The Armour Archive

Gaston de Clermont

My own very recent and limited experience was that I didn't have to soak more than a couple hours, but I imagine any oil would work like a resist, and it won't get clean underneath.

Gaston de Clermont

I tried the vinegar last night and it worked better than I expected! The scale came right off after just a couple hours of soaking. I did notice that the surface of the metal has some irregularities- it kind of looks like it was from bubbles in the quench bucket. They're all irregular, like a faint ...

Gaston de Clermont

Is there a paticular kind of vinegar you'd recommend, or should I just be looking for something cheap and mildly acidic? It sounds like a cheap, effective and easy method, which is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! I'm concerned about how deep a wire wheel could potentially scratch the metal. ...

Gaston de Clermont

Has anyone found an efficient way to remove forge scale without scratching up the steel underneath, or thinning, or over-heating it? I'm working on a breastplate and found silicon carbide wheels work pretty well, but 1. They're kind of expensive to use since they wear out fairly fast. 2. I haven't f...

Gaston de Clermont

Thomas offers some good advice. Even if it's low carbon, wrought iron is rare enough to have some value to blacksmiths. It's resistant to corrosion, so it would've been a reasonable choice in making a dam. The spark test is fairly simple to perform, but takes a little practice to interpret accuratel...

Gaston de Clermont

But aren't those arms and gauntlets 14th century? Did they just throw together whatever they had laying around?

Gaston de Clermont

Evadyn- Thanks for the link, but I'm not sure if I want to trust the Blankenshield site. There are some compelling tidbits that might be right, but there are a lot of odd statements in there too. Thomas- what are these defects exactly? The Blankenshield site talks about martensite (but spells it wro...

Gaston de Clermont

Jason- Thanks for the explanation.
So since you're thinning it, the disc is growing a bit while you work it. Do you have to mark the edge again later in the process?

Gaston de Clermont

This probably sounds like a total rookie question, but what exactly is going on when a piece of steel work hardens? Why is it that you can work harden mild or stainless steel, but heating and quenching doesn't really harden it?

Gaston de Clermont

Mike's correct, though there may be some level of hardening with lower carbon steels. You may also choose to let a piece cool very slowly to anneal, or soften it

Gaston de Clermont

Jason, I enjoyed your articles too. I don't quite follow why you did so much hammering in the middle of the great helm top though, since the shape you were shooting for was flat, and you seemed to mostly get that from the work you did near the rim. Were you intentionally thinning and work hardening ...

Gaston de Clermont

The embossing depth is hard to quantify I guess, but for this knee cop, would you emboss before shaping? Would you emboss to half the depth of the leather? I ask in part because I'm playing with a piece of my own (no where as nice as yours) that I embossed to about half the depth of the sole leather...

Gaston de Clermont

Your profile says your a blacksmith, so you could anneal it and try again. You might want to experiment with copper, lead sheet or even rolled out clay to see how the thin steel might move. It takes a bit of practice to visualize it. Raising, as Brian says in ToMAR, is a more advanced technique. You...

Gaston de Clermont

All excellent advice. There's a fuzzy distinction between bouging and planishing. They're both smoothing out the bumps. The cheapest, quickest way I found to do it is with a rounded dumbell I found. You can clamp it in a vice. Ideally it should be smoothed over some with some sanding (I used my trus...

Gaston de Clermont

I'd basically do what Thomas recommends. I made mine with an angle grinder. I would say that spending some time to make the hammer face pretty smooth will save you in the time you spend cleaning up.

Gaston de Clermont

If I understand you correctly, sure you can. For a simple curl, like you might use for a lame of a 14th century paudron, you could pound on it from the outside around something cylindrical like a pipe. You might save some time in cleanup if you use a rawhide mallet for such a curl, and it may also b...

Gaston de Clermont

All good advice. You may be able to adjust the helm a bit too. The closer your eyes are to the eye slots, the larger your field of vision will be. A little more padding in the back, and a playing with the rotation of the helm might give you a lot more vision. I fight in a close faced helm, and when ...

Gaston de Clermont

You could do something like the Hohenklingen effigy, or a Churbug #14 style like Lady Nai. m Or there's the nice Burgundian example at the bottom of this page: m So that last example is one way your body harness might have been covered in period. There's a nice example in Arms and Armor of the Medie...

Gaston de Clermont

Very cool!

Gaston de Clermont

Wolf- nice buckle choice. Where'd you get it? Did you shape the leather wet? Did you warm it up at all? I was reading on a leather dye bottle last night that they recommended a deglazing agent. I'm not really sure exactly what such a beast does, but perhaps using one would get the linseed and glue t...

Gaston de Clermont

Wolf- you're probably WAY more into leather than I am, but I've been reading the Museum of London book on Knives and Scabbards. There's a ton of info in it on leather embossing and scribing they found in the London finds, many of which are 14th century. They speculate a bit about how the different p...

Gaston de Clermont

Hi Geoffrey! How long does it take you to make your shields, and how long do they last? You said you use plywood, so is that some kind of pine? I'm unlikely to make Estrella any time soon. My wife's birthday is on Valentines day, which generally falls during Estrella, so leaving her alone on that da...

Gaston de Clermont

I got my kaowoll off ebay. http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dl ... category0=

Krag helped a great deal with the burner for my forge. May his name be praised.

Gaston de Clermont

So there are a few glues here to discuss: Gorilla glue Elmer's Wood glue (water proof and otherwise) Ponal 3 waterproof PVA Titebond II cascamite/extramite GOOP I haven't heard of the last 4 on the list. Are they available at regular hardware stores? Does anyone have any opinions or tips on them the...

Gaston de Clermont

I'd never seen many of those images. Thanks for sharing them, Chuck. Where can I pick up that catalog?

Gaston de Clermont

That's just insane, Wade. I'm jealous.

Gaston de Clermont

I've been an aluminum shield user for many years, and want to try playing with wood. My own experiments thus far have not been as durable as I'd hoped, though maybe my expectations are too high.
What kind of wood, glue and general construction approaches work well for you?

Gaston de Clermont

All good suggestions. Another to try, and I'll grant you it sounds backwards at first- use a shorter sword. It help break your old range habits, and force you quite conciously to close in tighter. Practice slow and without a helm on as much as you can. Your brain won't work as well when you're tired...

Gaston de Clermont

More than anything, folks need to crack open a book before they start building. A bibliography would do wonders. Heck, even making sure folks open just "Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight" by Edge and Paddock would go a long way. It baffles me that anyone would skip the looking at armour porn st...

Gaston de Clermont

Krag, thanks for hosting the Armour-In, and for all your help building my burner.
Thanks to Alexis for sharing your pattern, and showing us how you get such nice articulation on your gauntlets.

Gaston de Clermont

I found a 2" bell at a plumbing supply place today, but all they had was galvanized. Is that going to work? Can we cook/scrape/etch off the galvization without giving ourselves tumors? Oh, and do you use any compound to seal the joints in the burner? I'm still coming up short on the hose. There's at...

Gaston de Clermont

I got everything except the 2" reducing bell and the hose last night. I'm going to try to get to a plumbing place and pick those up. I'm really hoping the wool shows up soon.
I'll be able to attend all day Saturday and early Sunday.
This should be fun!

Gaston de Clermont

I don't have any affiliation with the seller, but I thought folks here might be interested in the forges for sale on ebay. Seems like a decent price if you want to do coal/coke

http://search.ebay.com/forge_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8
(scroll down)

Gaston de Clermont

Krag,
Thanks for the parts list. I'll see what I can gather before this weekend.
The email link on your posts goes to a cs.com account.

Gaston de Clermont

The insulation goo has started to show up on my doorstep. Krag, could you send me a list of the plumbing supplies? I'm not sure if the email address you've got listed is current.

Removing forge scale

Work hardening questions

Shields: what wood and glue do you use?

Forges on ebay