The Armour Archive

Konstantin the Red

Even better is to use a corner of that file to cut an X in the mandrel, apply a drop of oil, and drill out the center of the X. Any hardware place has metal rods -- ask for "rod stock" or "round stock" and you will be directed to the rack that holds these. For heaven's sake, don't try using all-thre...

Konstantin the Red

Vladimir, triangular or round, it's the flat shield that tries to twist around your arm. The curved shield puts some of its weight either in the plane of your forearm or a little behind it -- it only takes about three inches' depth of curve to get the job done. An adjustable leather arm band and eit...

Konstantin the Red

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by thomas hayman: konstantin did you mean a surform. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> That's the name! ...next time, I go in the next room and peek in my toolbox! http://www.armour...

Konstantin the Red

Heh heh, Bascot... looks like you've devised "the chinstrap -- or equivalent!" I should point out for Massaiti's sake that what Bascot describes is a setup rather more for tilting with the lance than for the kind of foot combat the SCA specializes in -- it often calls for good head mobility rather t...

Konstantin the Red

Charcoal, and its starter fluid. Do controlled, repeated small burns with little piles of about four briquettes each, and clean the charred wood out with anything that comes to hand, like jabbing at it with a wood chisel and cleaning it up with coarse sandpaper or those curving replaceable blade ras...

Konstantin the Red

It's modeled after 13th century barrel helms, and looks a bit light to pass SCA muster, frankly. Other than looking a bit exiguous, it's typical of SCA design and execution of a 4-piece barrel helm, right down to the flaring lower edge. It's an adequate entry-level fighting design -- or loaner hat. ...

Konstantin the Red

Massaiti-san, quite often they made a coif, or hood, tying under the chin with laces, that had a large doughnut of cloth stuffed with rags attached to the coif like a wreath of laurel leaves on Caesar's head. This doughnut filled in the corners between the head and the top of the greathelm. With tho...

Konstantin the Red

Close-helmets as contrasted with armets aren't so much an evolutionary development of armets as a different (and fairly contemporaneous) engineering solution to the same problem. Both of these hats are in one sense "close helmets," they differ mostly in their manner of opening, with the close-helmet...

Konstantin the Red

For my money -- and there's not a lot of it -- the place to get galvy wire is fence supply or lumberyard-type places and not the bigbox hardware outfits like Home Depot. Lumberyards sell wire by weight, for less than a dollar a pound. I recommend you take a wire gauge there, though. They don't neces...

Konstantin the Red

It's okay in pairs, such as one to either side of a visor, and it works very well if you can arrange it to be in a protected location that a sword cannot depress the catch enough, but a finger can reach in and push. For the belt-and-suspenders types, a spring pin cross-drilled for a sneck hook shoul...

Konstantin the Red

King, ole new buddy, I really think you can set your sights higher than that. Read the articles here and in Arador Armor Library. Maybe most of your idea of armor stems from Tolkien -- from the maybe-14th-century armours of Gondor through the mailshirts of Rohan and the iron hats of just about every...

Konstantin the Red

There were at least three distinctive styles of Viking-era interlace, succeeding each other in time. IIRC, they start with Irishy/Book of Kells-y interlace, proceed through a fashion for gripping-beasts, and then the latest-period of them is called the "Jelling" style, which shows interlace of two o...

Konstantin the Red

Dweezle, a "ball st eak " is a meatball. Or maybe something that... you don't wanna go there on a family BBS. http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/wink.gif A ball stake is good for planishing. Things like this are why I find spellcheckers less than helpful. ------------------ "The Minstrel Boy to the wa...

Konstantin the Red

The curves are mild enough that you can dish the whole affair. Start from a narrow conical shape, though -- vambraces are basically cones. The rest of the "tuliping" is to tailor it to the muscles of the forearm.

Konstantin the Red

Spray paint. Not at all medieval, but highly functional for armor you are using as armor is supposed to be used. For the outside, a high-quality automotive wax like Turtle Wax. In this application, seek out auto waxes with the most carnauba in their blend. People have tried things like gloss coat or...

Konstantin the Red

Don't forget how good that stuff is for making spring catches. Punch holes, install rivets for holding and for pushbuttons, et voilÃ .

Konstantin the Red

Weight belts, particularly the broad kind, are excellent prefab foundations for kidney belts; you can attach plates to them. The kidneys ride higher in the body than most people think -- they are up amongst your short ribs. Many people suspend a fauld or their leg armor from them. About the only bel...

Konstantin the Red

Of these, TOMAR is best for the new armourer, Armour From ... Wisby is excellent specialist material for early 14th-c. Scandinavian/Baltic armours but very expensive, and AAotMK is out of print though often available on Amazon at reasonable prices. Best of The Hammer well, I've got all four volumes ...

Konstantin the Red

If you have small dings or gouges or light corrosion pitting, you can dress the face with a two-grit corundum stone. I had a stone that had been severely saddled on both faces by long wear. I took to using this worn stone back and forth along my anvil's face and ended up dressing and smoothing my an...

Konstantin the Red

"Gadzooks" -- perhaps if slowed down into its original "Gad's Hooks!" which were the nails by which Our Lord got nailed up on what had to be the rottenest Friday morning of His earthly life. Lots of euphemistically distorted or truncated references to God, such as the similarly conceived "oddsbodiki...

Konstantin the Red

Demi Moore is an heraldic Moor, from the waist up, issuant from some heraldic whatever.

Konstantin the Red

Simon, riveted galvanized? Was it zinc'd up after construction? Or are these Indian links, shipped loose and built into a shirt over here? I ask because it is generally supposed -- and with good reason -- that the annealing process' red heat drives off the zinc as metal vapor, vicious to breathe. Wh...

Konstantin the Red

I think the Rev got his percentages for chromium mixed up with percentages for carbon -- 1095 high-carbon steel being 99% iron, roughly. Even before Saverio's post, I'd been under the impression that SS was at least seventeen percent Cr.

Konstantin the Red

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Rick1233: i wish u luck in making your chain mail i tried for my first armour atempt with about the same blackened 1/2 in diam rings cant get the weaving right so i eneded up w...

Konstantin the Red

I've never heard it said any other way than "Bernie."

Konstantin the Red

If you want to tweak its shape, torchcut it into the profile of an anvil or a T stake.

Konstantin the Red

See if that Ebay helmet might be Swedish, or Swiss. The "50-58" is doubtless a hat size. German WW2 stahlhelms came in five sizes.

Konstantin the Red

Hauberk, shmauberk. Hauberks come to the kneecap -- Rev is making a byrnie. Beowulf-era gear. Though you are on quite solid etymological ground -- "hauberk" comes from a very old family of ancient Nordic phrases all having to do with "neck protection:" heals-beorg. And that was back from when they w...

Konstantin the Red

Thomas, bienvenu! "Ga" is "gauge" pronounced "geij" -- ignore Losthelm's spelling of the word, for alas! he's quite the worst speller (of English anyway) that we can boast. Gauge numbers get larger as the metal gets thinner. The basic idea behind figuring metal by gauge seems to be its weight per a ...

Konstantin the Red

Keep at it, Artemis; you are doing mighty well. In five years, you're going to be magnificent at this!

Konstantin the Red

Many hammers are nice to have, two or three are must-haves, and a weighted rawhide hammer a secondary must-have, or maybe a very-nice. 1 16-oz ball pein, with a nice round hemispherical pein -- grind and polish if you must. The bullet-shaped ones are a little too acute. Good for riveting and some pl...

Konstantin the Red

It's a strap. The word means "band-helmet." We moderns typically speak of the "bands" and the "panels."

Konstantin the Red

European-style cold, however, is very dank and chilly. By American standards, that entire continent north of the Alps does not get enough sun (recent headline-making temps notwithstanding), and does get more than enough cloud -- and rain -- and guck. In America, woolen-jacket-and-tie ensembles are o...

Konstantin the Red

Electroweld, yeah. Forgeweld?? I think he'd be better off punching flat links out of 20 or 22 ga. stainless sheet with a Roper-Whitney #8, the big bench-y b -- eggar.

Konstantin the Red

Sure looks like it'd do for one -- interesting detail having the cuffs quilted but the quilting running crosswise to the arms' vertical quilting; the armholes seem large enough to support a gambeson/pourpoint interpretation.

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"The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone..."