The Armour Archive

Russ Mitchell

Ounce for ounce, I'll take the klappvisored pukelhelm for intimidating...

Russ Mitchell

Sadly, I am quite likely to be using commercial buckles, as well...

Russ Mitchell

THE MARK I-A1 BATTLE PANCAKE

Free to distribute with attribution.

Make a sword out of eight-inch-wide carboard, no more than 1/2-inch thick.

Won't help you cut, but I guarantee you your days of swinging a sword with incorrect edge alignment are over...

Russ Mitchell

Yeah, Matt, somebody did. That somebody was me. The point is not that it'll teach her to fence with a sword -- obviously. The point is that it's a dirt-cheap way of correcting obvious edge-alignment problems for a gal who can't afford a sword. Aminata: A machete doesn't need to be very sharp... a fe...

Russ Mitchell

The waves/scallops on these blades are functional... a blade may this way is a beast at the bind, because rather than putting a straight line next to a straight line, he can "grab" your blade/haft with the curve on the blade. If the guy knows what he's doing, he can really turn it into an advantage....

Russ Mitchell

Sorry, wrote poorly... meant to say that none of the artwork in **my** context seemed to indicate one way or the other. I have a possible idea for how it could be done with lacing... but it's not exceedingly functional. I am **hoping** to have the harness complete by the end of the first week in Sep...

Russ Mitchell

I'd be interested in hearing his rationale for that, since the finds of which I'm aware don't indicate diddly on it, and neither does any of the artwork...

but he may be right. how you're supposed to lace a single isolated rivet hole... that I'll leave to Smart People (tm).

Russ Mitchell

I'm working with some D-shaped plates... my brain farts, so I can't remember who I got them from... but there are hungarian plates documented that are almost exactly the same, only with a center hole. And in terms of lacing, that IS easy. Ridiculously so: you'll see why mine's taking so long when I ...

Russ Mitchell

Oh, I'm not going to start out with more than forty or fifty pounds... the real killer in this is not merely the wool cost, but the freight, as well... (man, I miss Idaho... pretty as all hell)

Russ Mitchell

1) Plastic armour [sic] is a joke in any language, for any purpose, and so is anyone who subscribes to its use or manufacture.

Actually, it's just fine for protecting the arms in la canne...

perfectly legit. nyaa nyaa

Russ Mitchell

Hi folks... just an update... per Warren's experience, too darned expensive. I am now looking for a source of raw wool that I can use to make the felt I need... Warren, just a thought... since I would need to make myself a pretty good chunk of felt for my own purposes anyway, is there a market for l...

Russ Mitchell

Egfroth; when the USB cord for the digital camera finally arrives, I'll scan some progress pictures of mine... it's even more knot-intensive... since my lamellar plates lack the characteristic center hole, however, I can't do the center rivet... gotta put on a movie tonight and try to finish attachi...

Russ Mitchell

Thanks for the replies, folks: I am great respector of the fact that paper knowledge is not experience.

Russ Mitchell

Thanks for the feedback, guys. It'll still be a while (though sooner than I thought), until fielding and coming out to play becomes a possibility... but it's coming along better than expected. I am aware that Ansteorran archers are considered heavies, which makes much sense anyway, since that's part...

Russ Mitchell

Actually, what I had been thinking of doing, because not everybody likes caftans, and horses are short, would have been a Byzantine infantry tagma as described by Maurice: a couple skirmishers, some shields, and then numberous rows of archers... Not trying to make a statement one way or another, mor...

Russ Mitchell

I agree with Brent's asserion that looking at this as a continuum is a serious mistake. We routinely have pop bottles, bags of potatoes from the store, or other blatantly modern stuff around our camps in Hungary, although we generally try to keep it either out of sight, or off the the side where it'...

Russ Mitchell

Chef is dead on. On a different thread on the Armour forum, I brought up the Khazar segmented breastplates... used for a time, and then abandoned, because it didn't fit well with horse archery. Folded and damascus steels are a totally different discussion, though... LOTS of cultures used folded and ...

Russ Mitchell

Hi. I'm bored and the forum is slow, so I thought I'd toss this in... Everything I've heard thus far indicates that SCA archers are effectively both treated and used as skirmishing troops... each one or few going their own way and doing their own thing. I was thinking on this, when talking with some...

Russ Mitchell

Cottage industry can produce scale and lamellar easily. Any village smith can crank out mail. Within reasonable limits, anybody can WEAR the armor cranked out this way... labor is cheap... the overlapping plates do an excellent job diffusing force... And mixing and matching types makes sense, and wa...

Russ Mitchell

Was reading "Design and Performance" in the Traditional Bowyer's Bible, vol. I.

tnx...

Russ Mitchell

Hey, just saw on your profile that you're in Texas... if you can get the raw wool, I'll show you how to do it... and even show you how to do it in bulk if I can get the rig set up for it...

otherwise, I may have to see what the time is like for a felting party...

Russ Mitchell

I've got some samples coming in the mail.... but I'd really rather get somebody to actually follow through on a raw wool sale, so I can just make up a couple hundred square feet...

Russ Mitchell

I'm extending the work I did last year for the medieval conference at Kalamazoo, and am getting into the physics involved... reading the Traditional Bowyers' Bible, I find that bracing height is subtracted from the power curve plotted for self bows... but not for reflex bows. Is this generally accep...

Russ Mitchell

Paper armour, whee!!

Russ Mitchell

The whole bit about stabbing it, hitting it with a mace, chopping straight through it with an axe, penetrating it with a [b]broadhead ! Come on now! I thought Peter Woodward was smarter than that. Then again, he is an actor...[/B] Actually, the tests tha...

Russ Mitchell

Dude, if you find it, cut me in, too, you wouldn't BELIEVE how much felt I need for a really good early hungarian depiction... I've even tried getting the raw wool, so I could make my own... but nobody seems to want to follow through on it...

Russ Mitchell

Egfroth: I think the confusion lies in periodization. The Carolingian "brunia" was almost certainly the scale garment you describe... and somewhere down the road, the meanings shifted, altered, etcetera. I actually rather suspect that the brunia was the exception to the byrnie mainstream... but west...

Russ Mitchell

If you wind up stuck, email me a pattern, and I'll boil you the six or so plates you need and punch the holes for you: I've got some thick scrap around. Won't match, but at least you'll be able to finish your row.

Russ Mitchell

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Noe: >what the heck is that thing? Hey Ron, do you suddenly feel as old as I feel?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Please tell me that's a troll... please... man, I know I've go...

Russ Mitchell

Yup, he's a minor deity.. his trunks are good, too... got my bunny one for Christmas, and she was thrilled to death...

Russ Mitchell

Minor tangential musings... A shield is much better protection than a boiled leather shirt, especially against spears and arrows. This has to be factored in when considering the economics of hide production vs. carpentry... one of the reasons the Hungarians had such a huge army was that, with livest...

Russ Mitchell

Definitely mail. The only folks who would have been likely to wear leather, assuming that's an armour, which it could easily be (as opposed to a smith's apron or the like), is for somebody who was predominantly at sea... in other words, not a thegn, but a sailor. I can't now recall whether it was Cn...

Russ Mitchell

This is NOT fantasy. Leather armors were often painted in Syria: I have photos from some work I'm doing with Nicolle (sorry, can't release them), showing just that. Given that it was done just next door, I can't imagine that this is some "artist's convention" per the contextless art history approach...

Russ Mitchell

Wil, I'll second Egfroth on the kite shield. It's depicted with Byzantine auxiliaries well before the Normans used them. Egfroth: Sources are, Leo the Wise (I KNOW you can get this one), Gorelik's chapter, which includes sketches of quite a bit of unpublished-in-the-west archaeological finds, and qu...

Russ Mitchell

Now that the Russian historiography has opened up, quite a bit of information has popped out regarding the "eastern barbarians," so to speak... The main contingents of the magyars were heavy lancers, and armored accordingly. By this time, the Avars are basically gone, but the late avars appear to ha...

Unit Fire for Combat Archery

Any bowyers in the crowd?