The Armour Archive

wcallen

Or a totally useless response - do what I always did. Just go blind. I am pretty near sighted (ok, very). SCA sticks are all pretty big anyway, so I just learn to deal with watching fuzzy sticks and fuzzy people instead of crisp, clear ones. It has always worked fine. I even played with collegiate f...

wcallen

Depends on what you want. Early and late are both fun. I tend to focus on the armour. My versions of mid and late (both pretty simple) Mid century: <img src="http://www.allenantiques.com/images/mini-Geoffrey-1340-overall.jpg"> Late 14th/early 15th: <img src="http://www.allenantiques.com/images/mini-...

wcallen

See if someone near you has a copy of Boccia, L. G. , Coelho, E.T., L"Arte dell"Armatura in Italia. Bramante Editrice: Milano. 1967. Boccia, Lionello G., Armature di S. Maria delle Grazie di Curtatone di Mantova e l"Armatura Lombarda del "400. Bramante Editrice: Milano. 1982. Man...

wcallen

Steve, I was always under the impression that much if not all of the modern renaissance of affordable riveted mail came out of your efforts. Esp. the flat and wedge stuff which I think is completely traceable to you. It is a lot better than what was out there before. Thank you. Before no one would h...

wcallen

Closest I have is a full list of the names of the normans in England pre conquest and the ones that came over on the boats. That is pretty much the same period and people.

Unfortunately it is in hard copy and a 1619 edition, so I don't play with it a lot. Looking for anything special?

Wade

wcallen

Yea, that is part of the 'none of the Indian mail is really right' part. I have several bits of authentic 'flat' mail. It isn't flat at all. Just not round. Sometimes it is flat-ish (a lot squarer than the super-flat Indian stuff). But the nice stuff definitely has shape like a D or a shallow triang...

wcallen

That is very similar to what I did. Actually, it was probably 5 rows.

Wide enough to be a collar, but not enough to have to be tailored for a particular person.

Wade

wcallen

I don't know enough about mail to really say. I think James' answer is as close as you are going to get to accurate. The real problem in my book is that the mail coming out of India in either flat or round isn't really the right look. Most of the real mail I see is more subtle in its shaping. The 'f...

wcallen

Generally I see the opening in the surviving ones at the front. Keeping to my silly tradition of posting images I am sure I own - m m Both have collars, though the second one is hard to see. The neck hole is certainly rounded to actually fit to the base of the neck - kind of like clothes are made. T...

wcallen

Given the standard of correctness you are accustomed to, I will guess that you will end up replacing everything to build your 15th century harness. Until then... Most people really won't know the difference between your legs and a mid 15th century Italian pair. There are a lot of differences, but th...

wcallen

It depends on the date of the piece, not on the shape of the breastplate. 'globose' really just means round. There are globose breastplates formed basically in one piece in several different time periods. My guess is that you are asking about 14th century ones. In that case, out. The only way to go....

wcallen

This is for a 'beater kit' right? So you could do anything you want to. Base it on a particular piece or not. Anything from a solid breastplate (a little late for you in mid century) through the Wisby styles, to a front and back composed of square-ish plates that are sort of half way between a coat ...

wcallen

Much of the mail I have been playing with is very tiny. I did some more measurements on the sleeve with the 'big' rings. There is no such thing as one measurement that accurately reflects all of the rings, but I got: wire thickness - .030 in. (pretty consistent, and really it is right about that). I...

wcallen

I have been staring at the sleeves some more. Yes, they are sleeves like those. But in a lot worse condition. Full, wrap around, complete sleeves if you don't count all of the moth holes in them. I added some estimates of ring inside diameter to the site. 5/32 - 7/32 inch i.d. depending on how I mea...

wcallen

Yes, there are some in Gratz. I think that they are actually all over the place. They are just hard to actually see because they are either in a drawer or buried inside a harness. I put the bends in Geoffrey's elbows in his 1250 shirt in the back too. It seemed 'right' to me as well. But the bends I...

wcallen

I just got my hands on 2 mail gussets. They are attributed to the 16th c. They are not a pair. I am not an expert when it comes to classifying mail. From what I have heard, these do seem to be European. They may be 16th c. or they may be earlier - into the 15th c. I try to be conservative in my dati...

wcallen

English brasses/effigies seem to indicate underneath. Italian art definitely indicates over. I am not as up on burgundian as I should be. Find some pictures and see what they did. If I were making something up for this era, I would do under if the sleeve is long enough to provide a cover for the ins...

wcallen

A simple link. m Everything on that page is Laurel work. The pieces are attributed. A combination of my work (Wade), Aaron's, Tracy's and even a little of Chuck's. That would be Will, Valerius, Claire and Cad. A few of the bits are very old, some are pretty new. We have all done plenty of other piec...

wcallen

Terms are way to interchangeable, but in modern parlance this is a close helmet: m It is a later 16th century helmet. It covers the neck pretty well, but would have been worn with a gorget like this: m There are several surviving armours (really probably many, many) but they tend to be under-illustr...

wcallen

Pitbull - German with floating elbow and separate vambraces. OK, narrow it down some more. 1490? 1520? They are totally different. Churburg is an armoury, they have lots of different types of elbows. 14th, 15th, 16th (and I think even 17th). c. elbows. You are probably thinking of the ones on the fa...

wcallen

We may be talking about different things with a "Jeweler's torch". We owned 2 of them back in the Valerius Armouries days. They are tiny O/A torches designed for jewelry work. That is what we used them for. They didn't cut anything. Maybe what is really meant here is a normal O/A kit with ...

wcallen

Updates. OK, I added some pictures to the web site for A-27 (the first arm). m Don't try it with a slow connection. That page will pull about 12 MB down. Click on each image to get really big versions. The first page uses the large images, but shrinks them using HTML to look like they are smaller on...

wcallen

Custom pictures? Yea, I can try to shoot some. It is a little annoying that I only have one shot of this piece on the web anyway. From memory - there are signs of damage (denting) at/near the point. The point is almost a point, but it is rounder from the top than it looks from the side. It is mostly...

wcallen

First, as always, it depends on what period/style armour you are making. But generally, yes. Deeper. Whether more pointy or more round will depend on the style you are aiming for. Never assume that an elbow is an elbow. I have several from the 16th century and they are all sorts of different depths ...

wcallen

One more update. I shot some more pictures - the kid on horseback. He is riding one of the lesson horses at the stable where he rides. They are on the normal page: m I also weighed the armour. All of it, with the gambeson, belts, wooden sword and everything (except the shield) - 29 pounds. The mail ...

wcallen

Yea, kind of like our interpretation of that: <img src="http://www.allenantiques.com/images/mini-Geoffrey-1340-overall.jpg"> Sort in the front, long in the back. The waist is roughly where the top belt is sitting. Very different lengths for other periods. The look of the brasses is a little odd beca...

wcallen

Yes.

And how much they need shortening will depend on their shape, how they fit and the padding underneath. A well-fitted greave can go pretty high. My guess is that these 'off the rack' ones don't fit that well, so they will need to be a little extra short.

Wade

wcallen

A few bad detail shots: Showing the general from of the elbow and the Y strap from the inside of the elbow: <img src="http://www.allenantiques.com/images/Geoffrey-1340-inside-elbow.jpg"> Showing the outside of the elbow (reflections are really bad, the disk looks a lot better in person): <img src="h...

wcallen

Yup, you caught me. The chausses are socks up to the knees. They go up under the cuisses. They are attached to the clothing underneath with points and I ran a lace around the top as a garter. They are not attached to the cuisses. I thought about making them go all the way up the leg, but they would ...

wcallen

Howdy Aaron, No, no gauntlets. I did think about them a lot. A simple set of Wisby's would have finished the thing off nicely. I did get some steel for them from Tom (which I will have to return). The mail took forever. This type of harness really needs it to look right. The gauntlets would have bee...

wcallen

Oddly enough, I don't think he has any real idea how he fits in the grand scheme of things. He has had a new armour (more usually a coherent partial armour) every year he can remember. The locals around here are used to him showing up in armour so there aren't all that many comments. We also don't p...

wcallen

The arms on the shield and surcoat are shamelessly stolen from real arms of a real medieval entity. Which one? The Imperial City of Nurnberg Yup. It seemed like it would be fun. I have the simple version of it on lots of the pieces in my collection since they used it as the guild mark for the city....

wcallen

Construction details and notes on this harness, in case anyone cares. This seems to be a style that many people might be interested in. Knees are symmetric. They wrap around the same amount on both sides. They are really pretty deep (probably too deep to reasonably be done by dishing). I aimed for e...

wcallen

Do what I did on the Halloween costume this year. The elbows are simple cops with round things on them. The upper arms are all any SCA fighter would really need. They cover the outside of the arm where you get hit. Add 1/2" or so on the front and most of the bicep is actually covered too since ...

wcallen

I do most of my round head rivets on a lead block. This allows me to polish them before using them and keep the head the right shape. I do the same with the custom rivets I got as part of Mac's order. I have used commercial rivet headers too, but the dents tend to be rougher than I would prefer. Whi...

Mail Gussets

Re: Halloween costume - 2009