The Armour Archive

Dan Howard

Yep. Blair himself concedes that there likely was always iron plate armour, just that it was rare during his "age of mail". I can think of two extant solid iron cuirasses dating right back to the Hellenistic period.

Dan Howard

The first questions I have are "can we see the back"? "What is the hole arrangement and lacing pattern"? "What are the dimensions of each scale"?

Dan Howard

Looking good Todd. When it is finished you might want to submit it here for the Armour of the Month competition.

Dan Howard

Gutierre Diaz De Gamez says a little about sleeping in armour, along with other complaints while on campaign. "Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow; their ease is weariness and sweat; they have one good day after many bad; they are vowed to all manner of labour; they are for ever sw...

Dan Howard

Hey Greg, do you have any more info on this armour?

Dan Howard

I'm sorry dan as an x nvg heavy running around in mail and gambeson in the middle of a football oval in 40+ deg heat doing a Scottish festival demo we NEEDED shade more then anything else hydrating was a must as well but using the Viking tents as shade was just as if not more important ! The armour...

Dan Howard

These days they would just add the pengiun to the picture with Photoshop.

Dan Howard

All of the above would have been capable of stopping most of the threats on a battlefield. The main difference is in weight, comfort, and flexibility. You can make leather stop a bullet but the construction has to be a lot thicker and heavier than a metal plate that does the same thing. But there ar...

Dan Howard

Jousting armour seems to have been a lot safer than anything those same men wore in battle. It is generally heavier and more restrictive than field harnesses, suggesting that safety was more important than anything else.

Dan Howard

Butted mail is surprisingly tough if the weave is fairly tight and the rows are alternated with solid rings. I have a few patches that can stop the hardest spear thrust I can manage. It's nowhere near as good as proper riveted mail but a lot better than I expected. And it looks a hell of a lot bette...

Dan Howard

Doesn't sound like you went at it long enough to get efficient -- I for one particularly and especially unrecommend using needlenose pliers for any aspect of butted mail weaving, though I've found worthwhile use for the type in the more complex process of making riveted links, especially around the...

Dan Howard

We find all sorts of pieces of metal that had straps on them and the leather is always gone. Not true at all. There are plenty of examples of metal armour with the remnants of leather fittings on them dating right back to the Bronze Age. The Dendra Panoply is the earliest example I can think of - d...

Dan Howard

CuChulain's leather body armor from the Tain? Yes, it is a story, but the describe it in pretty good detail. Cuchulain is said to be wearing 27 cneslenti . Old works translate this as "hide tunics" but it is better interpreted as some kind of padded jack consisting of 27 layers of linen. The word l...

Dan Howard

There is no evidence for Varangians wearing ANY lamellar - metal or leather. There is also no evidence that wax was ever used to make hardened leather armour, but there is some evidence that argues against its use.

Dan Howard

Yep. Acclimatization is everything. We know that some of the heaviest armours ever developed were worn in the arid regions of the Middle East. There are a few of us in Australia who have worn heavy metallic armour all day in the middle of summer. It is no more uncomfortable than wearing heavy clothi...

Dan Howard

You might want to have a look at the latest edition of GURPS Low-Tech. An obscene amount of research was done to try and model historical armour accurately. I wrote a lot of the armour chapter and it covers pretty much everything you want to do. I would put it up against any textbook on the subject ...

Dan Howard

This was all over the various forums a couple of years ago. Here are a few threads:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=136948
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=136962
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=136960

Dan Howard

My mail makes no noise at all when I do jumping jacks, but it has been properly tailored to fit me and it has a padded liner sewn to it.

Dan Howard

In order for lamellar to provide better protection than mail it has to be significantly heavier than mail. Pound for pound, mail would be better against everything except blunt truma.

Dan Howard

By 100 BC, every Roman soldier is carrying one, plus a bronze messpan, plus his bronze helmet, plus his mom has several bronze pots hanging on the kitchen wall. Were these items of a tin alloy that was suitable for weapons and armour? Romans had alternatives such as brass. Did the ancients have the...

Dan Howard

Here is a late 8th century source (after the monetary reforms) outlining the price of food from the Capitulary of Frankfort (794AD) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/794capit-frankfort.asp Our most pious lord king has decreed, with the assent of the holy synod, that no man, clerk or lay, may sel...

Dan Howard

From what I can gather, Lex Ripuaria is 7th century, not 8th. It was written before Charlemagne's monetary reforms. The golden solidi is still used, which equals 36 silver denarii. There are also two versions of the Lex Ripuaria, one says that a cow is 1 solidi and a horse is 7. The other says that ...

Dan Howard

Heh. We don't an illustration database. All we need is a service called "Ask Mart!"

Dan Howard

No. It just means that it is meaningless to use today's silver prices as a comparison. In reality it would require the resources of an entire community to supply one man with the above equipment and to keep it maintained.

Dan Howard

Bronze also has recycling problems; every time you melt it down you lose some of the tin content. So, if you want to recycle your equipment and maintain the same quality, you need a constant supply of tin just to replenish the stocks of bronze that you already have, let alone building up additional ...

Dan Howard

These days I only read non-fiction in hardcopy. All of my fiction is listened to on audiobooks, but I prefer historical fiction that is well-researched. Currently I'm about half way through Stephen Pressfield's books and they are all pretty good - both the books themselves and the narration. I enjoy...

Dan Howard

People have produced illustrations on this forum where the sword blades are coloured brown. There is no point even discussing colour unless it can be established that today's colour is the same as when it was freshly painted. Something that is brown today could have been yellow, green, or red when i...

Dan Howard

Personally I think that the Convey Fen shield was leather faced with bronze like the Yetholm shield. Only the bronze has survived today. One other pitfall is that these shields were rarely a uniform thickness. Often they are thinner near the rim and thicker in the centre. Most measurements of these ...

Dan Howard

We see pieces of similar shape, decorated similarly, in art, so it is a reasonable assumption. Artwork is no better. Who said that "brown" equals "leather"? Which artists use that convention and which do not? How do we know that the colour we have today is the same colour that it was when freshly p...

Dan Howard

Images taken by me at the Detroit Institute of Arts... <snipped cool photos> The problem is that it is impossible to tell from a sculpture whether an item is made fom leather or metal. There is nothing in any of these sculptures that couldn't be made in both materials. You need to look for physical...

Dan Howard

Copper wasn't the problem. There were a few decent deposits around the Aegean and Near East. As you said, the problem was sourcing decent supplies of tin. The reason why iron supplanted bronze was because iron was easier to acquire. Larger armies could be equipped for a fraction of the cost. It does...

Dan Howard

Bronze is also heavier than iron. It is certainly denser but that fact is only relevant to weight if the dimensions of both iron and bronze weapons and armour are the same. Suppose that the denser bronze plate actually provides better protection than an iron equivalent that is, say, 10% thicker? It...

Dan Howard

Didn't Neil Burridge do a demo where he cut a wrought iron sword in half with one of his bronze blades?

Dan Howard

With that in mind, a high-tin bronze that has been properly hammer-hardened is harder than wrought iron, in fact it's harder than a lot of ancient steel. But was that practiced back then? Yes. Matt is spot on. Generally bronze is superior to iron for armour and weapons until the intricacies of quen...

Dan Howard

Yep. I think theta mail might have been unique to India. What is the earliest example we have?

Re: 1390s effigies: what's under the jupon?

Re: Extant LEATHER Lamellar from the Roman Empire

Re: Revised chronology kegelhelm of Achilles

Re: An inquiry for the armor experts. For RPG game design.

Re: Extant LEATHER Lamellar from the Roman Empire

Re: I WTB a Varangian Guardsman in 1040

Re: Uh...

Re: An inquiry for the armor experts. For RPG game design.

Re: Knights on a Treadmill

Re: There is too much leather armour in the SCA.

Re: There is too much leather armour in the SCA.

Re: There is too much leather armour in the SCA.

Re: There is too much leather armour in the SCA.

Re: I WTB a Varangian Guardsman in 1040

Re: I WTB a Varangian Guardsman in 1040

Re: An inquiry for the armor experts. For RPG game design.

Re: Knights on a Treadmill

Re: An inquiry for the armor experts. For RPG game design.

Re: An inquiry for the armor experts. For RPG game design.

Re: Bronze vs Iron

Re: The price of arms and armour in the Viking age

Re: The price of arms and armour in the Viking age

Re: The coifette

Re: The price of arms and armour in the Viking age

Re: Bronze vs Iron

Re: Audio books that are research based?

Re: 14th century leather armour

Re: Bronze vs Iron

Re: 14th century leather armour

Re: 14th century leather armour

Re: Bronze vs Iron

Re: Bronze vs Iron

Re: Bronze vs Iron

Re: Bronze vs Iron

Re: Mail and what is time and region appropriate