The Armour Archive

Russ Mitchell

Gocin, I have oft maintained that the surviving mail I've seen has been round-wire, with only the rivet sections overlapped. HOWEVER, HOWEVER... That was in Budapest... and I have long suspected that there may simply be a regional difference between western and central europe.... (Edit: and that mai...

Russ Mitchell

Dude, PoD, you can still get Camels at the corner store... I know they tax the hell out of them in CA, but...

Best of luck, Andre.

Russ Mitchell

Thanks, guys, especially you, Angus... now I can run and hit ILL like a mexican boxer's hook... weird, the guy in your link is using butted mail... it's not the main thrust of the presentation at all -- that will focus on the experimental archaeological side done in Hungary last summer, but it's a b...

Russ Mitchell

Would appreciate it... the presentation is an attempt to understand why archery was so ineffective in western europe, and so startlingly effective in southeast europe... since I **don't do** western european milhist, outside the basics, and I'm short five months of ILL transfer time... it'd be a big...

Russ Mitchell

And as a side note, Lord is this embarrasing...

Russ Mitchell

Gents, I just found out that after something like eight months of not hearing from Kelly DeVries, that I'm scheduled to present a paper at kalamazoo to de re militari on this topic based on the mail test I described some time ago. "What we have here, is a failure, to communicate..." And I've been do...

Russ Mitchell

It is a **very** sweet kit, and highly adaptable. Anybody who's thinking about an eastern european persona should really consider it... Janos put a lot of effort into blending the historical reality with the function of the SCA list.

Russ Mitchell

After all our talk, I was going to say yes... and then our cat got nailed in the street today, right in front of us... he's at the vet now, and my budget is blown. So I'm out, sorry.

Russ Mitchell

It doesn't even have to be abusive aggression (1st Kay, for me it's fasting... catch me on a caloric restriction day, and I've got truly thuggish aggression)... but simply stress the overwhelming of the opponent via constant attack. At those odds, had one person thought of that, you guys would have ...

Russ Mitchell

Wow. I smacked the living crap out of this stuff, and it took it, no problem.

Have to give the cobbler's wax and/or rawhide a thought... hrm...

tnx...

Russ Mitchell

Freiman/Dave: The glue is Hungarian, certainly... but I'd have to go over there to find it now... it's not the kind of thing in common use any more (just like finding waxed linen thread is more of a chore than it was in the fifties, where it was all over the electrical industry). In terms of recipe....

Russ Mitchell

I don't know what "Barge" is made of... is this period? I have a choice... at this point, either shrug and say they probably wore a mail shirt under it (not my favorite, but possible), or look at what will deter a thrust... and that's either a harder-drying glue, or boiling the leather. I'm *hoping*...

Russ Mitchell

Yes, there are Seljuk/Mongol-type armors made that way... in this case, rather than several overlapping plates going down the body, it's basically a lightweight leather caftan of glued layers. Kinda odd, but so far, pretty protective, as long as nobody on a field full of spears and swords tries to s...

Russ Mitchell

Need help. In-between banded lamellar lacing sessions, Iâ€™ve been working on a different kind of leather armor, a laminate variety described in the Florentine chronicle of Matteo Villani (mid-late 14th c.), in his description of the Magyar cavalry accompanying Louisâ€™ punitive expedition to Naples...

Russ Mitchell

Need help. In-between banded lamellar lacing sessions, Iâ€™ve been working on a different kind of leather armor, a laminate variety described in the Florentine chronicle of Matteo Villani (mid-late 14th c.), in his description of the Magyar cavalry accompanying Louisâ€™ punitive expedition to Naples...

Russ Mitchell

Whew. That was great. And Bob is getting much, much better, folks. This was billed as an intensive seminar, and we had a middling-but-motivated turnout (which, in retrospect as an organizer, I'll take over "large and listless" any day), and we ran the plays of wrestling and dagger until there just w...

Russ Mitchell

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Armour Guy: [B]I'll sell you a mismatched pair of mild steel spaulders, rusty as all hell and not strapped, for $5 + shipping B]</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE> And he'll promise to sh...

Russ Mitchell

Why do you fight? I don't. I'm a momma's boy with a strong aversion to blood loss. I do spar and fence a lot, though. Seriously, I do it because it's enjoyable exercise, and because I like to feel abstract geometries come to life in and around my body. What group do you fight in? I have played a li...

Russ Mitchell

Sorry... a family mess back east has me forgetting my head lately. We start at 9 a.m. (sharp!), and we'll try to have the doors open just after eight or so in order to take care of all the preliminaries. Since we have people coming in from so far away, there'll be a little play-by-ear as we start, s...

Russ Mitchell

I have a tiny bit of slush-fund set aside, and would definitely consider it once I'm done with my current project... but while I could get away with stainless, I would much rather use carbon, and couldn't use aluminum or sports materials. Definitely 20 ga. unless it's a larger scale. (edited because...

Russ Mitchell

Keith, let me know if the two of you get it together or you get a room, so I know you're covered, okay? Kevin tells me he gave you references (and would have put you up, except he only gets back into town from business on friday, at midnight...). We're filling out nicely, but still have room if anyb...

Russ Mitchell

And speaking of control issues, I kicked my partner in the eye last night... with my toe... it's always the time that you stumble onto something good (in this case, a really slick combination) that it slips. ::sigh:: Kinda hard for me to biatch about safety after that sort of thing, but one of the n...

Russ Mitchell

I'm curious about the correlation of the targone with the "ungarische schilt" depicted in Gladiatoria ... it's too close a match-up to ignore, and too likely a weapon for a horse-archer, as well... Though it's unlikely that we'll ever have an answer, I'm curious as to whether the weapon diffused int...

Russ Mitchell

Hungary **should** be one of the best prospects, as the middle and lower stratum of warriors all used leather armor (and judging by Villani, highly effective leather armour) at least through the end of the fourteenth century... but we don't have a single source that unequivocally shows such a thing.

Russ Mitchell

Just wanted to make sure you were in the loop. Had been holding the checks, because the original response was short, and it was uncertain for a little bit whether the seminar would "make," in school terms. I'll be out of town this weekend (illness in family), but I'll go ahead and deposit the sucker...

Russ Mitchell

Actually, cheval, there are other m.a. that use it. Hsing-I chuan being the example off the top of my head. It has to be combined with other things, but it can be very valuable if it's done correctly... which means that *Everybody* is moving slow -- in which case the relative speeds are exactly the ...

Russ Mitchell

There's one week to go until we start the seminar... I'm very excited, as we're finally going to have the focus required to do the material in depth, and get down the fundamentals that actually let you apply all the "sexy stuff." We still have space for more fighters, so if you're interested in real...

Russ Mitchell

Actually, I know (of) a smith in Germany who regards making armour as journeyman's work. According to what I heard of out of this guy, a smith should be able to make essentially anything out of iron, period.

You don't have to get so defensive about it, chef, but I do think you're basically right.

Russ Mitchell

Excellent flow and timing, better than mine. I want an opponent who is better than me, but has sufficient control and precision that I'm challenged but only overwhelmed insofar as is productive. Basically, I want an opponent who I know I can only hold my own with if I'm playing at the absolute top o...

Russ Mitchell

It's certainly plausible, and wouldn't be even remotely difficult to make one that would be quite protective... I am pretty sure I could crank out a dozen in a single day, if I was prepped ahead of time... but given that this is hardly the kind of item that's going to either survive the ages in an a...

Russ Mitchell

I'm curious as well... my mentor in Hungary had a leather helm/leather pointy hat that was pretty darned stout... Leo the Wise mentions leather equipment among the Hungarians, and I wouldn't mind taking a shot at a leather helm at all (just imagine the tooling potential...)... but I'm all-around kin...

Russ Mitchell

Stoffel, just in case he's offline at work, yes, Nails is a young guy doing everything he can to bootleg himself into a set of field gear. I swapped him a few things to help him get a head start, but he's still way short. He's a nice guy, it'd be very cool if he was able to get on the field.

Russ Mitchell

I will start the same type of project in about two weeks, and will also try to figure out how to post them for y'all... though the design will be more karvas/bazubandy.

Russ Mitchell

Those elbows didn't fit??

Man, you are having the worst luck... and your email addy is bouncing.

Russ Mitchell

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody.

Archery and Mail: If you have a strong opinion, please help.

Help with leather armor reconstruction, [x-post]

Need help with leather armour reconstruction, round three.

Any of you gents with pretty armour books have surviving tar