The Armour Archive

Konstantin the Red

When you lay an SCA rattan sword on a table so that the blade is supported and the hilt is in the air, if you lay it so that the blade edges are horizontal, many basket hilts tend to roll so that the forward edge is down. Does anyone make a basket hilt that is balanced in that direction? What is it...

Konstantin the Red

Borrow a friend's cutting tool, be it a shear or a jigsaw. Cultivate a new friend if necessary. You really don't have to be locked into doing 100% of this altogether on your own hook; too many don't think of that. Make sure that wasn't you. If you have a nice thick chunk of metal, like an anvil, do ...

Konstantin the Red

If not a better one than rivets. @Michael, did your tool shipment come in yet? Are you employed? You sound like you have no remunerative options to make some bux open. I hope that is not the case. Typical SCA use of brass or copper rivets is attaching straps one way or another, straight through the ...

Konstantin the Red

Most of the perceptible Englishness in this would be in the cloth, in the doublet. Jackchains are pretty much jackchains, regardless of location.

Konstantin the Red

I liked the 6 inch deep throat for making viking helms. A 2 inch is pretty useless for making helmets. Except for spangenband rivet holes and stitch holes for bascinets (smallest punch & die, very good) and barrels and greats, whose rivet holes are at the plate edges. Useless for sure, yep. Now the...

Konstantin the Red

Link to a page, or are we going to have to go googling it up on our own?

Konstantin the Red

Does look like a struggle -- and a not altogether successful one -- to represent fingered gauntlets with knuckle riders, doesn't it. Though his left, bridle-side gaunt seems a more comprehensively protective mitten model. Let's not ignore the trebly-creased globose breast, either. Haven't seen any m...

Konstantin the Red

It's generally easier to really stretch making-skills than to stretch a budget. You can manually hog out a stamp-thingie using a few bits in your Dremel. If you haven't a Dremel tool yet, now's the perfect excuse. Making it from a Grade 8 bolt should produce a die for this work that will be hard eno...

Konstantin the Red

That's exactly what's going on -- they're all from the same Chinese factory, and just maybe there are replacement shear blades available on one or more companys' websites. Or you go find a regrinding shop you like locally. They can generally cope with this sort of thing. If you have a band sander, y...

Konstantin the Red

A wooden last is good for water-hardening with; it helps hold the leather up off the oven rack so it doesn't scorch touching the metal. At least, wadded newspaper balls and a plank of wood can help hold its shape and keep the oven rack from touching while the piece is baking. I'd hold the oven heat ...

Konstantin the Red

I see them now. Dang...

I don't know anyone's managed to identify a manufacturing center for such bascinets -- but they follow a longtime Celtic habit of tall helmets to increase the wearer's height and these stretched bascinets don't appear anywhere but here on the Celtic Fringe.

Konstantin the Red

Image while I'm still thinking about the guy -- Georg von Woellwarth (+1409) https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/23/01/3f/23013f477c8ac01aacf0ff1439a8b118.jpg Here we have the earliest date for something like an early sallet that I've ever seen. And a Lentner again. -------------------------- ...

Konstantin the Red

Henrik, inasmuch as you clearly can use heat, why are you choosing wax impregnation when you can build a lighter and stiffer gaunt by water hardening in the oven -- assuming your leather is vegetable tanned? Of course the wax needn't be useless -- you can brush on a light coat of melted wax on the w...

Konstantin the Red

You may have something like one of these fellows in mind: http://www.worldhistory.biz/uploads/posts/2015-07/58q-70.jpg -- No.107 is an early-mid fourteenth, featuring splint limb armor and a sugarloaf helm; No.108 is Walter again; No.109 has a fancy jupon with false-sleeves and arms in cuirbouilli, ...

Konstantin the Red

Note how that lineart of Herr Walter shows a 4-piece knee. Adding in a haubergeon in this kit -- weight penalty. You wouldn't like fighting on foot so much with this in the mix. Riding around on a horse, it's not so consequential, and it's good to have if someone is aiming a spear at your middle whi...

Konstantin the Red

I don't feel a mighty need for arm or leg protection for this, obviously I would need hidden armor for fighting, but would the following kit be considered in the realm of historical probability? Shovel faced bascinet with camail Gorget Shoulder armor (suggestions wanted) Hidden arm/elbow armor Gaun...

Konstantin the Red

It's sometimes called a shovel-front or plow-front. Late fourteenth and rare, but not unheard-of. Hounskull visors varied -- some downright supersonic looking, others more obtuse-set and even with some handsome creases demarcating top half from bottom half. Latterly there were some weirdies, like th...

Konstantin the Red

Um... you mean somehow *not* a steel shop from the local Yellow Pages? 1008 to about 1016 mild rod stock...?

Konstantin the Red

Search-button on a keyword, and/or an author. If you then leave things alone it will search the entire site; if you pick a forum to search in, looking in other forums require to change the forum as there doesn't seem to be a way to go from searching a particular forum to a broad, site-wide search wi...

Konstantin the Red

The halberd: it has a beak for steel plate and a slanted edge for flesh. Plus its thrusting point -- and all this in one. In terrestrial hand to hand combat you need little more. Are you saying most halberds were modular in construction and had replaceable bits? No -- but that they were designed to...

Konstantin the Red

Wow. Lots of information to digest. Thank you for the responses . . . So now am I right in guessing you will probably seek a bascinet & camail armour, of the later fourteenth? With your newfound hotwork/smithing skills, whatcha wanna build first? There are easy little projects that build skills, an...

Konstantin the Red

Hot-dip tinning needs a bath of molten tin in a crucible and a source of heat. Electroplating with tin still calls for a plating shop and that shop handles acidic solutions for good conductivity. It has the advantage of being quick to set up. Handling tinning on your own hook opens the option of usi...

Konstantin the Red

Don't see how anybody'd read brickwork torso armor as anything but scale. You know, somebody was deliberately making those tall bascinets, Celtic clogaid style. You're finding a lot of them, convincingly delineated. "HIC JACET JACOBVS SCHORTHALIS . . ." though how you tell that compressed S or -IS f...

Konstantin the Red

Konstantin. Here is an almost identical effigy which belongs to Piers' son James Butler. http://www.tara.tcd.ie/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2262/25915/ertk1624.jpg?sequence=1 This clearly looks like a mail pisane to me. In that better light, yes. I see. The coat of arms looked familiar -- and see: that ...

Konstantin the Red

Cuir was an early-ish thing, but for a generation in the fourteenth it ran alongside steel/iron plate. It's noteworthy, and almost odd, that we see so little of cuirbouilli, either in art or in verbal description, before the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. A kettle of steaming hot water t...

Konstantin the Red

A typical artistic trope of the era. Later -- in the Renaissance -- the "ancient style" armor more became "Renaissance Roman" or Heroic Armor, with Roman Empire-inspired details like musculata cuirasses, lion-mask cops, and sometimes even pteruges at hip and shoulder. The idea in all cases was to co...

Konstantin the Red

The halberd: it has a beak for steel plate and a slanted edge for flesh. Plus its thrusting point -- and all this in one. In terrestrial hand to hand combat you need little more.

Konstantin the Red

I'd like to learn more about this experimentation phase in the late 14th - early 15th century. Right up my alley. And quite a few others' alleys too, since there are quite a few SCA among our pool of correspondents and late-14th is comparatively simple to make and easy enough to buy since every mak...

Konstantin the Red

So here I am . . . the tools enroute, and a lot of info about the techniques used, but very little info about the various styles and eras of the armor I want to make. Okay, you reckon you don't know much, and since we don't know what you do and don't know, maybe let's clean out the really obvious b...

Konstantin the Red

Looks like we'll want you to open your permissions up.

Konstantin the Red

The R-W DA-2 and DA-5 are rated for aluminum rivets, which sounds like their market is in aviation and semitrailer manufacturing. Max tonnage is 3500#, so a 1.75-ton squeeze. Hand Forming Rivet Sets Sets are hardened with polished riveting head surfaces. Round and rectangular types are available. Ro...

Konstantin the Red

He meant you don't have to quote the entire post; snip as desired. Which is good to direct replies with. I whittle 'em myself.

Konstantin the Red

I think His Beltedness chose to go with somewhat lighter operating weight, for reasons readily imagined. This is one of the points I was trying to make in my OP. Is the armour shown in Piers' effigy, significantly lighter than, say a 1450s harness? I think that it would be at least as heavy, if not...

Konstantin the Red

Look over the Iona Abbey effigies (fairly contemporary with the Earl) and tell me if anything there (lots of stuff that's linearly textured like that) looks like mail. It is generally believed to be close-quilted cloth -- it does not resemble depictions of mail in art of the time. Many of the argume...

Konstantin the Red

Just use the Search button up top on "bowling ball basherizer" to get discussion and pix onsite. :D In a few words, it's using an old messed up bowling ball for a piledriver. Great for shallow smooth curves. Cheap. You may find haute-pieces on Italian armours of the fifteenth, with their big pauldro...

Re: Basket Hilt Balance

Re: Copper and brass rivets

Re: Copper and brass rivets

Re: Jack Chains in UK

Re: Heinrich punch

Re: Heinrich punch

Re: 14th Century Mittens? The Beautiful Fountain of Nurember

Re: Question about leather for corrazina

Re: shear embarrassment

Re: Hardened leather demi gauntlets: Hourglass or Wisby cuff

Re: 16th Anglo Irish armour

Re: New player in the Armour world - need some help

Re: Hardened leather demi gauntlets: Hourglass or Wisby cuff

Re: New player in the Armour world - need some help

Re: New player in the Armour world - need some help

Re: New player in the Armour world - need some help

Re: New player in the Armour world - need some help

Re: Domed rivets? Or flared? )SCA-specific)

Re: Chain mail sleeves

Re: Polearm Question: Replaceable Heads?

Re: New player in the Armour world - need some help

Re: Question about leather for corrazina

Re: 16th Anglo Irish armour

Re: 16th Anglo Irish armour

Re: 16th Anglo Irish armour

Re: Old armour in contemporary art.

Re: Polearm Question: Replaceable Heads?

Re: New player in the Armour world - need some help

Re: New player in the Armour world - need some help

Re: Churburg rivets.

Re: Domed rivets? Or flared? )SCA-specific)

Re: Dishing / Raising Question

Re: 16th Anglo Irish armour

Re: 16th Anglo Irish armour

Re: Dishing / Raising Question