The Armour Archive

Gaston de Clermont

Milos, check out this effigy: m I'm not sure what your fighting is like, though I've found a rivetted avantail to protect far better than I expected. You may consider pauldrons as well, since it can't protect the points of your shoulders all that well except from cuts. Back to the main topic, I rece...

Gaston de Clermont

From the outside in my forge is made from thin corrugated steel roofing metal. Just inside that is the Kaowool, which was then painted with Satanite and ITC100. The insulation is sufficent that the outside of the forge isn't hot. You could paint or insulate the outside of the forge, but I don't thin...

Gaston de Clermont

There's no doubt that adrenaline and vanity can get the better of people in a high pressure tourney. Having a concious and intentional separate calibration level just adds an extra factor to it. It does your reputation more good to consider blows in a tourney carefully, and in cases of doubt take so...

Gaston de Clermont

I've occasionally aimed my nozzle to swirl the flame around the forge, and blocked the flame with a brick to protect a spot from over heating. I'm not so sure it's necessary if you just let the forge get up to temperature first. This is also counter intuitive, but a great deal of your heat is really...

Gaston de Clermont

I try not to hit new guys more than 2-3 times in the same place. If I can land a blow with relative ease I'll slow things down, show them exactly what I'm doing, and discuss ways they could stop it. I also like targetting drills where I present a target and they whack it (lightly). It improves their...

Gaston de Clermont

My experience differs with Audax's. A lot of Ansteorrans don't wear cuisses at all, which is pretty unusual in SCA culture. It works OK here because people also frequently use large shields, so their legs only rarely get hit, and the idea of "pain as teacher" is more prevalent here. So the padded sh...

Gaston de Clermont

Ronnin,
I'm happy to help you make a spring steel thumb. We could probably do it lighter leather, though the piece is so small it won't make much difference. Are your finger tips covered?
Gaston de Clermont

Gaston de Clermont

Yeah, the bigger the piece of leather the more awkward it gets. I'm wondering a couple things though. How is the liner attached? The rivets through the central plate are clear in the pictures, but on the other plates do those rivets pass through the steel, through the articulation leather and also t...

Gaston de Clermont

My burner is pretty similar, except I use a torch tip set screwed into the little pipe in the reducing bell. It might make for a slightly more even swirl of propane and air, though I'm honestly not sure. I also use a small reducer bell at the output end, flaring outward. My forge body is basically a...

Gaston de Clermont

I've been using plain old water, and like Alexis just at ambient temperature. My main reason is that I've been doing big pieces like breastplates and cuisses. Using water means I don't have to have something like 20 gallons of chemically stuff in my garage. When I'm not using the quench bucket I jus...

Gaston de Clermont

I used the same number of rivets that appear on the original that go through the liner minus the four rivets you highlighted in blue, and with approximately the same spacing. The leather I used was thicker and probably stiffer than the original liner. You're right about when the slots would be expos...

Gaston de Clermont

Wow, that 's the exact quote I was about to post, Talbot. I'm curious about it too. I know that articulating solely on leather functions just fine, since I've made a few that way. I have no reason to doubt a sliding rivet articulation would work too. Since the rivet heads we see on the center plate ...

Gaston de Clermont

Brian, are the slots for the upper articulation rivets visible in any of your photos? It seems that the slot would have to be pretty short since the lung plate is going to collide with the lining rivet. It also seems that the sliding rivet is redundant with the articulation provided by the leather l...

Gaston de Clermont

A few different approaches will work. I tried to make my #14's kidney protection work like the rib protection on the #13, so I overlapped the plates a little and rivetted them to vertical leather strips. I used about a 6oz leather. Using a single larger piece of leather for the whole liner does work...

Gaston de Clermont

Effingham- you're not the only one bothered by lining avantails. It looks like you could line the gorget instead, but it still feels excessive and warantless. My avantail does it's job, and my throat and neck are safe without padding. I can sympathize with the marshallate's stance, since not all ava...

Gaston de Clermont

Woodcraft at 8904 Research Blvd has a good selection of stains and dyes and isn't too far from you. It might be worth checking out, and the employees have always been knowledgable and helpful when I've had questions. The stain should take OK with a light sanding as D. Sebastian indicated.

Gaston de Clermont

I'm with Guy on this. If you had a big fancy brass cuff, or brass gadlings the brass rivets would be a perfect match. Without all the frou-frou stuff, the clean look is really nice.
Either way, the gauntlets do look really good.

Gaston de Clermont

That is a nice convenient source of spikes. Any idea what the carbon content is on these? Do they have "HC" marked on the head? McMaster-Carr's site doesn't indicate the carbon content of the spikes they're selling, and from what I've read it varies depending on the intended use of the spike- like t...

Gaston de Clermont

Nice work! What grade of aluminum did you use? Did you have any problems with it cracking while you worked it? Since it really doesn't look like aluminum how did you get that kind of finish on it?

Gaston de Clermont

I use somthing like it for a lot of general blacksmithing work. The mushrooming of the heads might indicate the steel is fairly soft. It might be OK for pounding swedges, chisels and such.

Gaston de Clermont

Amazing work!

Gaston de Clermont

I like having a fan on my arms- though I only have one on my right, since my left arm is behind my shield a lot of the time and the fan gets in the way there. Not having the fan would make the piece a bit easier to make though.

Gaston de Clermont

You've got to grind or sand to the base of the pits you're seeing. I'm curious how they got there in the first place. Was there any grit on your planishing hammer?

Gaston de Clermont

It depends on exactly what you want to do. From what I've seen of Eric Thing's work, he's mostly interested in heating up a fairly small area for hot raising. He's doing some neat stuff with that. I use my forge mostly for heat treating, and a little blacksmithing (like for making tools, rib stops, ...

Gaston de Clermont

With a hammer and a hard heavy surface to pound on you can make your own tongs. They're a fun first project. There are decent instructions in this book: m This book is also good: m I got them both based on recommendations from anvilfire- definitely check out the site. Schreiber, I use water in my sh...

Gaston de Clermont

Who knew oak trees could jump around so fast? If I was better with paint I'd be tempted to replace the damaged body panel with 4130 steel so it wouldn't deform so badly. Oh well. Maelgwyn- I'm going out of the country for a couple weeks, but I'll be back the second week in July. If you can wait that...

Gaston de Clermont

The highlights for me were learning about Alexis' gauntlet articulation and Krag showing us his beaver. In all there was good food, good armour, and a good time. Thanks for hosting, Krag!

Gaston de Clermont

Did you use a fume hood with that hot zinc? How do you plate the steel in copper? Electroplating? You might be able to electroplate directly with bronze. It's worth investigating. What's bronze and what's brass is a bit subjective, but generally if it's mostly copper and zinc it's brass, and if it's...

Gaston de Clermont

What I have is silicon bronze that I got from McMaster-Carr, so mine doesn't have the manganese Everdure has. Sounds like your source for Everdure is cheaper that what I paid. Where do you get it? I don't know much about beryllium except that it's really heavy, and it's used in missile guidence syst...

Gaston de Clermont

This I really have to see. We could get into all kinds of trouble with something like that. How big a pour can you do in steel?

Gaston de Clermont

Cool! (Well, it's going to be hot, but I'm excited about the casting.) I'll try to remember to bring some molds, soap stone and a crucible.

Krag, do you you mind bronze in your forge?

Gaston de Clermont

This is very impressive work. How do you get your helms so smooth?

Gaston de Clermont

Zoe's going to be staying home with her grandparents. To see all we wanted to see requires a lot of travel, so lugging her, or a Barnet sized duffle might not be practical.

I'll share what I can. I'm still not clear on what kind of photography is allowed.

Gaston de Clermont

Given the choice, most armourers use Beverly shears to cut their steel. They're fairly expensive and may be difficult for you to find. You could use a chisel though, and use a grinder of sander to clean up the cuts. It takes a lot more time, but it would be far cheaper and easier to find the tools. ...

Gaston de Clermont

That's a sexy lid you have there Brian. Who made it?