The Armour Archive

wcallen

I have now been involved in the making of a few items of children's armour - ages 3, 5 and 10 (if I remember correctly). I made the arms and legs out of incredibly thin stuff, but I kept the major plates 'thick' to give this things a little solidity. I found 18g to work very nicely. Other than just ...

wcallen

Basically they are all hidden collections.

That Is why I think that most museums should be required to sell most of their holdings.

Wade

wcallen

There are a lot of pictures that show plackarts worn with something that does not look like a solid breastplate. There are serveral theories about what they wore with them. If we look at the surviving pieces, they are either still connected to a solid upper breastplate, or seem to have been in the p...

wcallen

If you look carefully at the pictures of the burgonet you can see rivets (esp. on the left as you are looking at it) in the helmet bowl. These attach a strip of leather. The lining is sewn to the bottob edge of this leather strip. You can see the rivets that hold this leather strip on most of the he...

wcallen

I am running out of space so I sent them to you by e-mail. You can post them if you have space....

Wade

wcallen

I wouldn't think about it as 'how far off the body does it sit' - I would make it look like the original and then see how far off the body it sits. I have never worried about how far out it sits. As my wife sitting next to me just said - it depends on the style completely. A peascod will fit differe...

wcallen

I have had a couple of questions that may be helped by pictures. Bascinets - Here are some shots. They will show the lining and the spacing a sizes of the holes for the lining. Bascinet with lining from Churburg 2 bascinets in the Tower (at least formerly) showing holes The Churburg book indicates t...

wcallen

As I remember, Tom was tempering gauntlets as a unit... It made sure any warping was minimized and that it was uniform. I think it would do pretty bad things to the brass - at least loosen it up. All the straps will be toast (litterally).... I am thinking about tempering up my arms (they are done, a...

wcallen

I claim no responsability for this - I just stored the link.

http://www.eskimo.com/~cwn/hardening.html

This is a description of one set of instructions for tempering 1050 armour.

Wade

wcallen

There are a few surviving sets like this. There arepictures of them in L'Arte - and it bends past 90 degrees. You can see two of them on pages 47 and 54. I have a pair that I made for SCA combat. They work just fine. You can't quite sit on your ankles, but there are a lot of reasons for this in my l...

wcallen

I fought off and on for a lot of years in various forms of globose breastplate. They aren't supposed to be in contact with the human body in the middle. They touch at the waist and at the top - and often along the sides. I have had various annoyances - but most of them were from the evil SCA style l...

wcallen

Deacon, I wouldn't wait for a place you can drive to - unless you just happen to be in the right areas you will be waiting a long time. There really don't seem to be all that many suppliers for spring steel sheet, you just have to deal with shipping..... The truck guy seemed amused when he pulled up...

wcallen

Anyone who is not stretching the literature I have seen will have to guess on the lining for early helms. We just don't really have data. Barbute. If you look at them there is a line of rivets around them. It is roughly in the same place as the rivets on a salade (but there is more metal below the l...

wcallen

On the subject of protection and kidneys..... I often long for the bad old days when you could mostly decide what you wanted to wear... I have watched people wearing no armour to speak of blow off really heavy shots and I fought for along time in armour that didn't pass modern regs - to no ill effec...

wcallen

James is right - I can get a little abbreviated in my notes. 'Tempering' in my note means any heat treating, for 1050 it will involve at least hardening and then a temper. For even more reliability it may involve an anneal, then harden, then temper set of operations. Sloppy me, I should be more care...

wcallen

Try this - the pictures are small to save everyone time.

These are from L'Arte Del'Armature in Italia.
front

side

back

Thanks to James for scanning the book.

Wade

[This message has been edited by wcallen (edited 06-17-2002).]

[This message has been edited by wcallen (edited 06-17-2002).]

wcallen

Bascinet Simple padded lining forming a sack. Usually (we have lots of examples http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif ) having a 'drawstring' like top to allow it to be fitted a little bit. It is sewn to the edge of the helmet through a bunch of holes around the edge of the helmet. These holes ...

wcallen

Brian had it re-published. His add was on the top of the page the time I looked (it may not be there now.... http://www.chivalrybookshelf.com/titles/wisby/wisby.htm It is probably available from amazon too - but I bet Brian gets a little more money if you buy it from him. If you want to know anythin...

wcallen

Yes - what type of helmet and what period.

There aren't many ways they did it, but they are different so we don't want to lead you astray.

Wade

wcallen

I find that I like 1050 - both for its authenticity (very important to me) and because of the way it works.

As I remember, Knuut did some work from 1090/1095 - maybe he is lurking and could make a comment?

Wade

wcallen

The basic patterns should be easy - just take them from the Wisby book - they have all sorts of styles and there is no way anyone can say that they aren't period. There is a reasonable reprint available. It contains scale patterns for all of the sets found.

Wade

wcallen

I was about 14 when I started. My high school had a metal shop and a cooperative teacher. Very few of the tools were actually all that applicable, but at least we could cut metal. I won't show you the armour I made at that age (pretty horrible), but I still have one of the pieces to show me where I ...

wcallen

I have 2 additional viewpoints to add. We were probably some of the first armourers to use spring steel in SCA armour (we were doing it almost 20 years ago). We never bothered to harden or temper it at all. We did 2 kinds of work - hot work and cold work. When we did hot work the pieces would have b...

wcallen

From what I remember, there really are (or were) 3 separate museums with armour in Vienna. The Waffensammlung The city museum the war museum. The last one is a bunch of 17th c. stuff and cannon and the like. The other 2 were really worth a look. Kind of like London - different stuff in different mus...

wcallen

Most of the cold rolled I have run into is actually another variation - CRA - cold rolled annealled.

That means it is even softer than hot rolled, not harder.

All very confusing in the end.

Mostly the hot rolled is a little rougher and has the nasty scale that is so hard to get off.

Wade

wcallen

Off the top of my head there are 2 books with pictures from the Musee de l'Armee - Les Armes et la Vie Les Armures des Rois de France au Musee de l'Armeee Both my J. Reverseau if memory serves. This is just from memory, but it should be pretty accurate. I have some pics somewhere, but not in an onli...

wcallen

It really does not work harden (as in crack) much more quickly than mild. I have moved it around a lot cold, but I tend to get lazy and use heat for some bits on mild and spring. It is strong enough to make arms from 18g even if you don't temper it - though it will still dent. We have made parts out...

wcallen

In general (since I both play with real armour and have made enough SCA stuff to qualify as knowing something) SCA armour is different. I think that the real reason is maintenance. There is nothing all that different except the amount of money we are willing to spend on our armour and the amount of ...

wcallen

I borrowed a really deep throated micrometer and waved it around on some of my pieces of old armour this weekend. This was by no means really scientific, but it was kind of fun. Some results: Late 16th cent. normal burgonet. German, Nuremberg. polished. Bowl varied between .050 and .060 in thickness...

wcallen

I prefer the Walter Suckert stuff. He has a good eye for the lines of the piece. Karl is admittedly better than most, but he is really good at decoration (from looking at this site and other pieces earlier). His actual lines are not all that good. I would like to have Karl's skill at decoration - bu...

wcallen

Make it in one piece - it is so much more fun and you get a real feel of moving metal around. Wait - I guess I have been moving metal around for a while. Some of the method depends on exactly what visor you want to make. I have done them at least 3 different ways, each better suited to different sha...

wcallen

Even if we don't become active, there are some people in NC with some skills and knowledge in various areas of study who are interested in talking to people who are really interested. I know of skilled armourers, pewter casting, brass accoutrement makers and costumers in the area. You might have to ...

wcallen

That is really the only published text on how to make armour. Personally, I think that anyone who wants to make armour should study the history and development of armour so that they can decide what they want to emulate. For that the basic text is "European Armour" by Claude Blair. Between the 2 you...

wcallen

That is the bascinet that is commonly associated with Joan of Arc. I don't remember the Met making any really solid claims to this actually being documentable, but it is possible. The line of lining holes is not only not uncommon - it is the norm. We just usually don't see them. This is the way lini...

wcallen

Other pictures - (some may be duplicates) are in Martin, Paul Arms and Armour, English published 1968. The text is to be ignored, but there are good pictures including plate VI of some really elegant ones, some effigies (fig. 86, 87) and probably the same painting in fig. 88. There is a different pi...

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