The Armour Archive

wcallen

I work in 14, 16, 18, and 20 g. 1050. I am often more interested in making something that approximates the authentic pieces than in minimizing weight. This works out to .075-.035. I really would like to build an authentic breastplate, but I haven't set up the power hammer and I don't have any .125 o...

wcallen

Some of the reproduction armour in the house: m This is another wall of the same room. It was taken at a different time so it includes one of the same suits. m As an aside, for a while the wall with suits looked like this: m When my wife saw it she said that there seemed to be something missing, the...

wcallen

This is what some of the armour looks like in my house: m I don't have any good pictures of the reproduction stuff as it normally sits. This image at leaves gives an impression of how I display the kid's armours: m I now have a stand for the one he is wearing in the picture and a stand for the newes...

wcallen

I keep mine all over the place. Some of it is on custom-made armour stands (I keep coming up with new and different ways to build them), some is hanging on the walls, some from beams and the remainder is piled in bookshelves. The only mail shirt on display is on a commercial half mannequin. I have t...

wcallen

From what I have seen (mainly 2nd half of the 16th c.), The higher quality stuff is a lot more likely to be attached to the arming clothes than the lower end stuff. Munition armour seems to have been designed to be thrown over more normal clothes. For instance: m doesn't show any signs of needing to...

wcallen

The Wallace was supposed to be re-opening their main armour rooms right about now. They weren't open when I was there Nov. 21st, but it was supposed to reopen... uh.... Dec. 15? Something like that. The Tower has a little armour back in there. Basically royal stuff. Overall, just a tiny bit of the R...

wcallen

I have done what Mac describes too. It is a bore, but it works. The tiny torch helps a lot both because it gives you the right size flame and because it doesn't weigh as much. The nice thing about it is that it can be done in sections. Once you have the galvanizing off, you can weld up the places th...

wcallen

This is an authentic russeted piece:

http://www.allenantiques.com/images/A-122.jpg

The color is maybe a little browner in real life. All of the other pictures I took of the piece really washed it out toward the bluing color. Photographs rarely do the color justice.

It is an interesting and different effect.

Wade

wcallen

SCA armourers often use pretty big rivets. In the dim, dark past most of the articulations were 3/16" rivets. Having played with a lot more real stuff since then, most authentic rivets are pretty close to 1/8", but often with larger heads than you see on normal, modern 1/8" rivets. It...

wcallen

Sean will probably be reading my copy. Long before I get to see it. I am part of the group order, but I don't know when I will actually get my grubby little mitts on it.

Dave will have lots of copies (for a while). Hmm. I wonder when he will see them?

Wade

wcallen

Understood, and it is fine with me. I just like to add information so people can choose to do something based on information instead of guesses. If someone wants to build a 16th c. outfit based on what was used in tournament and use in it SCA tournament, that would be great. Please do. And post pict...

wcallen

This has examples of both big leafy stuff and small stuff. Embossed and etched. m Zoom in for detail. These are more 3-dimensional: m Wade P.S. You aren't that far away, maybe we could arrange a visit. The armour is always here. Actually, I will be in Crozet over thanksgiving... I can't bring the wo...

wcallen

They aren't 'gothic', more likely late 16th century. But they are bits of armour. I don't see any reason to suspect they aren't real.

Wade

wcallen

That is really just the period version of perforated plate. It was used as an inner visor probably to allow lots of vision and air when you didn't need all that protection - like in a tourney where you were whacking each other with clubs or some such. It is mid-16th century and pretty crudely cut. I...

wcallen

Thanks for the comments. In reverse order.. He doesn't need a helmet with a grill. When we play with boffers we don't use helmets. Or armour. I come from the era when people still fought SCA heavy at a reasonable age (I practiced at 15 and authorized a few days after my 16th birthday). Boffers are w...

wcallen

Once again, halloween means some new armour for Geoffrey. He is now 9 years old and in 4th grade. This is his 8th real shot at armour (assuming we don't count the conical helmet and shirt of mail I made him when he was 4 months old). Continuing the tradition of always making armour from a different ...

wcallen

The answer depends on what you are going to do and how high end your burgonet is. For a munition one, this is the way to go: m This is a period lining in a 16th c. burgonet (a real one, not a modern copy). It is attached to 2 strips - one runs across the brow just above the brim and the other is jus...

wcallen

Everything Mac said is right. I was amazed how much putting the flutes in DIDN'T mess up the articulation. Basically it worked before and it worked after in a very similar manner. You will also have to deal with the fact that the flutes will line up nicely when the gauntlet is fully extended and not...

wcallen

I was there recently. If you are interested in guns, there is a lot of stuff. If armour, there are enough pieces to make it interesting, but not enough that you will risk overload. It is mostly 16th c. and later. There is a case with some earlier bits. Many of them cam from Rhodes/Chalcis or from th...

wcallen

The real answer will depend completely on the real type of round, load, powder, etc. As chef said, Alan Williams and others show that later shot proof armour was formed from softer, more easily deformed material rather than tempered spring. An example of a not-too-ugly shot proof breastplate with so...

wcallen

The knuckle height rule is the standard blacksmith's heavy work rule. My anvils vary from that height for my 150-200 pound 'blacksmithing' anvils up to my light one (60 pounds) that actually sits on top of my table. It comes up to somewhere about 1/3 of the way up my rib cage. Most of my stakes fall...

wcallen

On the thickness issue. I think this one is a lot like the religious wars about the effectiveness of longbows and armour. Neither side can really be right - armour wasn't a bunch of 1/4 in. thick plates that dragged people down, and it wasn't ever all 20 g. tempered spring steel. Armour was both ver...

wcallen

Bob, Yes, there are several examples of wearing armour after the 17th century. They were worn in WWI against tanks (didn't work very well), and there is a book full of Bashford Dean's concepts for very modern armour (basically experimental, but certainly shows various types of helmets really used). ...

wcallen

Some background can help in convincing people (they 'know that you are wrong when you say foolish things like armour wasn't too heavy to wear') What annoys someone about armour? Heat, not weight. How do we know? We wear it - that doesn't convince them, must be different We work with real pieces - th...

wcallen

Top and bottom confuse me. I tend to think of the plates as the inner and outer plates. Teh outer one is on the side where the point of the elbow is, and the inside is next to the bend of the elbow. Nothing is ALWAYS the case, but this may be the thing that breaks that rule. The outside of the lower...

wcallen

Yes, both sides should have sliding rivets.

There are slots in all of the articulations.

I get app. 3/4" total movement from the slots between the knuckle gadling and the cuff. It seems to be the same amount of movement on both sides.

Wade

wcallen

I can check tonight, but as I remember the sliding rivets on these go on both sides. They provide all of the side to side motion so you want to get what you can. The back of the hand part of mitten and fingered German gothic gauntlets seem to work in about the same way. I base my detailed opinions o...

wcallen

The Higgins now has the ex-Churburg, ex-Gwynn late 15th c. Italian export breastplate. Maybe Chef could get his hands on that sometime? It would be very interesting to see measurements from it. It wasn't originally made for one of the Churburg high end armours and it might show some different charac...

wcallen

Chef, Just in case it would offer another perspective - the next sale here: m is offering one of these for sale. I am not an expert, and the image isn't really all that good, but they seem relatively impressed with it given the reserve price. The item is lot 325. They think it is south german/Swiss ...

wcallen

Yea, mostly a 16th century thing. I know that there are some really early 16th century ones (max and similar smooth pieces), but even the late 15th c. ones I am used to seeing have a strap and buckle. It can't be that clean, nothing really changes on a century boundary, but it certainly isn't someth...

wcallen

Mac, thanks for the info on the Avant armour. That is great to have. I don't have any reason to doubt that the dummy is about the right size, it displays really well. It has always been one of my favorite armours. James, yup, that is a fine counter example of the right size dummy on a harness. That ...

wcallen

All of my backplates are pretty late, but sure we can do that. Without measuring, the answer is that they are really thin. While I was at the Wallace, Toby showed me the pin striped half suit. It actually has a heavier back than breast, but it is a very late one and, I assume, very atypical in this ...

wcallen

You are in a little bit of luck. It just so happens that elbow was available so I played with it a little bit over the weekend, I just hadn't uploaded the new text: m I guess you want a back or side photograph. That can happen, it won't be immediately. The cop actually wraps around the back a reason...

wcallen

My 5'5" estimate for Avant was sort of a guess, and it was actually wrong. I was comparing the armour to my sister, not my wife (oops), my sister is 5'6" so we are getting pretty close to Toby's estimate. The total weight for the Avant harness I am used to seeing was taken without the miss...

wcallen

Mac, thanks for the real numbers off of the Avant armour. My impression is that when Toby wrote about the thickness of the 'breastplate' he was using the general term so it applied to the plackart/lower breastplate as well as the upper breast. He was probably using your measurements as his backgroun...

Annual Halloween Armour - 2008