The Armour Archive

Konstantin the Red

No, never. Upwards of thirty years ago, some SCAdian helms got camailed that way, but no more. The medieval method of stitching the camail to a leather camail strap which was in its turn attached to the helmet readily permits the camail to be demounted, usually for maintenance on the helmet. The cam...

Konstantin the Red

Ignoring shades of colors also allows a free hand in using the tone-on-tone effects of diapering, should you want to get that fancy. Just plain keeping the colors generic, the basic box-o'-crayons colors, keeps things much simpler, which in turn means we don't have our heralds going bald from tearin...

Konstantin the Red

First quarter of the fifteenth century, for sure. Perhaps even as early as the first decade. Early white-harness on through all of the fifteenth century, especially from German armories -- German armours always seemed to put more emphasis on arm mobility than the pauldroned Italian armours. [This me...

Konstantin the Red

The essence of your program is that your cops will be fanless and the padding beneath them will be either buskins of wrapped blanket (rather than athletic pads) or 1/4" neoprene glued in.

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

Konstantin the Red

Here's the hard way: build yourself scale models of 16th-c. armours out of tagboard/manila folders. Snip, tuck, and fiddle until the curves and lines are right. Disassemble, open up and scale up at Kinko's. Fitting a tagboard armour to a G.I. Joe would make a 1/6 scale model. I should think this wou...

Konstantin the Red

With a glove well stitched in at the fingertips (say, the two middle fingertips) and the cuff stitched to a leather tab riveted to the gauntlet cuff, could you not dispense with a strap across the palm entirely, and improve your grasp on your weapons' hilts? ------------------ "The Minstrel Boy to t...

Konstantin the Red

Would an English wheel budge metal that thick, even if it's aluminum? Hand-operated English wheels max out at around 20 gauge mild, I thought.

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

Konstantin the Red

Now that's Norman. Armourcake, sir, pure armourcake.

Konstantin the Red

Skullfighter, you will also want to read this site: http://www.swordforum.com It's probably the best English-language site on swords, sword-making, and sword-selling on the Internet today. There are also pages there in Spanish, French, and German, IIRC. Alas, no Danish -- yet -- but there are Swedes...

Konstantin the Red

The best way is to run it through a suitably large sliproller. Get about 3 inches depth. The second best way is to use the biggest deadblow hammer you can get. Conventional hammers tend to get thrown back at you because 6061 T6 is very very springy. Expect to spend quite a while at it, like most of ...

Konstantin the Red

About a handspan in front of the guard on singlehanded swords, and up to two handspans for a bastard sword. I haven't made a great in so long that I've forgotten -- and I only ever made one...

Konstantin the Red

I've always been of the view that punched links were a way of ekeing out a bit more use from scrap and trimmings -- a likely source being scrap from helmets, pots, or any other article made of flat iron -- griddles? By the time of the mid 14th century when sheet iron scrap was no doubt much more com...

Konstantin the Red

I haven't met the close-faced helm that gave me the breathing I wanted. Does such exist? Can it exist?

These questions are yet open.

Konstantin the Red

As for padding an entire coif, you build a hood, and wear that under the coif. In certain specialist applications, such as the lip edge of a camail, the hood/padding/lining might be stitched down there.

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

Konstantin the Red

To escape doing any disservice to our friends for whom English is a second language, allow me to clarify this small point: Thongs -- what you find in Monica's underwear drawer. (among other stringlike meanings) Tongs -- what you find in a smithy for hanging on to hot things. ------------------ "The ...

Konstantin the Red

Sounds like the shield type Daniel would prefer would be one that is quite small, suiting a mobile, aggressive fighting style. Small heaters and bunny rounds come to mind; Wankels are pure SCA and are used like rounds, and are usually full-sized. I think this time I'll not discuss their camp-table a...

Konstantin the Red

Adriano, does that link need an "h" in "panther?"

Konstantin the Red

A "crapload" is a "double scad." 'Nuff said.

Konstantin the Red

Hmm -- blow that design up to head-size and lose the haft-holes and you'd have a pretty good shape for an early 14th-c. cerveilliÃ¨re! That's what I thought I was looking at in the first thumbnail on the left! Pretty work.

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

Konstantin the Red

Lynxicanus (um, is that a wild CatDog? http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif ), inquire with any airplane-repair facility you can reach. Clecos and Cleco tools, plierslike doohickies you fasten and unfasten Clecos with, are a staple of aviation sheetmetal repair. They ought to be able to clue y...

Konstantin the Red

If you have more time than money, scrounge some rigid foam -- not Styrofoam, the tougher stuff -- and whittle you an axe head to tape on. If you have more money than time, buy the rubber axe head. They last well, like fifteen seasons of hard use, don't they? The balance of time v. money is often wha...

Konstantin the Red

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by sternotwo: ...I live in a small town with a very small library. There are only four books on Heraldry in the entire library, and yes they all focus on English heraldry. Which b...

Konstantin the Red

Okay, I'd blazon the arms, "Per fess Gules and Argent, a demi-lion rampant Or, double-queued, issuant from the fess line." It doesn't look to me like that patterning on the Argent lower half is anything but diapering, and that curving mark is an attempt at 3-D modeling to make "paper" heraldry look ...

Konstantin the Red

The other way to get smooth rings is to go into riveted. All my rings to be riveted get cut from the coil with small bolt cutters. By the time the links are flattened, the end looks like a serpent's head more than anything else, with a distinct "nose" and "neck." But the whole thing is so squashed t...

Konstantin the Red

Not to mention that the SCA does not use what heraldry technically calls a "crest," nor "supporters," btw, but simply the "arms." In SCA heraldic parlance, it's your device until you get your Award of Arms, at which time your device becomes your arms. There are higher degrees of arms registration su...

Konstantin the Red

My first camail is attached to my Northstar Armory grill-face center-hinge bascinet. It's butted, with copper-clad wire as an inlay on each dag. The way I've got it fastened to the camail strap is without doubt not historical at all: The camail strap's bottom edge is pierced with many oval holes and...

Konstantin the Red

Edmund, you are most welcome. The hood idea should work well; I believe it would not need any shaping to the neck or anything, just straight down and then flaring out. I intend to quilt my camail lining only lightly, trusting to the camail's ability to soak up incoming by requiring the sword blade t...

Konstantin the Red

I don't think I've seen either brass/effigy. Can you post pics?

Konstantin the Red

Brodir, to get that kind of weight on a frame like yours -- which is very like mine -- everything I've heard says you HAVE to go riveted. The authoritative source on this is Steve SoFC, who will probably discover this thread in a day or two unless he's swamped with Christmas orders or something. He'...

Konstantin the Red

So, one more thing, Edmund; if you are dancingly eager to get started, start building the big-steel-doily part of your camail anyway, and wait until your helmet arrives to fill in the extra face triangles, when you have the article before you. If you're really drumming your fingers waiting, do some ...

Konstantin the Red

Edmund, they are all made the same, be they coif bottom or bishop's mantle. You can generate your spread-out either by expansion ring, expansion hole, or rectangles w/triangles -- whichever you think you can do. The fitting of your camail to your Klapp will depend much on the location and style of y...

Konstantin the Red

Welllll... it's a nice doggie.

If this guy's the maker, he could build good SCA and historical gear.

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

Konstantin the Red

Iox, the important thing with spaudlers or pauldrons is that they attach at a single place on the top of the shoulder line. Large, deep pauldrons, especially those with articulations inboard of the main plate, might attach by strap and buckle to the gorget, or attach by spring pin for armours of lat...

Konstantin the Red

Signo, "rebar" stands for " re inforcing bar," also called "reinforcing rod." Some formulas of steel do crumble like that at heat; the English for this is "red-short" and it is a very great nuisance to the blacksmith who wanted to make something out of that piece of steel. Congratulations! You have ...

Konstantin the Red

Or call it an Oakeshott Type XIX blade in an early-type hilt. AoW discusses just that combination, citing two examples from history, on p. 314.

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