The Armour Archive

Tibbie Croser

If a tenant farmer of late-15th/early-16th-century Scotland or England went to his muster/wapinschaw properly arrayed in his jack, "hat," and splints, would he have worn the armor beneath or over his outer coat/gown? I know that soldiers with livery coats/gowns wore them over the armor. Wo...

Tibbie Croser

The Tudor Tailor team are selling wool fabric directly (http://www.tudortailor.com/woolshop.shtml), and the list of suppliers is here http://www.tudortailor.com/links.shtml

Hope that helps.

Tibbie Croser

Are you speaking of true newbies with no experience in sewing or leatherworking? I think teaching them to make shoe *covers* for modern shoes or boots would be a better idea. Covers would require less sewing and could be made of scrap leather or fabric. I know there was a good recent thread on the A...

Tibbie Croser

Have you tried checking the sources listed on tudortailor.com?

Tibbie Croser

I wouldn't expect gauntlets to fit inside a complex hit. However, I have a dagger with a simple cross guard, and I may eventually want a C&T sword with a very simple hilt. I do have padded gloves (the Light Sparring Gloves from Revival Leather), but I'm not sure they would be sufficient. Do clam...

Tibbie Croser

From reading some of the WMA posts, I'm curious about what gauntlets WMA/HEMA people use for hand protection. Where do you get them, and how much control do they offer? I know that many SCA gauntlets are designed to "ground out" on the rattan. I assume that this is not true for WMA gauntle...

Tibbie Croser

Reconstructing History is now carrying the Westland line of shoes. See Brewer's "Shoes" thread in the Classifieds.

Tibbie Croser

Does anyone here have access to the George Black book "The Surnames of Scotland"? I am trying to document "Croser" as a 16th-century Scottish spelling of the name Crosier. Crosier was a common name on both sides of the English-Scottish border, but my secondary sources say that Cr...

Tibbie Croser

I'd agree that the alleged Holbein drawing looks really dubious. I have a book of Holbein paintings and sketches, and this doesn't look like anything else in his style. The hat also looks odd. It looks like an exaggerated version of the "acorn" hat that appears in the work of Durer and Bru...

Tibbie Croser

Triplette Competition Arms (the modern-fencing division of Zen Warrior) sells male chest protectors made of plastic.

Tibbie Croser

I believe Ratangei or another Tuchux had mentioned Animal's injury on the AA a couple of weeks ago.

Tibbie Croser

Thank you all very much for the help. On the site for the SCA College of Heralds, I followed a link to the most recent PDF of the Ordinary and Armorial. While there are a number of arms that are "Per saltire azure and gules," none have a "lozenge, or" as the charge.

Tibbie Croser

Dweezle, thank you very much for these. I have a question about the figures in the Hofkleiderbuch. Many of them are wearing a band of elaborate embroidery on the upper right sleeve of their gown. Does this show heraldry? If it does, does it show the wearer's arms or those of his master?

Tibbie Croser

When a field on a device is quartered, how do you describe the color/pattern/charge in each quarter? Do you start with the top left quarter first (or the top quarter, if the field is quartered per saltire)? For example, I want a yellow diamond on a red and blue field quartered per saltire. I want th...

Tibbie Croser

Darkwood offers a few early-style hilts, but they're more expensive than Alchem. I was surprised to see how inexpensive the Alchem blades and hilts were, even cheaper than Zen Warrior.

Tibbie Croser

Thanks for clarifying. So the Del Tin rapiers are good (and legal in the SCA), but their other swords are not suitable for sparring. I hadn't realized there was such a gap in quality between the rapiers and the other blades from the same company. http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?...

Tibbie Croser

Halbrust, glad to know I guessed right. I thought those looked like Dag swords (and good ones). Do you play in the Aggelgorod chapter? I retired from Dag fighting, but my husband still plays. We've been to Ragnarok several times, and we know Kyrax. Good luck with your unit.

Tibbie Croser

There's a new Osprey book on galloglasses from 1250 to 1600. For the late period, some of the period depictions seem to show Irish soldiers/galloglasses in morions, cabassets, or burgonets.

Tibbie Croser

http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=121860

It appears that Iomtalach has a high opinion of Del Tins and that his group uses them.

Tibbie Croser

Thank you, Dansknecht. I had misunderstood your original comment to mean that the man in the photo was trying to look Elizabethan but was unintentionally looking 17th century instead. Now I see that you meant that the man was trying to portray a 17th-century Scottish soldier. (I didn't think you wer...

Tibbie Croser

Which LARP? The swords look very much like Dagorhir/Belegarth swords.

It seems like an odd picture for the Interpretive forum. Did you mean this for Medieval Combat?

Tibbie Croser

Dansknecht, in the photo you're referencing, could you be more specific about what makes the clothing of the man on the left "mid-17th century"? To my less-experienced eye, it looks roughly like Reconstructing History Pattern RH207, 16th Century Common Man's Doublet and Breeches ( http://w...

Tibbie Croser

There's a new Galloglass book from Osprey. I was skimming my husband's copy. The book looks like an excellent source with many citations from period documents, photos of artifacts, period tomb carvings, and period illustrations. I think it covers 1250 to 1600.

Tibbie Croser

Listen to the seamstress, but first make sure she knows how to make arming clothes for SCA combat. If all she knows is modern street clothing, you might not get good advice. If you're going to attach mail, you need a strong fabric. You also want something worthy of your armor and the social station ...

Tibbie Croser

I have several lengths of broadcloth-type wool (dense, but with a fairly smooth surface) that I should prewash. However, I don't want to make them fuzzy. They have a beautiful smooth surface. Would it be OK to machine wash them in cold water at low agitation and then use the air-dry setting on the d...

Tibbie Croser

Don't get "monk's cloth," at least what's sold as "monk's cloth" in fabric stores. It's too flimsy and open. Get linen or fustian (linen-cotton blend). The heavy linens from fabrics-store.com have a relatively loose weave, but they're strong. They're also inexpensive and come in ...

Tibbie Croser

Cillene, if you have Venetians, you could add hidden protection for your rear end underneath them; that would let you shorten the jack.

Tibbie Croser

This is the latest list of allowed blades from the Society rapier page ( http://www.sca.org/officers/marshal/docs/rapier/bladetypes.pdf ), as of August 2009. It shows Alchem blades as being still prohibited in An Tir. Have you checked the website for the Kingdom Rapier Marshal of An Tir? Was there a...

Tibbie Croser

Hi, Simon, this is Tibbie from Storvik. I'd recommend that you get on Atlantian RapierNet or other rapier e-lists, if you haven't already. There are many, many more rapier folks on those lists than on here. You can get more answers, faster, to your various rapier questions.

Tibbie Croser

Cillene, if you want to do a jack of plates, go for natural-colored canvas/fustian for the outer layer, as in the museum jacks (cheapest option would be the cotton canvas painters' dropcloths at Home Depot). Also, with a jack, you could make a lightweight long-sleeved doublet of light wool or heavy ...

Tibbie Croser

For clothing, try the book The King's Servants: Men's Clothing at the Accession of Henry VIII, by Caroline Johnson. (I may be misremembering the subtitle.) It's from the people who did The Tudor Tailor. Have you tried contacting Gaddgedlar or other British LH groups doing that era or doing medieval/...

Tibbie Croser

Yes, there ought to be an essay on strapping helms for armored combat. In my case, I'm not sure that a helmet for rapier/C&T would be strapped exactly the same as one for armored combat. I have one of Icefalcon's light fencing helms. The perforated faceplate pivots upward, and it extends farther...

Tibbie Croser

Thank you, Frederich, for the offer, but I've realized I will probably not be able to strap the helm for a while; I have to show it to a C&T marshal first. I'll probably contact one of the C&T or rapier marshals for help with strapping.

Tibbie Croser

Irish, yes, that's the one. I went to the Icefalcon booth during Midnight Madness hoping that he'd have one of the fencing helms so I could see it in person. He did, and when I realized it was actually small enough to fit me, I got my husband to buy it for me as my anniversary/birthday/Christmas pre...

Tibbie Croser

I just bought one of the Icefalcon rapier helmets. To my eye, the style is generally reminiscent of some ca.-1500 long-visored sallets. How upscale a look are you seeking? I saw some rapier fighters at Pennsic with really spiffy male gowns of the early to mid-16th century. I imagine you could also d...

Armor worn over or under outer clothes?

WMA gaunts vs SCA gaunts

Black, "The Surnames of Scotland": anyone have thi

Heraldry: specifying arrangement of colors?

Prewashing wool broadcloth?