The Armour Archive

Hew

Striped pants.
I don't care if it's authentic for Viking or whatever, to me they look like modern pajamas. (As in "I once shot an elephant in my...")

Hew

When I were a lad, I came into possession of a jar of powdered magnesium. Somehow I hit on the idea of dunking a pencil-sized stick of wood into a jar of rubber cement, allowing most of it to drip off, and then rolling the end of the gluey stick in the powdered magnesium. The glue lit easily with a ...

Hew

OMG - A scientific experimental approach. Who'd'a' thunk it? Thanks for the results of your tests. - What kind of finish was on the samples to begin with - original factory finish, hammered and planished, brushed/satin, or mirror polish? - Was there a control sample with no coating? (Not that it's r...

Hew

Huh. I had never heard of a "plague mask" before. m [img]http://www.gvec.net/riptron/garb/dr_p/p_dr_draw.jpg[/img] That helps answer something I've been wondering about for years. I've always thought that the cover art for Stephen King's "The Stand" was lifted from a Bosch or Brueghel painting, but ...

Hew

seyc wrote:I was just thinking. Is there any way to spell check posts before they are submitted?

Click the "Preview" button first, and read it? (crude but effective)

Hew

"Do not carry your knife to your mouth with food, or hold the meat with your hands in any wise" ( The Babees Book or A Little Report of How Young People Should Behave , MS Harleian 5086, ca. 1475) "Nor bear with meat thy knife to mouth" ( The Book of Courtesy , MS Sloane 1986, ca. 1460) Hey, that's...

Hew

Todd Feinman wrote:...get some red ochre powder from Nativeway online...

Is that really red? The red ochre I've seen in the wild (a hillside in the Richardson Mountains) is kinda pink shrimp coloured.

Hew

Very nice looking, I like the look of the solid mempo. Funny, I was going to say that I liked the whole thing except for the smooth mempo, because the rest of the kit is so busy with all the lacing and so on. That smooth face sorta jumped out at me as being different, and it looks modern somehow. M...

Hew

I'd have to grow my hair out some more for it to be able to hold on better. Hmm. That gave me an idea for long-haired person wearing a regular maille coif. Use a crochet hook to pull patches of hair out through the links kinda' like those plastic hair streaking caps. I bet that would get a few stra...

Hew

Which direction does the blade turn? Does it cut up or down? If down, I'd worry about it catching and yanking the end of the coil out without cutting. If up, I bet you could just allow it to gravity-feed the coil.

Hew

Verrah nice. I love the colour scheme.

Hew

And could someone explain how when there are two rows of rivets on each quarter of the helm on the outside, equidistand from their respective centerlines, there is only one row of rivets on the centerline on the inside? I see no evidence of countersinking on the interior... They look like tack weld...

Hew

Sasuke wrote:I like a rubber or plastic mallet to fine tune things.

Absolutely, especially when the adjustment needs to be made after you've started sanding. (d'oh!)

Hew

Wulfe wrote:Rustoleum has the added rust prohibative chems in to, so that is usually my choice.

Oh yeah. That's what I meant to say - Rustoleum, now that I've looked at the can. Grey hammertone, actually, so it's doesn't look too even.

Hew

I ended up doing pretty much what Mad Matt suggested, with a shingle nail, but I took more time at it than he made it sound like. I cut it to length and filed the end of the shank to a rounded point. The hole was barely big enough, so I had to whack the plate down with a nut driver to get the rivet ...

Hew

I've had "Mop 'n' Glo" liquid floor wax recommended to me, but on one sample I tried it seemed to scrape off fairly readily from the inside, but not so bad on the outside. I plan to use a grey Tremclad spray paint on hidden surfaces (especially ones that are riveted to leather straps) and carnauba o...

Hew

I'm guessing the middle one is St George, since he's carrying the cross of St. George - m On the left, possibly St James. Santiago/St. James is associated with a red cross that has a sword for it's lower arm, and that's kinda what his flag looks like, except it's missing the little barb things on th...

Hew

Thanks, all. I think I'll go with a simple round hole (not keyhole) and a lathed headless 1/4" diameter post at first. I can always modify it later if needed. Hmm. Now I've got an idea for a jig to keep the post lined up while peening. It involves clamping two 1/4 thick blocks of metal side-by side ...

Hew

Wow. Some great photos.

But in the interest of "journalistic balance", it behooves us to consider conditions on the other side.

Hew

Hmm. Welding is not an option. Sean: "If all else fails you can chuch a piece of 1/4" round stock in a drill press and with a file CAREFULLY lathe turn it into a pin with shoulder, head and a shank you can rivet in place." Sasha: I'm pretty sure your ASCII art didn't work as expected, but I gather i...

Hew

Cross-posted from an older thread - m - but I thought a better title might help attract replies. It was talking about this pattern: m by Alan Bauldree. Glad I found this thread (almost a year later), since I'm in the middle of making a gorget using that same pattern. I see now how the flaring contri...

Hew

My wife occasionally sets up a merchant table (mostly flea-market feastware finds) at some SCA events. Once she took a commission to make some garb for an individual. The profit covers travelling expenses, if that. Recently a laurel was offering a weekend workshop on making a particular kind of garm...

Hew

Owen wrote:You don't stab with a shovel. The proper term for the technique is, "Whap them upside the head".

Then bury the bodies so that they're never found. The enemy will be filled with superstitious dread.

Hew

Torr - were you at Lornevale Keep last Fall? Gruffyd and I were hurling rocks off the hill into the trees with some staffslings that I'd brought along. See m I must make changes to that page though, because we had some failures with the wooden bead/stopper knot method when we started to use larger r...

Hew

...is ideal for re enactment, LARP or role play your ruling allowing or as a stunning display item. Sounds like he's purposely avoiding mention of SCA combat. The top of that visor looks wierd. Just a flap sticking out with no support and nothing to prevent it from peeling back and up, from a risin...

Hew

Grind the tip a bit and it's a perfectly functional stiletto.

Hew

Glad I found this thread (almost a year later), since I'm in the middle of making a gorget using that same pattern. I see now how the flaring contributes to the stiffness. I'm just about ready to punch the holes, but there's one thing I haven't figured out yet. How do you keep the catch pins in plac...

Hew

That's not true, Hew. Science Fiction Magazines were at their finest in the late 20's and 30's. Take Amazing Stories, for example, and Buck Rogers (who appeared in '28, I believe). My brother is an early Sci-Fi fan just about as much as I'm into armor, and he's told me enough to know that a rocket ...

Hew

Most of us were so poor, we couldnt afford carpet scraps, we used cardboard..Otto <yorkshire_accent>Cardboard? Luxury! We used to dream about cardboard armour. Me and my eleven brothers used to have to share armour made from discarded bus tickets glued together with pigeon dung.</yorkshire_accent>

Hew

Lucian Ro wrote:Picture-wise, I'm just getting red x's. Anyone else?

Me too.

Hew

As many times as I've seen photos of sabatons, none of them show the bottoms. What kind of straps are used to keep them from flopping up and down? Do some have a toe plate that wraps under the toe of the boot? Whatever straps there are must take a lot of abuse. Do they last very long if they're worn...

Hew

Somehow, I immediately thought of Lurtz' armour:

Not much help, I know.

Hew

For what it's worth... WHOIS results for fioredeiliberi.org Generated by www.DNSstuff.com Found WHOIS server for .org: whois.publicinterestregistry.net. Looking up. [snip] Domain ID:D83574889-LROR Domain Name:FIOREDEILIBERI.ORG Created On:12-Feb-2002 19:09:43 UTC Last Updated On:02-Jan-2004 12:02:05...

Hew

Dishing: m Planishing: m Dishing hammer: m and m Low budget tools: m Making stumps: m And of course How to Build a Spangenhelm by Ron McWilliams, page 1 of 3 at m My most useful dishing stump was made on a table saw. It involved clamping a 2x4 for a send fence at right angles to the regular rip fenc...

Hew

Knight's Realm wrote:so, anyone see any really tacky smurf-hide armour lately?

Yeah. A blue lorica segmentata-shaped-object in my living room, just waiting for for some faulds and tasset thingies to match it before I make the over-tunic.

Re: Let's talk about pricks.

Re: Painting rawhide red

Re: tools

Spring Pin Gorget - how to install pins?

Sabaton Fastenings?