The Armour Archive

Jeff J

What you see as nail heads on a faux brig, I see as pearls on a sumptuous tabard. Naw. The 3-nail configuration is common on brigs in art and the surviving ones. It's not a separate covering. We've discussed this one before. Were this merely a brig, then there would be more nails, and closer arrang...

Jeff J

Spiffy!

Jeff J

I think the correct answer to the sharpened blade question is that they may not have been sharpened full length. I suspect it depends on the type of blade and personal preference. A thrusting sword probably didn't need an edge too far back, but something designed for chopping more likely would. Rega...

Jeff J

Bascot---are those reproductions? The weights seem a bit heavy for the originals! Thomas Ya - DelTins are reenactor blades. Made approximately 1mm too thick so that thet are safer for demonstrations and general wearing about in public. Here are some more correctly configured Blades that are a tad l...

Jeff J

Hello, Mr. Finkas. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to educate a group of people who have a large number of preconceived incorrect notions regarding the 15th century...

Jeff J

Trevor wrote:

And only you would be eating the bread and drinking the wine, unless it was a special occasion.

Non-ordained persons performing Rites of Communion and confession are frowned upon by the modern church. You may want to leave those aspects out.

Jeff J

D. Sebastian wrote:Hung from the saddle?

Ya - the one-handers were a horseman's weapon. I've never seen one worn.

Jeff J

- Looks pretty
- Demonstrated wealth of the owner
- Doesn't rust
- Chicks dig it

Jeff J

egfroth (what an interesting name!): With the platform shoes, how were they constructed? could the "platform" part come off? Specifically, I was hoping the heel could be accidently left behind at a crime scene as evidence. Got my fingers crossed... Gwyn [/quote] As you will probably see in the Carl...

Jeff J

Ya - it's pretty popular. I've heard it has a few flaws, so I'd recommend asking on here before trying any of the more involved projects.

Jeff J

They are a nice sword, I got to hold the proptotype in their shop.

All the Albion museum swords & nextgens are sweeet. I've a couple in my rack.

Jeff J

Ah, but to some of us, it is not a pretend religious function. When I am present at 15th century services, I pray, as devoutly as I would at any other time or place. And zeal adds to the authenticity! (Yay!) Not to say that everyone then was absolutely devout, but at least they knew the words. We n...

Jeff J

Also in the group James B & Wolf are in. Religion played such a part in the time and place we reenact that not having some form of religious function is a tremendous gap in the portrayal. It also helps people get into the proper mind-set. In order to be sure we don't offend, we did research before h...

Jeff J

What's REALLY sad is that there is a wealth of beautiful decorative designs, correct to the period of the item they are working on, and the (supposed) artist or craftspeople seem to want to reproduce the same, simple design over and over again. I used to think knotwork was cool, but like the song th...

Jeff J

May I have an "AMEN" for Brother Doug?

I despise the populist slathering of knotwork over every object from bikinstocks to ball-point pens and then calling it "medieval".

Jeff J

I have arming coats coming out in February. Thats the post that got me to ask if anyone has seen it or knew if it is being offered yet. Seems pretty clear to me. If she is going to offer them, Gwen is pretty good at keeping schedules, so come February, or soon thereafter, she'll probably let the wo...

Jeff J

Concur on the card/cabinet scraper finish - it can come out smoother because sandpaper eats the softwood part of the grain faster than the harder. I've used the boiled linseed & beeswax mix (available pre-mixed commercially) it comes out hard, yet has that waxy feel and sheds water nicely. It even w...

Jeff J

Sounds like she should be talking to ARS.

http://www.armourresearchsociety.org/

Jeff J

Charlotte here, I think MTT, Marching Through Time, a LH timeline event, is the 8-10 of April, at Marietta Mansion. http://www.pghistory.org/MariettaMansion.html Marietta is in Glenn Dale, MD, just east of the DC Beltway. It wouldn't be an SCA thing, but it could be a fun day out. -Charlotte Who isn...

Jeff J

I believe black velvet came to be a very popular "status symbol" textile amongst the nobility in the late 15th century- vis. the number of noble portraits in which the sitter is wearing the stuff- in contrast to the peacock-like color displays of a hundred years earlier. My gut feeling is that if i...

Jeff J

I haven't seen any green beavers yet. There was this girl I dated... One of our guys has a knit, boiled/felted bowler hat that has the right shape and a fairly rigid structure for a basis for one if the fuzzy ines. I can imagine taking 4" pieces of heavy yarn and attaching them (doubled) through th...

Jeff J

If I may be as bold as to put words into Jeff's mouth; The first piece of armour aquired within the confines of one's economy would be a helmet. That's consistant with my observation of period art - if they had any armor at all, it included a helmet of some sort. As Bob says, though - there are alw...

Jeff J

Some would, some wouldn't. Some would think me ridiculously AR even to notice and comment on points. Not us! We like the little differnces! "That black is too black", "Is that brass or bronze?" "Is that leather goat or pig"? Others wouldn't accept the research presented as sufficient evidence. That...

Jeff J

I think the combo of the technical ability to do it, combined with the apparent willingness of men to wear multicoloured cord in various other applications, makes it a pretty small leap of faith. Aye - that's the rub. How big of a leap to make? I feel a lot better having the Dieric Bouts and Van de...

Jeff J

I have seen one artist from Germany show a mail coif with a sallet. The French and Flemish at best show a mail collar with a sallet normally paired up with a jack, brig, a mail hauberk with jack, or a mail hauberk and brig combination. Ya - in the 15th C. you normally see mail on upper sleeves, col...

Jeff J

I Love you too.

Ooo... pretty snow...

Jeff J

re the sausage the sausage as also used as a fool's symbol, more precisely the marotte, often phallic/sausage shaped sometimes more phallic than sausage. So messages can be put across especially as it seems in those tourney pics where the aforementioned strange crests appear, the hennin? maybe to d...

Jeff J

Trinity College has an altarpiece (Flemish, Memling(?), circa 1475) that depicts in great and realistic detail some military saint in full harness. The arming points of the saint as I recall are multi-coloured, presumably fingerlooped points. So one more bit of pictorial evidence for multi coloured...

Jeff J

So what is the distinction between a sausage crest and a say a horse tail? I wasn't saying anything is specifically wrong with any specific device. I'd prefer it be at least loosely documentable - like it be recorded that "Sir Bubblefart had a xx on his badge", which logically carries to a crest. R...

Jeff J

If you did not know that and some guy said "hey i am going to have a sausage as a crest for my reenactment" he would be laughed out of the game. Not really. He'd be asked if he had any documented historical basis for such, and if he was unable to provide something reasonable, it would be suggested ...

Jeff J

what??? I am tired. keep it real. and by reak i mean authentic. because if you dont then the stitch nazi's will get you... Been posting for an hour & ten minutes , and already he's managed to tick Char off. Not an auspicious start, Ean. You may want to think before you post. For a lesson on why thi...

Jeff J

All of the liners I've seen in originals have leather riveted to steel and a padded liner sewn to the leather. This way, when the liner needs replacing, you just unstitch it from the leather. Here's part of one. The full photo is too big to attach. The middle section of the liner is rotted out, but ...

Jeff J

That the other guy doing a paper on the topic needn't conflict TJ's research. The other paper seems much more narrow in scope, where TJ seems to be doing a broad survey. Russ, I also think that the generally accepted definition of "Pavaise" is that it is designed to be placed on the ground, primaril...

Jeff J

I think that in most cases, a well-executed crimp can do the job.

Jeff J

what I've been told is that them euros used a sort of slip knot. See the bottom image here; m maybe someone else has a better image. It's difficult to describe this simple knot. [rant]The knot in the photo Mag posted is the knot you see in almost ALL medieval illustrations and sculpture, and almost...