The Armour Archive

wcallen

Big rolls in stainless? Heat. Heat is always your friend when doing big things in stainless. I expect that you might possibly be able to do it without heat if you do enough of the flairing on an anvil, but it will be harder to keep it from cracking anyway. I expect that you may not really want a "bi...

wcallen

Corey,

Cool. It would be a lot of fun to have a certain someone show up. Let's see what we can do to encourage that.

Wade

wcallen

I would really REALLY like to come this year. Especially since I now live in upstate south Carolina :). Not far at all. I think we accidentally went very near your location when we were driving the wrong way from an archery tournament out at Green Creek NC. Very, very close to you. At least part of...

wcallen

One more comment about the hinges. I would make the template a bit longer to accommodate the mis-matched overlaps that can happen. Instead of 2" length, I may try 2 1/4" next time. I seem to be the odd man out here, but I avoid the problem a different way. I don't like playing around with fiddly li...

wcallen

Some of us ... At least Talbot and I... are definitely looking forward to having the book in our hot little hands.

Trying... hard... not... to... give... away... details.....

Wade

wcallen

A-267 looks like quite a coup. Sixteenth-century Italian armour feels a bit under-represented in museums and collections today. Is what comes up for sale today pretty overwhelmingly South German? Filippo Negroli and his Contemporaries makes it sound like the Italians were still churning out plenty ...

wcallen

Greensboro?

You are just stupidly close. I know of armour centers/people who care in Graham, near Efland and south of Raleigh. Another in Asheville too. Less well set up and we can get some more parts of the state.

I expect if you asked nicely we could find a way to talk...

Wade

wcallen

If all goes well, I will have my latest stuff by the end of August. I have some work that should finish up around then too, so Sept./Oct. will probably be good all around.

Wade

wcallen

As someone who really wants to get into armoring, and didn't realize that there were people this close to me, I'm extremely interested in this! Where are you? There are people in the most unexpected places. If I ask nicely, I can get 2 people who make armour to my house in about an hour (plus me). ...

wcallen

Doug..

Effusive?

I don't play quite so lively a game, but my copy should already be reserved. When it comes out, I will have it. It documents a great collection, with some very, very nice early examples of armour. Definitely a must have in an armour library.

Wade

wcallen

I expect that this detail will likely end up being the least of your worries. From what I have seen, no matter which you pick, you are probably going with a product out of India as the basis of your mail. The links used aren't quite right no matter which you pick. At least not in any of the pieces I...

wcallen

This was last year we set this up with this thread: http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=178776&hilit=Study List for this year: http://www.allenantiques.com/2016StudySession.html I expect that we will be late this year too. First, we are dealing with the summer archery season. ...

wcallen

European Armour in the Tower of London (Dufty) has a picture of the breast and back of the 3/4 armour from the inside. That helps clear things up a lot. Plate XXXVII. Sasuke built one. Tracy was trying to get me to make one for the kid one year, but I wimped out. I have a spaulder much like what I t...

wcallen

Creases are cool. You know you want a full crease in the front and a nice crease up part way in the back too.

Go for it.

Wade

wcallen

A perfectly reasonable conjecture. Sure. I wonder how thick the survivors are? Buff leather coats are a lot thinner than 3/8", but leather and felt are not in any way similar. You may easily need a lot more thickness in felt to get similar protection. It would still be fun to know if there is a basi...

wcallen

More information as it becomes available would be highly appreciated. It does seem that we now have some concrete proof (from the Museum of London) that there was such a thing as a wool felt "buff" coat. Maybe not common, but common enough that it appears (at least) portions of a few survive. So, it...

wcallen

Tracy was there too. It seems like a very interesting idea.
It should certainly be easier to get decent wool felt than buff.

Tracy mentioned carpet padding as a possible source for thick wool felt these days. I look forward to talking about it.

Wade

wcallen

If he doesn't have Toby's book, he should get it.

If he needs to see it before he gets his copy, he can drive over and say hi to me. I have a copy, and I am sure we can make the rest of his day worthwhile.

He knows where I am. Short drive down I-40.

Wade

wcallen

I was looking trough Toms pinterest gallery and noticed these legs: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/78/95/f8/7895f8935aa39cf2e987a51bf6b534cb.jpg I found the half greave setup riveted permanently to the knees interesting. From the style I would place this as a proto gothic leg, middl...

wcallen

The knees in Paris are on the right hand figure here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/4513602843

Wade

wcallen

We can use this as a tool to "learn what the armour is telling us." You can actually see this from either the outside or the inside, but having both views is extra nice. Looking at my "archer's knee" we see: rivets along the upper edge. Rivets at the sides of the "cuisse" Rivets (and a buckle) on th...

wcallen

Mine was sold as a late 15th c. survivor. I personally believe that it is early 16th c. I have seen surviving examples in Paris and I have seen pictures of surviving examples in Madrid. From memory none of them look exactly like the thing in the manuscript, but they are close and cover the right par...

wcallen

Me? I buy old stuff, or make things when I really get into the mood. I don't keep track of the modern armourers as much as I should. Klang is definitely worth talking to. He has a variety of skills. Gruber seems to be getting work done. Personally, I would look for someone who has done things in the...

wcallen

note the nice pictures. Knees, not elbows. I have made them and I think that it is really something people do to make things easy for the armourer. They (think) that they can get away with a lot less customization in size/shape and get away with it. For many customers it seems to work. As the pictur...

wcallen

The turner or separate arm and pauldron are the superior mechanism. The pauldrons connected to arms without a turner are going to have to pull on the leathers as they twist. This seems to be a lower end solution. Wade Lower end or just earlier? I know we don't have much surviving 14th century piece...

wcallen

Thanks very much, i found that! Mr. Allen has a piece on his webpage: http://www.allenantiques.com/A-242.html Best, Indi And: http://www.allenantiques.com/A-27.html http://www.allenantiques.com/A-37.html http://www.allenantiques.com/A-195.html http://www.allenantiques.com/A-171.html http://www.alle...

wcallen

Oh, and I don't mind just bashing out the backs by dishing. The real ones I have measured indicate that this is reasonable, they get thinner exactly where you would expect if you just bang them out and don't worry about thinning. A breastplate is exactly the opposite.

Wade

wcallen

As I watched this go by, it occurred to me that the waistcoat cuirass was really an example of a very similar pattern design, but applied in a way that doesn't require welds. The cuirass is pieced together with seams where they need to be to accomplish the appropriate depth easily and the pieces hav...

wcallen

Buffing, Speed, Good (within some reason). I know I have run 12" wheels at 3450. We ran 2" wide 14" wheels at 1725. Direct mount on a 2 hp motor. "buff" - clean up from grinding was fast, but it was not something to take on lightly. When something catches, you get out of the way. That is to fast for...

wcallen

Uh, yes. Very nice to have.

I still like books though... More pictures everywhere is good.

Wade

wcallen

I pulled a pike down and measured it. I probably picked the wrong way to do it, but the information is now available:

http://www.allenantiques.com/W-42.html

The taper is pretty subtle, but is definitely there, and it makes a real difference.

Wade

wcallen

Tom did a "2 point mushed point" version of a breastplate. He had two darts somewhere down low. What you have built really minimizes the amount of metal movement needed. Personally, I don't mind a little metal movement, and I hate dealing with welds. I expect that if the pattern were cut with a litt...

wcallen

almost anything on a 2x72 (even my Grizzly) works nicely. If the thing is hard, I work it with bare hands to so I don't have to worry about over-heating. You can regrind a little or a lot depending on what you want to do. Get the face smooth, John is right. I tend to be sloppier than many and skip s...

wcallen

I have been wandering and working a bit.
I will try to get the measurements up soon. First, I have to remember how reasonably to get one down....

Wade

wcallen

Yes, it has a nice article on that with line drawings and some comparable items.
The pictures aren't huge, but the line drawings seem to help pull out the details, and I don't remember thinking that there was anything wrong with the drawings.

Wade

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