The Armour Archive

Konstantin the Red

Wot Ironbadger sed. They may make them out of nylon now, but there is a reason they call them "bone folders" that doesn't mean pretty pocketknives.

I believe you can also slick with the side of a glass bottle.

A polished bit of antler lends a certain buckskinner/rendezvous cachet.

Konstantin the Red

Consider the Scottish Lochaber axe as an example of the long persistence of which adaptation of the axe served which purpose: Lochabers have a long edge and a flat section blade -- so, rather light for its size and length. It is a tool for cutting flesh rather than wood. Various arrangement of eye o...

Konstantin the Red

A starting point that would be much earlier than your 15th/16th-c. period of interest would be the various forms of axe found in the Viking Era. The Danish axe of distinctive, long-edged form and decidedly flat and slender section -- those mankillers have a lightness to them that suggests a real, ma...

Konstantin the Red

Apologies for being blunt: Why do you assume that I am not already doing all those things? And how satisfactory or otherwise have the results of these efforts been? You seem dissatisfied, but I can't put a finger on where you're looking to improve nor precisely why. I asked for a textbook because I...

Konstantin the Red

Both the Bayeux and later art show mail chausses, too. The Bayeux apparently shows chausses on the particularly great and wealthy. Later art shows them to be nearly universal among the knightly class. Later art shows hauberks definitely with big skirts to them -- moreover with slits front and back, ...

Konstantin the Red

Oh, well in that case, a little ole Harry-Homeowner 3/8" power drill with variable speed set low would do. The budget nylon wheel slicker is indistinguishable from a nylon clothesline wheel for that kind of clothesline. All you want is some way to fasten it solidly to a rod to put in the chuck. A le...

Konstantin the Red

14th Century Brig. Mostly "larger" plates 15th Century, Fourteen Hundreds. Yes. Excellent first-time brig. Even fat-L lung plates, if any, are simple metalforming. Good project! In point of technique, never ever use a power grinder and grinder wheels on aluminum. Aluminum clogs the pores of the Car...

Konstantin the Red

Six days on, now...?

Konstantin the Red

The Trevanion, a/k/a Bosworth, sallet would be a good one to build just for the engineering experience of fitting a bevor to it as well as determining if a low line of suspension rivets like those shown works better or worse than the usual hat-sweatband location. More on sallets of this rather loose...

Konstantin the Red

Mad Matt wrote:. . . nearly finished alkyl my overdue orders.

Alkyl 'em. Alkyl 'em all.

Konstantin the Red

For equipping a troop easily: Easy Bake Armour -- read both pages of the thread. And poster Myron's laminated canvas armor, which only needs cloth and Titebond III glue, plus a little sanding of the pieces' edges when fully dried. For Easybake, all you need is blue barrel plastic or HDPE plastic she...

Konstantin the Red

Canadian Tire's anvils will dent and mushroom, but apart from severe breakage, you can make do so long as you're willing to dress 'em with an anglegrinder when they're too chewed. Okay for setting rivets too but assume they will immediately become a cratered mess in the process. Their mass is still ...

Konstantin the Red

Thanks, that's a TON of help. I've got a few machinist and welder friends locally that I might be able to talk into building stakes, but they're busy people so I don't want to impose on them. As a sidenote, I've heard from some people that, in the context of making and repairing armour, an anvil is...

Konstantin the Red

I'm looking to build a set of arms limbs that are splint upper and solid lowers, but I can only make the splint stuff myself. This I find puzzling -- I don't yet see that you're as limited as you're thinking you are. If you can cut, drill, and above all hammer on splint (to get it off of flat) then...

Konstantin the Red

Churburg 13 and 15 would be great models, since they are late 14th century North Italian aventails. But the sculptors seem to be showing a slightly different construction. This would have precedents in coifmaking by some of the more peculiar layouts -- linkrows running in all sorts of curious direc...

Konstantin the Red

I suppose. You also see English Coronation pics showing the cap of maintenance being processed (on a stick) when you google for images. Not to mention that there are pics showing one being worn with its stick-outies either to the back or to the front like a Robin Hood hat. :?: :? Every way but sidew...

Konstantin the Red

See Cap of Maintenance. Mainly you'll get hits on heraldry pages showing what the charge looks like: a red (usually/default) velvet cap, sometimes like a pillbox, with an ermine brim turned up all round it but tailing looser in the back. The metal crown sat on this. To Make A Cap Of Maintenance http...

Konstantin the Red

The whole affair per the instructions starts with bending the brow band, then shallow-veeing and bending the centerline band to make the ridge fore to aft.

Konstantin the Red

Though that sallet looks to have plenty of peripheral vision from the length of its eyeslot, or sight. Discover which SCA Kingdom you live in (tell us!), find their Armor Standards, look at helms and helmets -- the most-regulated piece of SCA armor. Pester every armor schlepper at local fighter prac...

Konstantin the Red

Steam and heat stretching for curved hems can be accomplished in several passes of a steam iron and bullying on the trim while it's still hot, stretching one side out until what had come off the reel straight has gotten a permanent curvature. It's the fabric equivalent of ballpeining one edge of a p...

Konstantin the Red

All the same, I'm happy to say I've completely solved my piercing issues by making a pair of piercing tongs. For now it is on to the drudgery of mass-producing rings. Any advice on keeping my sanity would be greatly appreciated. MP3 player, loaded full of tunes, earbuds, shirt pocket. And keep the ...

Konstantin the Red

Here's the old instruction page. http://www.scribd.com/doc/20786277/Valsgarde-Helmet-Assembly-Instructions-Zweihammer-Armoury#scribd Though that one is behind a paywall. Docslide.us has one in 24 pages. Starts with a list of parts, then a list of needed tools. Which is as far as I looked. Proceed f...

Konstantin the Red

Time to start with itemizing the puzzle-points and discussing same. It seems you're having trouble seeing what he's driving at.

Konstantin the Red

About anybody can. Happens often. Don't think I'd go as heavy as 14 gauge mild; gaunts need to be as lightweight as will work and if you need 14ga resistance over the main knuckles, you may at least prefer to use 16/18ga stainless there, and with plenty of shape to get the piece 3D. Simply using thi...

Konstantin the Red

Sun won't bother automotive type paint, which is the spray paint you'll be using -- get it at the auto store. They have numerous sorts of paint, including heat resistant black paint intended for engine blocks -- remarkably tough stuff, even if it's something you never actually need. Lightly fogging ...

Konstantin the Red

(as in "bumped up")

I suppose you meant 95 grams for the gauntlet.

Vsë schastlivogo!

Konstantin the Red

Sounds right off like you're after three or four different thicknesses of leather, assuming you're actually building boots and not just costume shoe covers, if you are after both footgear and sundries. That doesn't exactly sound like one hide and nothing else. But a hide or half hide in about 9 ounc...

Konstantin the Red

The great-basc differs from those others in that it rides entirely on the shoulders. This has been used to excellent effect in Atenveldt on a knight with a very dodgy set of cervical vertebrae -- no worries to his neck at all with that great-basc. It does call for alwyte harness everywhere else -- a...

Konstantin the Red

I just imagine how much trouble something like that would give me if I were reading it in other than English, and the way I have to struggle to arrive at the meaning in a foreign sentence. It'd really throw me. Homophones and near-homophones can really be pitfalls -- especially pitfalls for the nati...

Konstantin the Red

Bitte. Throwing two valid words that sound very much alike, but have such differing meanings, at you is no favor to the foreign correspondent! A stumbling block and a snare. Well, we can always mutter curses at AutoCorrect, which cannot sort out meanings. Ckanite is certainly not speaking of any ste...

Konstantin the Red

Dysentery exciting? More exciting than fun. @Siegfried9: I agree with what they're telling you about weights for bascs. You can get the benefit of more ballast without any more load on your neck muscles if you use a camail that runs over the points of your shoulders; its weight will primarily be bo...

Konstantin the Red

Ckanite wrote:. . . I planish and then run everything through the forge to distress, quench and temper.

Typo here, I think: for "distress" read "de-stress."

Konstantin the Red

Perhaps "short sleeved hauberk" would be a better way of putting it? I get the sense that a full gambeson would be more appropriate for a later project. Maybe, but see below. Early hauberk with short to half sleeves, yes, that too. Since my first shirt is more of a prototype and a lesson in tailori...

Konstantin the Red

As for "do I make it bigger and by how much?" shootie, just pattern its pieces rather large and then pin and trim to fit pretty close, like a flat hand could be slid in between the gamby and your person when it's closed up. The kind of ease you'd give to a CdB's shoulder/chest section but not to the...

Konstantin the Red

The gamby controversy swirls only about the axis of there being no known evidence either pro or con. One side calls, "We can't prove it!" and the other replies, "Our forebears were tough as four bears, but smarter than the average bear!" and would presumably have at the least worn three tunics or tw...

Re: Leather edge slicking question

Re: Looking for info on English and Scottish axes and hatche

Re: Looking for info on English and Scottish axes and hatche

Re: Introductions to drafting and modifying patterns?

Re: Are split front gambeson/hauberk recreations wrong?

Re: Leather edge slicking question

Re: Best method to de-edge aluminum

Re: Zweihammer Valsgarde Helm Kit Questions

Re: Would a 15/16 century Italian wear this helmet?

Re: Looking for a new or used small sca helmet

Re: O/T: Good source for various armourcrafting stakes?

Re: O/T: Good source for various armourcrafting stakes?

Re: O/T: Good source for various armourcrafting stakes?

Re: Bracer and Greaves with articulated joints?

Re: How to deal with maille around face-Aventail

Re: padding for a crown

Re: padding for a crown

Re: Zweihammer Valsgarde Helm Kit Questions

Re: Looking for a new or used small sca helmet

Re: Simple Tunic Gore Question

Re: Introduction and High Medieval mail project

Re: Zweihammer Valsgarde Helm Kit Questions

Re: Zweihammer Valsgarde Helm Kit Questions

Re: Different thickness of metals on one gauntlet?

Re: Painting a helmet?

Re: ===// hand protection. helmet

Re: Where do and don't you want to buy full hides?

Re: Weights of these 14th-15th century helmets?

Re: Metal fatigue

Re: Metal fatigue

Re: Weights of these 14th-15th century helmets?

Re: Metal fatigue

Re: Fitting a gambeson for mail

Re: Fitting a gambeson for mail

Re: Fitting a gambeson for mail