

Re: Lamellar Rust Prevention

Re: Splinted Leather Armour-Panels inside or out?

Re: Splinted Leather Armour-Panels inside or out?

Re: Splinted Leather Armour-Panels inside or out?

Re: Any evidence of scalloped lames in the 14th century?

Re: Any evidence of scalloped lames in the 14th century?

Re: Galvanized coif

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: Galvanized coif

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: Making a mold of the lower legs for fitting leg harnesse

Re: Let's talk about templates.

Re: Converting a maille haubergeon to a coat-style with clas

Re: Splinted Leather Armour-Panels inside or out?

Re: Who wore ocular spangenhelms?

Re: Converting a maille haubergeon to a coat-style with clas

Re: Converting a maille haubergeon to a coat-style with clas

Re: Visor for Helms

Re: Splinted Leather Armour-Panels inside or out?

Re: Japanese SCA Kit (Need Suggestions) Lamellar

Re: Thin helm padding

Re: Thin helm padding

Re: Information on Early 15c. Reproduction Helmet

Re: Information on Early 15c. Reproduction Helmet

Re: Non ad hoc shield press

Re: List of tool suppliers

Re: ballista leaf spring... what model vehicle to pull from