The Armour Archive

James Arlen Gillaspie

That round looking bit is at the wrong end of the slider. The evidence that I have usually seen for a round initial hole is at the other, full extension, end. That left leg has taken a lot of damage. You can see a not so well done countersunk rivet for a patch holding the lower edge of the knee cop ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I think I should have said that I have usually seen evidence of a round hole being punched initially for fitting purposes, and then chiseled out to make the slot. If you look carefully at the slots in the photos, you will see evidence of such round holes, along with marks of the chisel.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Nope. I am in the process of setting up a gazillion museum photos on Flickr, though. Here's one example;

: slider hole.jpg (14.2 KiB) Viewed 301 times

James Arlen Gillaspie

In my experience, the slider holes usually have a sort of round (typical punch job of the time) hole at one end, as part of the initial assembly process, and rectangular otherwise. I will see if I can find a good photo or two. Oh, dam', I have to scale them down...

James Arlen Gillaspie

#3 is typically a spring-loaded sliding catch. It moves in a short slot to release the 'upper bevor' (what would be the lower part of a one piece visor), and the spring holds it closed when it is fastened.

James Arlen Gillaspie

This shows the internal construction of #2, on another helm of similar type. The exact details of the helm you are interested in may vary, of course. You can see the cord (broken off short) that pulls the spring loaded arm that retracts the pin. The cord also acts as a visor lift. 1.1.2011 024crp.JPG

James Arlen Gillaspie

Their provenance is impeccable, however, as they belong to the Cabinet of Curiosities of Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria at Schloss Ambras (same fellow who assembled the 'Hall of Heroes', so we are all in his debt), so they are indeed dated correctly. He wouldn't have picked them up if they weren't...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Now that is quite literally a breastplate! Make a fine candy dish, it would.

James Arlen Gillaspie

You'll notice the 'thunder thighs' look of the cuisses due to the clothing styles worn at the time.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Oh, shoot! That IS the statue's left hand!

I misinterpreted the image and thought it belonged to a statue to its left. Yep, they're a pair, alright.

It would be great to see some good photos from before the bombing.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Is anybody else bothered by the way the gauntlet looks like a standard fingered gauntlet that transitions abruptly into a rather boxy mitten? Then there's the gauntlet to the right, which at least looks more like a first half of the 15th c. half mitten.

: Beautiful Fountain Nurnberg1crp.jpg (59.41 KiB) Viewed 644 times

James Arlen Gillaspie

Oh, and I've a notion that it is for a specialized tournament event, in which neither legs or chin are target, but the occularium of the helmet (need to work on proving this). Better to wear the A 79 foot combat helm for this event, though; mistakes happen.

James Arlen Gillaspie

More likely Lorenz Helmschmid. The armour shown does not seem to be identifiable with any surviving armour, however, especially the Schaller that are nearly skull caps with a visor and a little flip out in the back. These are much more common in French illuminations, such as the Saint Louis; Roi de ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

The Holy Roman Empire strikes again...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Thanks, Mike! I just wish he'd had the gauntlets when the photo was taken.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Sometimes necessity is the mother of absurdity.

James Arlen Gillaspie

'Tasset legs', as I like to call them, speed up donning one's armour considerably. The sliding rivets on the outside of the leg are the only hard articulated points, the middle and inner legs being articulated on leathers. The slots for sliders were larger than the rivets that rode in them, say abou...

James Arlen Gillaspie

A friend of mine tried to make a brigandine using garment leather. It started to come apart before he had even finished it (it may well be that careful shaping of the plates would have lessened the stresses; dead flat plates are just plain wrong). There's a reason why leather is so rare in surviving...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I should have amended that comment to, 'covering part of the ulna bump', rather than 'covering the ulna bump'.

James Arlen Gillaspie

SONOFAGUN! Frickin' Germans. Now what?!

James Arlen Gillaspie

Especially for overhead strikes! I have an old GI pot suspension liner in my helm, and whenever I loan it out to SCAdians I have to tell them to count very, very, light! It makes me wonder about the tales of how some units of the SS did a hazing ritual in which the candidate was made to stand on the...

James Arlen Gillaspie

The weird stuff out of Scotland had already helped prepare me for something like this, but yeah, 'fantasy' is the first thing that came to mind for me too.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Early legs often do not seem to have had them (the Chartes leg is an exception), but Pisanello shows them hanging from a sort of Y strap when worn by foot soldiers who carried shields and did not wear cuisses. Often, they are a little to one side of the center crease; the greave belonging to Pandolf...

James Arlen Gillaspie

We don't know that there was a failure where we can't see into the crater. #55 is an epic fail for sure, though. I wonder what sort of testing the Italian govt. did before they bought them (assuming they did).

James Arlen Gillaspie

I was confining myself to European late Medieval/Renaissance plate styles. That a bunch of HRE men-at-arms would take the center plate of Churburg 13 and wear it by itself, uncovered, was something that I hadn't imagined, but some really odd stuff appears in the HRE in the 14th century, especially. ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I'm saying that there are no arm openings at all, since they do not wrap around the sides at all. Or, to put it another way, the arm openings go clear down to the waist! That other portrayal of the royal figure in the red garment with immense sleeves looks closer than anything else, but to me is dub...

James Arlen Gillaspie

These breastplates are not of the classic form, being entirely frontal without extending around the sides at all, which is what, I think, attracted Mr. Rogers' attention in the first place. It's the first thing I noticed, at any rate, and got the full WTF reaction from me. I could not remember anyth...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I'm with Mr. Rogers. I think they are earlier, having looked with great thoroughness at everything I could find, years ago, in the period between Agicourt and the execution of Jeanne d'Arc. I found nothing like that in England or France (as the notes show, the bulk of the manuscript is in Latin and ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I would not want to mess with Dr. Pfaffenbichler - I owe him BIGTIME. You have no idea. And, he is best researcher of relevant records across the continent that we have, with Dr. Terjanian coming up second, I think. He sounds as though he has found a record of a Helmschmid protogarniture ordered by ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I don't know that it would have been much of a gift to his uncle if it didn't fit him. The main problem, as I see it, is that it is clearly shown on Sigmund in the Armamentarium Heroicum of Ferdinand II, to whom the collection at Ambras belonged, but as I say again, there is no certain paper trail. ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I should have added that the medial line is very well defined and not at all flutelike for most of its length, except perhaps at the bottom, depending on the style. A 62 KMW Wien, for example, is not as well defined as the greaves on the Italian legharness in the Royal Armouries, Leeds, which follow...

James Arlen Gillaspie

A couple of things; the real greaves I have handled are indeed rounder than the actual human shin, giving a bit of airspace over the inseam side of the bone. You want them to contact muscle, not bone.

Have you left enough room for your hose?

James Arlen Gillaspie

Second on the Fluid Film.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Some GREAT shots there, Chris! Mmmm, it reminds me of how much I love the helm on G 179. There's a lot on that harness I like, but somehow the overall effect is lacking, and the decoration on some of the elements needed to be treated in a less rigid fashion. The Helmschmids would have known what to ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

9 & 10 seem to have been the norm, from all that I have read. The platers of Nuremberg were pretty much just parts people, but I strongly suspect that it was normal for the parts people to have relationships among each other so that you could get a harness that looked as though it all belonged toget...

Re: Sliding Rivets

Re: Sliding Rivets

Re: Sliding Rivets

Re: Sliding Rivets

Re: Helmet- Prince-Elector Chistian

Re: Helmet- Prince-Elector Chistian

Re: Five fingered boots?

Re: Pictures of breastplates which make you go 'humh'

Re: Questions about late 16th century legs

Re: 14th Century Mittens? The Beautiful Fountain of Nurember

Re: 14th Century Mittens? The Beautiful Fountain of Nurember

Re: Need info on this harness

Re: Need info on this harness

Re: 14th Century Mittens? The Beautiful Fountain of Nurember

Re: Questions about late 16th century legs

Re: Kettle Hat

Re: Questions about late 16th century legs

Re: Question about leather for corrazina

Re: regarding late 14th century arm harnesses

Re: Curious holes

Re: Shocktec, Unequal & Sorbothane

Re: Important late-Viking era sword find

Re: Milanese harness in progress, continued

Re: WWI Italian body armor

Re: Wellcome Apocalypse, strapped-on breastplates "c.1420"(?

Re: Wellcome Apocalypse, strapped-on breastplates "c.1420"(?

Re: Wellcome Apocalypse, strapped-on breastplates "c.1420"(?

Re: Wellcome Apocalypse, strapped-on breastplates "c.1420"(?

Re: A62, made for Archduke Sigismund or Emperor Maximilian?

Re: A62, made for Archduke Sigismund or Emperor Maximilian?

Re: Milanese harness in progress, continued

Re: Milanese harness in progress, continued

Re: Storing Armor in Plastic Vacuum Packs / Bags

Re: Compression Articulation Crotch Area

Re: The idea of a "composite armour"