The Armour Archive

James Arlen Gillaspie

Leeds (in the North, NOT the castle!) is THE armour collection in the UK. Oh, and weapons, too!

James Arlen Gillaspie

Tap Magic. What the pro's use.

James Arlen Gillaspie

For those who do not have the latest, most fashionable equipment (like me!) Thomas de Freville is a bit more like what you want, I think.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Hot rolled often has more carbon than cold rolled, though, making it respond better to 'Superquench'.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Hey, I like the pierced plate faceplate! That looks sooo much better than JAFBG (Just Another Bar Grill). I HATE welded round stock bar grills. I could go my whole life without seeing another one. I would much rather see a pierced faceplate, which at least has some (squint squint) resemblance to som...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Here's something from Olympus, that was labeled as a 'gauntlet', if my source is correct. Anybody know anything about it? P.S. I doubt the 'Etruscan gladiator' story; Eero Jarva, in his book Archaic Greek Body Armour , discusses these in the historical record and shows four examples and a vase paint...

James Arlen Gillaspie

That fellow in Illustration 'E', #1, with the 'bag with straps' on his back... is he wearing thigh-high riding boots? Or what?

James Arlen Gillaspie

You should ask over at [url]myarmoury.com[/url]. They know a LOT more about current blade makers over there.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Why the late 1300's? You got me. This is my 'Band of Brothers' harness.

James Arlen Gillaspie

I tend to be very 'Blair' in my terminology. He is very restricted in how he uses the word 'splint', for instance. I would agree, though, that the piece in question seems to meet the dictionary definition of 'splint', only in this case a piece set along a bone to PREVENT it from being broken!

James Arlen Gillaspie

I wouldn't call it a 'rerebrace' either I would call it a small, laced on reinforce designed to alleviate blunt impact trauma from side cuts, and I particularly like the way it is shaped a bit like angle iron to maximize its strength. I would call the things on the shins 'greaves in embryo'. Jack ch...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Umm... I'm a little confused. I don't see any 'jack chains' in the photo of the Gottfried von Arnsberg effigy, and I didn't when I went to Koln Cathedral and spent over twenty minutes looking at the old boy and making sketches and notes. ??

James Arlen Gillaspie

I didn't know about the 100MB limit. As for the picture size, that's odd - I just gleaned several pretty nice 5MB pics off flickr that were posted yesterday (every day I do a search under armour to see what turns up). I have to admit, though, I don't post on flickr; I just put my big pics up on Carl...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Yes, yes indeed.

James Arlen Gillaspie

I'd go with flickr.com for hosting. You can post HUGE pictures on there, which is what I want to see!

I like it when you can see the finishing lines and stray hammer marks!

James Arlen Gillaspie

Dr. Williams would, once again, be the go-to guy for ancient arms and armour. He's the only one I know of that has done a lot of metallography on ancient blades (Roman blades were 'piled structures', not casehardened, sometimes quenched, IIRC) and at least two lorica laminata specimens. One from Bri...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Making a more relevant post - ahem! Long, long, ago, far beyond the memory of living men, I first began my efforts to drastically improve modern plate armour. I started with case-hardening (a film by Helmut Nickel and some old Met Publications made me think this was the way to go), which lead to sub...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Boy! I didn't think it was ever going to happen! Not that I ever understood why it hadn't happened YEARS ago!

James Arlen Gillaspie

Check this out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/societyofspaindc/sets/72157620314738315//

James Arlen Gillaspie

Removed -wondered where that post wound up!

James Arlen Gillaspie

Sallets start showing up in the 1420's, late, IIRC, and among the French. They don't start gaining favor with the English till the 1430's, earliest.

James Arlen Gillaspie

A bit more information on the Carlisle find.

http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/Pre2003/McCarthy/mccarthy.html

James Arlen Gillaspie

DO NOT use anything with more carbon than 1050! Anything over 1040 simply increases brittleness. The only exception I would make to that would be to use higher carbon steels that had been treated in such a way as to give a pearlitic microstructure. If you don't know what that is, you shouldn't be tr...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Aw, dang! How did I miss this? I have a Parker-Kalon with several busted punches...

James Arlen Gillaspie

My deepest apologies! It seemed to me later that my last post might well come across as irritation at YOU, when I didn't really mean that. But seriously, the A & A Forum is the best single spot to ask for pictures, and if you check there, you might well find some already posted, and I have one i...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Ask over on the Arms and Armour Forum. I'm done with resizing pictures down to the 100k limit. I just don't have the time.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Yes, and this form of legharness is well suited to a basic skill set, as the only challenging things forging wise are the knee cop, and forging medial lines across slightly convex surfaces. The thing that will cause lots of trouble, though, is that there are subtleties involved. Best to practice in ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Thank you for your kind words, AL! The two main factors that have given this form of legharness such a bad rap in the SCA are; to make them dent resistant in mild steel means horribly heavy, and the biggest problem that always bedevils SCA armour, improper construction. Made properly, they wear a lo...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Thank you sooo much for posting that - I can never get too many pics of that quality! There's nothing like being able to see the surface texture, damage, and delamination. Next best thing to being able to handle the piece.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Paulus, I don't have a reference. I have, however, worked with some 5% tin 95% copper bronze that was roll hardened, and it will scratch cold rolled 1018, and makes a doggone good spring. I made some jewelry out of it, and it damaged the jewelry tools I forged it with, which could handle mild steel ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Plate armour made of 'latten', which is basically a name for any number of copper alloys including some with some tin in them, was more common than surviving pieces would suggest. Do you know what the chemical composition of your 'bronze' is? The straight copper -tin alloys, when work hardened prope...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Here's a bladed one (not sure why it's clipped off) from the Thun Skizzenbuch, South German, 1480's.

James Arlen Gillaspie

It depends on what you mean by 'rolled'. 16th C. cuffs are usually rolled to the inside. German 'gothic' cuffs are usually rolled to the outside. In my experience, though, the roll is more of a fold-over, not as developed as an Italian cuff of the same period, which are triangular or rather square i...

James Arlen Gillaspie

???!!!! NO leathers in the front? Who made those things? The holes for the decorative rivets in front should have been for 'truing' purposes, with holes in the lame behind so the lames could be calibrated before assembly. The holes in front then would have decorative rivets installed, to fill up the...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I think my favorite things about this helm are the way the scorpions crawl through the hair and that really nifty symmetrical wave in the part in the hair in front!

Armour from Spanish Royal Armouies now in D.C.!

RA Madrid stuff now in D.C.