The Armour Archive

Konstantin the Red

Oho. And here I was thinking a shaker shovel was, like, a Simple Gift...

Konstantin the Red

Will discuss with JT soon about stickying something, and we can hoover through the forums scooping up usefuls to stick into one midget Florilegium.

Konstantin the Red

Wasn't sure where to post this . . . was curious as to what preference the group has when it comes to meeting SCA standard and comfort. Keeping in mind that I am currently sporting the 14th C mafia look :D I presume that means bascinet plus camail. So any lo-pro safety gorget, like those above, plu...

Konstantin the Red

Natural gas plus forced air is, at bottom, every bit the same thing as charcoal (plus air). Same goes for coal. Same goes for biogas. Same goes for petroleum fractions like propane. Thing about charcoal feeding a forge is you use the charcoal not by the tens of pounds but by the pickup-truck load. E...

Konstantin the Red

All rightee... you got some assets, then. Sounds like a plan. 16ga SS should be within the Bev's capabilities.

Konstantin the Red

Stylistically, I think I want to make the oak slips a {bit} smaller and/or the knot a bit bigger. Sure thing; you know that gets done anyway, and so much nobody need mention it. Fieldless, two oak slips of three leaves and four acorns in saltire, entwined of a Hungerford knot, all argent No need to...

Konstantin the Red

(For some reason the neighbors, Coast Guard, and Corps of Engineers won't let me run a dam across the mouth of our estuary to power a hammer mill.) Eh, old man, you're behind the times. You need rotary power for a lift&drop hammer mill. This is where a nice strong 3-phase electric motor and reducti...

Konstantin the Red

"Fashion Disaster Armour" -- Sieur "Too Cool" Raoul and good Sir Johnny Cote may have just got a plot-point to play with... Certain varieties of early-fourteenth harness that, well, didn't have to interact could go pretty far in that compositely sourced way and still work. We may as well keep that i...

Konstantin the Red

If you happen to observe that an eight-dollar yard of cotton quilters' batting also happens to be ninety inches wide -- double the usual 45-inch fabric width -- the price suddenly looks twice as reasonable as it did. The other thing is to suit your padding to your harness: mail needs some thickness ...

Konstantin the Red

They'd do that, all right. Settle for nothing less than 14ga, .0747", and there's nothing at all wrong with using 12ga, .105ish", for the skull of the helmet or forehead plate of the barrel helm. 14ga is very stout in the spangenhelm application, with its overlapped bands and the barrel with its ove...

Konstantin the Red

Looks to me like there's a wry depiction of some men not getting paid, because the paymaster hasn't any coin to lay out on that exchequer board. He seems to be calling on Heaven to witness his plight and theirs.

Konstantin the Red

It'll work for SCA Youth Boffer, at any rate. A lot of us around here are building for SCA hardstick, which at a minimum gauge number wants 15 gauge everywhere on the helm, and many of us find a 12 gauge helm skull is wanted for durability and obviating concussions. You can still easily enough prett...

Konstantin the Red

"Did he just say, 'Holy Shit!'?"
"Can't say for sure; I never can hear a thing right after the gonne goes off."
"Wha'd you say?"
"Oh, now don't you start."

Konstantin the Red

Why do you need a metal screw when a wedge, (Known in Antiquity!), will work? What ere you referring to? Using workbenches and holdfasts to keep the pieces on place? Or actual "vices" using wedges to clamp down the pieces? With bench vises of that general kind, I'm not prepared to say there's much ...

Konstantin the Red

He's a po-et
He don't know it

Konstantin the Red

You are missing an option, for post vervelles anyway: cut short lengths of 6mm-7mm brass rod, hammer one end flatter, put that end into the jaws of an electric drill, clamp a mill file into a vise with the file's edge where you can bring the brass rod up to it, set the drill going and touch the end ...

Konstantin the Red

They make all-wool quilters' batting too. Prices vary a lot, but the yardage is generally wide, often double-width and even more in some cases.

"Wool batting" "wool batts" and such searchterms. At least one outfit offers both high-loft and low-loft batts.

Konstantin the Red

Absolutely nothing else worked as well, either then or now. Wood breaks into sharp splinters; rattan breaks square or brooms into loose fibers. Very hard wood not only broke sharp, but caved armor in. UHMW HDPE plastic rod lands on you like a deadblow hammer rather than the springy impact of rattan ...

Konstantin the Red

Is there a link on building a split rattan falchion Welcome and well come, Ser.Lawrence. And that nigh-fourteen-calendar-year RESURRECT-O-THREAD, which might be a record. For sure a contender. You must've been prowling the early pages... like I am. To topic, though, the method should be exactly lik...

Konstantin the Red

Ti is always going to be more or less model-airplane gray -- a little lighter or a little darker. Particularly if you use fine sand to tumble.

Polish-tumbling usually means things like rouge, borne by crushed walnut shell media.

Konstantin the Red

Gunther von Schwartzburg's splint probably is the in-and-out variety. What weight of metal are you considering, along with your leather weight? Using a middling ounce weight of leather seems like it would go -- 5-6oz. If I don't miss my guess, the nine-ounce tended most to appear in vambraces, with ...

Konstantin the Red

Vinegar method: soak, submerged in enough distilled (white) vinegar to cover, and outdoors, at least several hours if not all day. Remove remaining reacted but stuck on zinc coating with green or brown scrubbie fixed into a sanding disc if your piece is big enough to want powertool speed. Finish the...

Konstantin the Red

Thing that gives linen its strength is its fibers are very long. Silk, same story. Long-staple cotton (the more expensive cotton) is like that too. They all make longlasting garments. Though silk that stays close to the skin in wear eventually decays from skin chemistry and grows holes. Like they sa...

Konstantin the Red

If indeed that plate under the straps is a metal plate and not of stout leather, say.

All the wrist flexing of course is taking place a couple inches over.

Konstantin the Red

Panel 6 listening man seems extensively harnessed in cuirbouilli above the thighs. His legs might be all plate, but observe his arm, seen to advantage. Those are the shapes and articulation I associate with cuirbouilli pieces laid over a mailshirt's sleeves, plus floating cop and spaud which likely...

Konstantin the Red

http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=60741 That isn't a pic of a GB's barbe-plate, which I think is what's causing the mischief. It's of a sort of supergorget. I think the actual GB is one layer of steel in. http://www.thetimeseller.com/images/product/1/large/pl_1_2_6398.jpg ...

Konstantin the Red

18ga is a good choice for weight of metal. For workability, it both is, and isn't quite, easier. It is, in that you can move the 18 around easily using that nylon body hammer, just enough to slightly dish your lames, about the amount that you got in your cop pic. This fits the lames to your musculat...

Konstantin the Red

Fearghus, looks to me like creasing-stake work, the finger bulges getting raised down on the stake with rounded or ball pein hammers.

Konstantin the Red

Maybe not quite that, but it's a piece of it. Wade'd like you to concentrate entirely on getting the bulge, after which any curving to fit the arm is pretty trivial on a spaud's cop. So I think you do get it, and now all you want is a deeper dish in your stump to get you there.

Konstantin the Red

Thor's is a different setup, but identical effect. Headquartered in England, so well suited to ship all over the Continent. Strongly represented in Australia for sure, and I suppose New Zealand, so there's a help to our Antipodean readers.

Konstantin the Red

It might do 'er. If not, go ahead and splurge on the Garland and try it again -- the Garland mallets shape themselves to the work as needed.

Konstantin the Red

And in the sixteenth century, English armor looked quite as contemporary Germans were making it. Henry VIII brought in German armouring talent to build harness for the English Court, and a lot of that gear was well documented. By that century there were many distinguishable regional styles of plate ...

Konstantin the Red

I'm down to contribute . . . Or even a sticky thread here that lists links to google docs that are .pdf's of collected threads or articles. Which is what I'm advocating, the sticky thread -- links, threads, exerpts, whole essays maybe (or just links to them). Not that bigfredb's Archive-Florilegium...

Konstantin the Red

Angle grinders: chainsaw cutting discs http://katools.com/images/LANC_SQUIRE.jpg fit in angle grinders. They are very scary tools, but highly efficient for hogging-out. Emphatically, use both handles in your angle grinder and wear shop goggles. With chainsaw discs, surprises are bad things. Indeed, ...

Konstantin the Red

Nice tip on the split face hammer, I will look into that. Garland Mfg's kelly-green page of split-head mallets . As hammers go, pretty expensive. Value for money for smoothly dishing and raising metal, superb. Sometimes you can score old softface mallets, even obsolete Garland or Chicago models, on...

Re: Designing a forge

Re: collecting how-to articles

Re: Gorget preference?

Re: Designing a forge

Re: Making some splint arms - what weight leather?

Re: Heralds: Blazon Help Please

Re: Wrought Iron - for armouring?

Re: The idea of a "composite armour"

Re: Thinking about Gambeson

Re: Making some splint arms - what weight leather?

Re: Closing the camp gate - hardcore

Re: Sugarloaf visor modification

Re: Closing the camp gate - hardcore

Re: Vervelles, how they were made?

Re: Rattan Falchion?

Re: Vervelles, how they were made?

Re: What would you use for gambeson materials...

Re: If you could ask the 'founders'?

Re: Rattan Falchion?

Re: Polishing A plate lamellar

Re: Making some splint arms - what weight leather?

Re: How can I tell if it's safe to heat this steel?

Re: What would you use for gambeson materials...

Re: Early 14th century gauntlets

Re: Cuirasses on the Pistoia Altarpiece

Re: Agincourt Great Bascinet, bevor and gorget - Patterns

Re: First Armor Project Spaulders

Re: Simple gauntlet patterns

Re: First Armor Project Spaulders

Re: First Armor Project Spaulders

Re: First Armor Project Spaulders

Re: Quest for a good BOTN/IMCF/ACL plate armour

Re: collecting how-to articles

Re: First Armor Project Spaulders

Re: First Armor Project Spaulders