The Armour Archive

raito

Of course, plastic wins the cost and necessary tools arguments. No, no it doesn't. Not really. You can get both for free sometimes. Depending on where you are, one or the other is more plentiful. And a sheet of kydex costs me more than a sheet of steel, if I buy both new. Scrap prices can be compar...

raito

Well, I've used all 3 for various things at various times. You cann reheat all of them, provided they weren't heated too much the first time. My preference is for Kydex over ABS, because I find it to last a lot longer (like 5X). I use HDPE currently because it is more tolerant of cold. I never use 5...

raito

RE: 16 as the minimum age. Kids get dumped at other athletic practices with no parents on site- what makes us any difference? Our injury rate is lower than high school football, after all... Besides the fact that high school fottball is run by the school disctricts, and health insurance is required...

raito

In Northshield, Principality and Kingdom, there are few standing rules (even the one regarding randomly filled lists and double-elimination gone from the Kingdom), save the usual gotta be a member and send in a letter stuff. It is rather traditional that there's been a lot ov variation over the year...

raito

OK, we have a time and place (thanks to Gilebert, great job). Thursday, after everything else. It's scheduled for 5-7, but I doubt it will go that long. I wanted it scheduled after everything had died down so we wouldn't bother anyone by using the main battlefield. Rules are at http://www.j-armour.c...

raito

When is this "early period"??? Northshield is late Medieval German right now, to be followed by Japanese Shoguate. I assume you mean the Japanese Shogunate, by which you mean the Tokugawa Shogunate, which we will not be doing, as it is past the end of our period. Besides, the Tokugawas le...

raito

I don't know which article you found, but here's what I do. First, I measure the head where the band goes. This is not always the boggest part of the head. Some helms (particularly some Japanese ones) are sort of tipped back on the head. Then I figure out how much padding is going in there. Let's sa...

raito

I don't want to screw this up. Sorry, Freiman, but you hit the hot button, and the ball is mine for the duration of the post. Go to http://marshal.aethelmearc.org/policies/Missile_Combat.html Look at #13. Seriously, every damned kingdom's manuals are online. It took less than 30 seconds to find thi...

raito

In the early 80's, a magazine called The Bujin reported some experiments in speed of cutting, mostly Japanese style. They had some interesting results. The fastest weapon they found was the yardstick, followed by shinai, bokken, and steel. And, single handed basket hilted rattan came in second (but ...

raito

If everything comes off, it'll really be a lot of fun. One of the Barons is having his personal people do Japanese armour for the reign. I've already had one of his squires come down and drain my brain. Most of those guys were my 'hairy barbarian' guardsman when I was territorial prince last time ar...

raito

Yeah, now that I'm going to be a Duke (unless my membership expires ), I'm working on the pysique, too. The biggest problem is finding the right materials. patterned stuff just isn't common in the necessary patterns. I'm having to adapt. I did make a run yesterday and got acceptable fabrics for the ...

raito

So here I am, Prince of Northshield. I'd sure like to do Imperial Japanese clothing for Coronation. That's not a problem. I have a ton of good resources to go by. But what the historians write down doesn't seem to jive with other facts. For example, nearly every book I've read states that Japanese c...

raito

"Calvary tactics" ? No wonder Notre Dame has done so well Does anyone still remember those guys? Anyway, I've found that studying maneuver warfare has helped greatly. And I think that some of our units provide the functions of cavalry, even without horses. Though it seems that different u...

raito

But we're the good guys!

raito

This is a fallacy foisted upon us for years, Bran. There is no legal requirement for an officer of an organization to be a dues-paying member. Many clubs impose this requirement internally for their own reasons, but it is not a State or Federal stipulation. Not to mention that, while there is such ...

raito

IRS does it by the post mark on the envelope. (This is why I always fax my membership with my CC#.) First time I did that, I lapsed. I even got back the application and the credit card slip. Why did I lapse? Because the corporation insisted that my credit card number was invalid. The real reason? B...

raito

Saw it last night. Lots of brigs on the bad guys, and morions, but with really, really weird pseduo-Viking-Negroli looking faceplates. Head baddie wearing late period plate, but the look of the stripes was bad (can't call them Maximilian flutes nor etched/engraved/enameled bands). Dude in the middle...

raito

With the way your helmet is (non-) working, you're obviously not an art metals major.

raito

Unless you have something more sophisticated, drill bit and file work fine.

raito

In a more oriental vein: Ric Furrer if I need something that's made from iron-bhearing sand on up (or wootz), or Howard Clark for someting to use if/when the zombies come. Ric made my 12th century Bizen style tachi blade for my knighting. Although the cardboard outline looked very wimpy, the blade m...

raito

yes, Yes, YES!

See, this is the sort of thing I wanted to have happen. People stretching themselves a bit in order to get a little bit further.

raito

Thanks, sensei. There will be 'interesting times' this summer. In addition to getting my new stuff ready for the Japanese Battle (new 16th century nostalgic haramaki in shaded blue odoshi, with o-sode and oda-gote, and egawa and all the folderol), I'm supervising some other people in making their ow...

raito

Forget stories, I just want to know what His law is! Please won't you share, Your Highness? The law is that rice shall be served at every meal! (And for those of you who might get upset that someone would tell someone else what to serve, last reign I carried rice with me to make sure that rice was ...

raito

Well, I do plan on being at Lilies...

raito

I thought that was incorporated with the rewording of section IV.2 "The blade of an opponentâ€™s weapon may not be grasped at any time, nor may it be trapped in contact with the fighterâ€™s body as a means of preventing the opponentâ€™s use of the weapon. Armored hands may grasp the haft of an ...

raito

And then there's the matter that raising is really easier with heavier material. I expect that were I to try raising a helm in 16 gauge steel - of any flavor - I would blow right through before I had anything really resembling a helm. ??? Um, don't you mean dishing here? Raising is compressive, whi...

raito

Dent resistance doesn't mean quite what you might think it means. There's 2 ways for a material to protect you. It either spreads out impact over a larger area than it's hit, or it bends and absorbs the impact directly (in practice, both happen). If it doesn't bend too much, it bounces back into its...

raito

1. I've searched these boards and learned some things. It's my understanding that annealed spring steel is easier to work with and the final piece of armor should be tempered to raise it's hardness to acceptable levels. m 'Easier' is not a word I'd use. 'Possible' is what I'd use. Also, tempering i...

raito

For a method of patterning, you might try:

http://www.j-armour.com/method/3.html

It's specific to 16th century kebiki-laced armour, but can be adapted to other types.

raito

I used to make LARP swords in about five minutes for about $6 worth of material. Short of a dead run and full power beheading swing, they can't really hurt you. The appearance of safety is more important. Cue that standard rant about the extreme difference between what kids do (and survive) left to...

raito

In some places in this Kingdom, cold = -30 F. With the snow measured in feet. The wind chill gets even colder than that.

raito

The splintering wood can be fixed my simply epoxying some rope to the edge of the wood then puting leather over that. Um, that really wasn't my point, sorry if I wasn't more clear. My point was more that unrounded wood takes more damage from rattan than it does to rattan (it really doesn't damage r...

raito

Personally, I find that trimlock over aluminum chews the hell out of my rattan an order of magnitude more than unrounded plywood. However, unrounded plywood splinters a lot more than rounded plywood. I'd been having a problem with something chewing up my rattan in the last year or so, so I did some ...

raito

Old_bear wrote:What? Everyone needs a rule made up after them!
Ya brat.

I've got my rule. And it concerns combat archery.

raito

I don't ever recall seeing a rivet failing in shear. Usually, the piened end fails as the plates separate. I did recently replace all the 1/4" shank rivets on a helm for a freind that had mistakenly been put together with plated brass rivets (the helm itself was plated, too). Several of those h...

Pennsic Classical Japanese Battle

Re: how do you kill an archer in Aethelmark?

Japanese Clothing (facts don't add up)

Re: DIY Spring Steel Helm newb information?