The Armour Archive

wcallen

As tom said - don't worry about being nice to the stuff - I take some of it to school shows and let the kids play with it. Don't worry about grommets. My stuff is steel, it should be able to handle being played with. I guess I will have to bring the c. 1500 breast. The ballock is no problem. It is a...

wcallen

I assume that we can work something out as a get-together. We will see how many people show up and what kind of interest there is. Talking armour is always fun. Some of the things are new since his visit - and they are some of the really cool things. By the way - that breastplate with the trinagular...

wcallen

I am sure there will be a burgonet, finger gauntlets are no problem and some breastplates - all I have to do is decide which ones to bring.... If I bring the B&W breast I will probably have to get the backplate that goes with it back from Tom http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif I have a pair ...

wcallen

Looking at the Atlantia University page it seems to be scheduled for 10 am - noon. Not so good for you.... The registration seem to be here (I am not a big SCA person any more so I don't keep track of these things.....) http://university.atlantia.sca.org/register.html There is an FAQ, schedule of ot...

wcallen

A few of us are hosting a session at the upcoming University of Atlantia. It will be held in Raleigh NC on October 5. This is the posted description: Section 108 'Please Touch' Medieval Armor and Antiquities Museum (Will of Wiltshire, Eldrid Tremayne, Clare de Crecy) Ever go to an exhibit of armor a...

wcallen

The applicability of a triangular roll depends on the period of the breastplate (just like almost everything else). If you happen to be doing one of the correct periods..... We always called them triangular rolls too. They do not actually end up being triangular since one of the corners ends up bein...

wcallen

at least for a little while I could put them up on my site (and take a copy for my own use....). I wouldn't want to leave them there forever, but we could easily post them for a week or so to let people get them as they can..... Drop me a note. Wade P.S. It would be really nice if they actually disp...

wcallen

The Met ones (as I remember) have no back flap plate and no lames on the top of the cop (articulating to the cuisse). These are really cool legs - if the Met (Dean) hadn't messed with them they would be even better (as I remember all they did for sure was add the brass to make it look like the bits ...

wcallen

Do you want to find pieces to buy, or pictures of real things to copy? I have some real knives (and one spoon) on my web site.... You can take a look - if you need measurements I can probably get them for the pieces that interest you.... http://allenantiques.com/Knives-Collection.html There are also...

wcallen

Pictures. We need pictures.

They might (possibly) be similar to a pair of legs now in the Royal Armouries (Tower/Leeds) that came from Churburg - but details are what matter in this type of thing.

Wade

wcallen

1050. All the way. It works, it can be hardened, and it is about as close as we can get to the right thing (unless you want to find someone who will make some 'variable' carbon content steel that ranges from 1030-1070 and just play with it....). 1050-ish is about what they used for good armour. Good...

wcallen

There are (theoretically) 3 differences. 1) mill scale. Exists on hot-rolled, not on cold rolled. It is a pain ot get off. 2) surface texture. Cold rolled should be smoother than hot rolled. 3) hardness. Cold rolled will have some work hardening, hot rolled will be normalized (at least) possibly ann...

wcallen

UPS offers the service - they also call it COD. You can even tell them what kind of money to accept (check or cash only).

It adds a little to the cost and it takes them a while to get it back to you, but it worked when we tried it.

Wade

wcallen

Half way between pan-head and round head. 1/8" shank - wide head (like a pan head). That may be a bit rare.... but it is the most correct for most periods. It seems that heads got taller as time went on, but they were almost always about 1/8" for both lining and articulation. By the 16th c. they wer...

wcallen

I haven't looked at Sinric's patterns so I don't know what they do specifically. I have made legs patterned after c.1400 legw with no back plates, ones of a slightly later era with back plates, 15th c. legs where they did lots of back plates (Italian, not German - they were different) and 16th c. le...

wcallen

I have used greaseless compounds a lot. We tend to use them in between the final grind and the move to the sisal wheel. They come in a lot of grades - really idicating the grit in them. They can be very coarse to extremely fine. They are sold as 'deburring' or 'scratch finishing' compounds. We tried...

wcallen

I would not claim to be the world's expert on this but.... My best guess is no. Vervelles really tend to be a lot more 'squarish' with highly rounded corners. I am sure that somewhere someone made a completely round one, but it is not the norm. On the other hand, it does look almost exactly like a m...

wcallen

From my experience the whole thing is more complicated than this - mainly because there are lot more choices out there than are normally listed. I have played with a whole bunch of different 'black' compounds. They are all different. There are special ones designed for use with the sisal wheels. The...

wcallen

Using any of these medieval buckles is MUCH better than using off-the-shelf modern buckles. I have used cast ones and I have used ones that I have fabricated. The real annoyance for me (if you are really being picky) is that all of the real armour buckles I have played with (I am sure there are exce...

wcallen

Having now spend $1200 on a book I am probably not the right person to comment, but... I bought this book when it came out - I paid full price and have never regretted it. It is a combination of the original catalog of hte Churburg armoury (a little light on pictures, but descriptions and measuremen...

wcallen

Personally I just use O/A, but I can weigh in on the Authenticity thingy.... Charcoal. Not coal or coke. That is what we would be using if we really cared to do it the right way. We could burn through acres and acres of forest in no time - just like they did... I have also found that the way the met...

wcallen

My guess is that you want:
Dillon, Viscount, An Almain Armourer's Album, London, 1905

Good luck finding it.... Maybe someone will inter-library loan it.

Wade

wcallen

Some of those marks on the one from Germany are pretty good. The ones on the other one are actually pretty mellow - as these things go.... I have done some work where the result was kinda, sorta knarly like some of these. It happened when we got really aggressive and were pushing a lot of metal arou...

wcallen

Ah - not the Black Prince. The BPs arms don't survive, just his very detailed effigy (and helm and gauntlets). That is the arm in Chartres from the Dauphin of France. We talked about that one on a different thread. It does seem to be just a cop and a vambrace - but there is no sign of articulation h...

wcallen

They did not seem to do the same thing on the arms. Actually, the way arms really work you could just cheat and articulate straight to the vambrace with no dishing - but they don't seem to have done it. From memory, the BP arms have a lame top and bottom. Only one, but one on each side. I know that ...

wcallen

The pictures are here:

a leg from Churburg

the leg from the famous Met suit (brass at least added later)

Wade
< 1 minute - how's that for responsive

)

[This message has been edited by wcallen (edited 06-27-2002).]

wcallen

How about pictures of the real thing? Bent? I have that..... I have also made a pair of them. I don't have pictures of them though..... I got some more space on my web provider, so maybe I can post the pics of the real ones today if you want. They really weren't all that hard to make. I did use heat...

wcallen

I got a different impression from the 15th c. salad I played with. The marks on the inside looked to me like cleanup marks - I assumed that the piece had been plannished (at least significantly on the upper half) from the inside onto a surface. The maks were very aggressive, but they really felt lik...

wcallen

I have a Victor set that has been used off and on since I bought it new in 1979. Seems fine. I thought that Mac's was a Harris - but I can't be sure. Victor seems to make good, solid stuff. Once you buy one get a gas saver (if you want to do any hot work with it). The one I have is a combo pilot lig...

wcallen

The sliding rivet thing seems to have been a relativly short-lived thing. It is the only way to fly on late 14th-early 15th c. arms with 'tulip' vambraces (the nice-shapely ones). They seem to have lost interest in the nice shape (they are still often shaped, just not in this way - ask Chef if his v...

wcallen

Costs, no - but one call would probably get them.

http://www.precisionsteel.com
http://www.admiralsteel.com

These seem to be the 2 choices people have found.

Wade

wcallen

The really short answer is that the metal gets hard.... If you are raising you will just decide that you are tired of hitting the hard metal, and you will normalize/anneal it. More reasonably - It mostly depends on how you are working the metal. We have done lots of cops without any annealing. Most ...

wcallen

It ain't pretty, but.... http://allenantiques.com/LH/Guidelines.html is a copy of your guidelines that is web-accessible. If you think you want to keep it there we can clean it up (you can just reference it from anywhere) and I could get you access to fix it. I am in no way trying to steal this - I ...

wcallen

This is not what you asked but.... By the way, I have no connection with Steve and I don't make much mail. I have only made several aventails and a couple of shirts. I made all of mine from scratch (using end cutters) and either a spot welder or O/A torch. Buy the starter kit for making mail from Fo...

wcallen

It is not the same type of thing, but read Claude Blair's "European Armour". It is the one book that will give you a good background on the development of armour and I have not yet found it to be wrong (it is incomplete, but if you know everything in it you will be doing just fine). If you care at a...

Authentic Armour etc. you can play with