The Armour Archive

James Arlen Gillaspie

This project reminds me of a partial armour in Vienna made for Gianfrancesco Gonzage c. 1495. You ought to check out the pauldrons, which with their haute-pieces are strongly anticipating the 16th century.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Have you done any riding while wearing them yet?

James Arlen Gillaspie

KinnieKat is just very slender, which elongates the proportions of the breastplate. That's what's throwing your eye off.

James Arlen Gillaspie

It's interesting that artists so often put tournament armour along with field armour into battle scenes. It seems their visual references were whatever armour they encountered in their lives, regardless of context, and makes it very clear that said artist may have seen a mounted melee in a tournamen...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Mac and I both use absurdly small hammers for peening most rivets. Mine is a crosspein that weighs less than 3 1/2 ounces handle and all. You're looking for kinetic energy (deforms metal at point of impact), not momentum (bends rivet shank). The fact that the leather does not support the rivet is ce...

James Arlen Gillaspie

It's a fantasy close-helm for use with lances. Somewhat interesting, really, but the visor (the lower 'visor' is actually called the 'upper bevor') shouldn't be so open for such an application. Also, you had better keep your chin down!

James Arlen Gillaspie

DIbs on Laurence Olivier: Henry V.

James Arlen Gillaspie

See the post, 'Spring Steel VS. Mild Proofing Test'. Absolutely a MUST for anyone trying to figure out what to do with spring steel.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Early tassets are often rounded, or have a crescent shaped bite out of them. They do not tend to be pointy. Maybe I missed something, but I can't find an example I can confidently date to before 1450. The squigly lines in the sketch of the effigy are very unsatisfactory for being confident of exactl...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Yeah... I was afraid of that. How late could she possibly go?

James Arlen Gillaspie

Some aventails were covered. Why not just make an aventail of padding that actually has no mail underneath?

James Arlen Gillaspie

Assuming, once again, that those are somewhat long pointy tassets, they would be later than the 1430's. And what's with his hair?! That doesn't look right at all even for 1430. Doesn't make a lot of sense, I know... The actual effigy would be critical, here. Maybe it would be better to look at Margu...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Tassets of any kind are a bit out for c. 1415. They start out small and sometimes very numerous about the time of Jeanne d'Arc and gradually get bigger. The drawing is pretty careless, and a photo of the actual effigy would be vastly preferable, but what I seem to be seeing is a pretty late form of ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Hmmm... the armour of the Marguerite de SaintrÃ© effigy looks pretty late, 1430's at the earliest.

James Arlen Gillaspie

And one more.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Here are some I have picked up from the web of one in the Royal Armouries UK.

James Arlen Gillaspie

James Arlen Gillaspie

That helm is in excess of 20" from back to front. You'd look like a lightbulb with legs!

James Arlen Gillaspie

Here's my pic' of the GB in the Bargello, which I took in '93. I thought I might have cropped it when I posted it on some thread or other, but the reflection shows otherwise. Paul Blackwell is holding a six inch ruler in the same plane as the GB, which helps to show how utterly ENORMOUS the thing is...

James Arlen Gillaspie

The funniest thing from an armour-geeks standpoint is that a great deal of the armour was based on real examples, but NONE of it dated to the time period the film was set in!

James Arlen Gillaspie

The top GB (hmm, did I take that pic'?) is in the Bargello in Florence, Italy. The second is in Munich (didn't take that particular pic', I don't think).

James Arlen Gillaspie

Umm.... I do think the greaves have a medial line forged into them, but it's pretty muted, very soft.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Hello, Jiri, the harness was long in the collection of R. T. Gwynn, and is now the property of Ronald Lauder. It has not to my knowledge been extensively photographed. You can see from this picture that the legharnes has no medial crease, a flashback to early German plate armour styles that often ha...

James Arlen Gillaspie

The 'elephant in the living room' the 'Jesus never existed' crowd runs smack into is Saul of Tarsus. Saul, better known as St. Paul, is the reason there aren't many of 'em. Saul lives at the same time as Jesus, writes 13 letters well before 70 A.D. (seven are accepted by non-Christian historians as ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Hmm, maybe I should apologise. Ordinary 304 stainless is workable, but sometimes a piece of 'halfhard' or other weird stuff can show up in scrap. Hotwork is the only way to go, and then it's no longer 'halfhard'.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Stainless, 14 gauge. Just sayin'.

You can do it! I have faith in you!

James Arlen Gillaspie

I was thinking specifically of craftwork, such as the leatherwork Cat mentioned in her original post. A large wax tablet (and they did exist, as Karen pointed out) would be good for working out such designs, being a correctable medium. It would not be so good for a painter.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Ordinary MIG wire works fine on 1050. Always a good idea to normalize the weld area afterward, IMO, whatever the welding method, just to be on the safe side.

James Arlen Gillaspie

I am surprised that only Crimthann has mentioned wax tablets. They were probably the main way that people jotted down their ideas and worked out designs before paper became less expensive. Here is a French 14th c. example, a holster with multiple wax holding tablets made of ivory. Sometimes town rec...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Ask, and ye shall recieve...

Also, another interesting article;

http://tinyurl.com/yfu5vdu

James Arlen Gillaspie

Better to go with the one in the Met. While not wildly common, we know this was not a unique piece.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Tawed leather was also often used for shoes. I expect that such shoes were 'stuffed' with something to weatherproof them.

James Arlen Gillaspie

If you can get a hardwood stump, it is a much better tool.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Before the Germans figured out how to heat-treat armour, smart Germans wore Italian.

This particular harness is in French style, however, not the Italian style. Hendrik, I would not have gone with a one-piece backplate; I cannot think of a single example of such a construction.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Umm... I have just one problem with it just glancing at it... What man in armour stands with his feet parallel? Typically a man stands with his feet at an angle to each other approximately 30 degrees or so.