The Armour Archive

wcallen

To make information easy to find. This thread:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=157286

is the thread that documents a recreation of the gorget I referenced. There is a lot of detailed information there.

Thanks to John who did the work.....

Wade

wcallen

We are still a few weeks away here in NC. They didn't start season 2 until mid Jan. I always like seeing how different armourers work. I look forward to it. Aaron and I were on a TV short back in the day, and there have been some newspaper articles. That was enlightening. Knowing the truth and seein...

wcallen

I am always happy to help. My collection isn't large, and doesn't contain really nice pieces like the ones you copy, but I can often find a good comparison piece in my collection for many things, and I have more interior images than most collections post in public. I am also willing to take addition...

wcallen

you needed a rope connecting the 2 buildings and a sled (one of the northern types without runners)... or anything flat. Just pull yourself to the other building. I don't know how long the snow will last there. Here in NC, we just wait a couple of days and it goes away. In Wisconsin when I was a kid...

wcallen

I have watched from the side lines as you created the gothic armour and this half armour. More parts just pour out at an amazing rate. The exterior pictures you posted don't show interior details, and I don't see some rivets I might expect, so I am curious how the pauldrons and tassets are put toget...

wcallen

I think the real question would be: Why bother? It seems to be pretty easy to get a gas fired burner to get steel to working heats. The equipment isn't expensive, and can be optimized in various ways. I usually use O/A, but a simple propane burner works well for wider heats. If you have better acces...

wcallen

:lol: I did hold off on the "no gloves" comment, but as a museum person that's driving me crazy. Pish... No gloves? I do it all the time. I get the feeling that other people have more acidic skin/sweat than I do, so I don't seem to cause harm quickly. I do use gloves when we have a whole group of p...

wcallen

Nope.

I have hurt myself many ways, but not that way. I have even cut some pretty thick stuff after I turned 50.

But I messed up my lower back recently just by bending. So anything can go wrong now that we are old.

Wade

wcallen

I remember real amounts of snow and a climate where you really had to clear it. I was a lot younger then. Here we just wait and it goes away pretty quickly. Also, we tend to get more ice than real, fluffy snow so shoveling just isn't the same thing. I am hoping enough of our part of that storm will ...

wcallen

Really? 20 armours? All of the same style. Even I think that is a bit excessive. On the other hand, somehow they think that they can make money selling 20 armours for 20K with stands. I know, they have a lot of issues... but I don't want to imagine what the poor guys who had to make them were paid. ...

wcallen

The silicone negatives I pulled are a bit inconclusive, but I would characterize them as roughly "U" shaped, but with sloped sides... so it is a rounded bottom "V" - so i don't have a character to represent the shape perfectly. "U" may be the closest we have...

Wade

wcallen

Nothing leaps out at me either to scream that it is a fake. I expect a side view would make us all get a better feel for it.

Wade

wcallen

Bayerisches National (Munich) Germanisches National (Nuremberg) Dresden.... look it up, they put the armour back. It has a bunch of child's armours. Two very good public collections with different cool stuff in them (which I have visited) and then Dresden which I haven't. It was east germany then. B...

wcallen

I will try to work the Graz into the budget. Might as well if I am all the way on that side of the world. Or maybe another trip in the future. I am having trouble locating an inventory or catalog of the armour in KHM. Does such an electonic/paper publication exist? They published 2 volumes of "cata...

wcallen

They could be sitting funny, or they could be parts of multiple pairs. Having some real measurements or some more images would help clear that up. Just think about trying to keep track of what "went with" what in Graz. It appears that they really didn't try. I was talking to the curator at the Zuric...

wcallen

James is right. The City Museum has a small number of world-class items. Like the Kastenbrust-ish thing.

Graz isn't all that close, but is well worth a wander if you care about munition stuff -esp. late 16th c. They have some earlier and nicer stuff too.

Wade

wcallen

It will be a while here. We just had the clock maker (season 2 episode 1).

Wade

wcallen

My best guess is that those are working life grinding. Maybe original, first work. Maybe when it was re-worked for a new style. I can't tell without an interior picture. These abrasive marks are still there too: http://www.allenantiques.com/images/A-178-b.jpg I have always felt that there are things...

wcallen

33 years ago when I did it - no forms needed. I just started taking pictures.

Of course things could have changed in that time.

Just goes to show you how long some of us have been wasting our time with this stuff.

Wade

wcallen

What gauge are these in? Is it really impossible to do them cold? It is not actually impossible to do them cold. But you have to either work stupidly hard, or you have to work completely differently. The method illustrated here works well with thin sheet metal. It allows you to move the metal aroun...

wcallen

Back in the dark ages we found a lot of good stuff at Rakow Machinery - they are out in Germantown WI. used to drive out there and find all sorts of cool stuff. Things may easily have changed in 30+ years, but it is worth a try.

Wade

wcallen

I used to be a Dew fan, but after an all-nighter when we had to finish some work before the war and we went through 3 two liter bottles each it kind of lost its glow for me. Aaron (last I heard) is still a fan. I wouldn't say either of us was ADD or ADHD. But that is another story. And getting thing...

wcallen

Exactly what it mimics would depend on how it is finished off.

Best guess of the most likely outcome would be 2nd half of the 15th c. Germanically influenced style of armour. German or Italian "export" style.

It is definitely not typical of any "normal" 16th c. armours.

Wade

wcallen

I'm glad I found something for everyone discuss. I am wondering if the hinge might not be "bling" and part of the decorative motif. Everyone seems to be saying that there was no reason for the hinge to be there. Wade pointed out that the artist appears to have been very careful with the drawing of ...

wcallen

By the way, I like your mail. Much nicer riveted overlap than is common these days. And the geometry on the flat rings is nicer too. I actually think I like the domed punched rings, it avoids that annoying "washer" look a lot of modern mail gets.

Wade

wcallen

A similar eastern shirt:
http://www.allenantiques.com/images/M-1 ... Corner.jpg

Other pictures:
http://www.allenantiques.com/M-1.html

Again, the tapered solid rings.

I would expect it is very similar in origin and date to the one worldantiques posted.

Wade

wcallen

Most of my raising on things like this is done with an octagonal hammer face. It is rounded and the edges are well rounded. I can still get a wave, but it is at the end of the face, so it tends to move forward in bigger leaps. Of course, I tend to be a little more free-wheeling about when and where ...

wcallen

Reading the bio... he was important, but I am not sure he really had enough money to actually get a Greenwich piece. The king did have to "forgive him" his back rent. I don't know enough to be sure (just what is in the bio there) but he probably was important enough that he would have wanted a styli...

wcallen

I am making some of this up... but my German-Augsburgy type is on leathers and can have narrow little lames. Though generally they overlap the other way.... So maybe it is a Greenwichy-styled Italian... It really isn't as straightforward as the original poster probably thought it was. And there is a...

wcallen

Bigger image doesn't add any super interesting rivets. I think the construction is likely similar to the ones I showed on the inside. What's up with the hinge in the upper arm? You can see it, right there on the left arm. Right where those crazy English put hinges in the late 14th/early 15th c. But ...

wcallen

I may not be looking closely enough, but I am not seeing some of the rivets I would love to see to differentiate this style completely correctly. The closest normally occurring pauldron would seem to be the German, most associated with Augsburg pauldron style. This shows a degenerate version of the ...

wcallen

Wade, good to see the pauldrons right way round! It's remarkable how a little thing like that can make such a big impact on the overall look of an armor. :wink: Mac Yes. And since it makes such a difference, it is always amazing how many get messed up. The backwards pauldrons and overall droop of t...

wcallen

The general advice boils down to "don't". Since most armour work doesn't actually need, or use an anvil, it is not bad advice. You have a very nice lump of steel. Which could be used for power anvil hammers or anvils. Or small flat anvil surfaces... or lots of tooling. I used 2 pieces of 1 1/2 x 4 x...

wcallen

After some major work cleaning (lightly and carefully so I don't mess up the original stuff that is there): http://www.allenantiques.com/images/mini-A-267-post-clean.jpg larger image: http://www.allenantiques.com/images/A-267-post-clean.jpg I have more work to do, but it is better than it was and mu...

wcallen

No, it wasn't the current staff that did it. They were good enough to report on their predecessors. It is really annoying that things like that happen. Sometimes it is amazing how much messing around happens over time. Annoying... and it means that it takes a really practiced eye to know what to loo...

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