The Armour Archive

Russ Mitchell

If scheduling allows, I'd also like to show up and say hello to all of you people, and a couple I've specifically wanted to meet...

Russ Mitchell

Hey, I hate to be a dick here Sure would be nice if your posts reflected that, since everybody else here seems capable of carrying on a civil and rather enjoyable discussion. [This message has been edited by Russ Mitchell (edited 09-26-2002).]

Russ Mitchell

btw: anybody who has done these tests and documented it, I would be very happy to receive writeups, and include them in what I"m going to present at Kalamazoo. Academic credit will be given, and I will, of course, open up my research results in return. There is a chance that by making said presentat...

Russ Mitchell

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>"You have to prove something DID happen, not prove it DIDN'T." Unscientific backyard tests don't prove shit. How hard is that to understand?VvS<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Vermin, what period/lo...

Russ Mitchell

It's veg-tanned horsehide. I am lately in the hunt for horsehide (and striking out jsut about everywhere), either fronts or butts, to replicate a leather armor and to do some destructive testing therein. This is the only source I've found, in a whole lot of url-hopping from some kind links given las...

Russ Mitchell

Thanks for the heads-up Ernst: I only noticed it about an hour after I posted, and felt like an ass. Egfroth, again, my condolences. I'm going to try to put together one of these puppies, and I'll keep you posted regarding the results. I have a friend with a lathe who ought to be able to turn some p...

Russ Mitchell

Oooh, you have a much better one you can use... have you ever read Otto Brunner? I strongly suggest it. If you want to be "vaguely dispossed," your family can have lost a running dispute with the local bishopric over who *really* owns the land... according to the bishopric's records, the land was do...

Russ Mitchell

Found some horsehide under my nose at Brettun's after striking out all over the map elsewhere... unfortunately, it's done over in a really ugly lizard print/texture. Anybody ever stretched horsehide? Think there's a chance I could pull it flat/flatter?

Russ Mitchell

The description seems very interesting, and over in Texas, we have a good use for one... bowhunting season. If your fletching is even a little loose, or the deer is looking in your direction when you shoot, they have the reflexes to actually dodge a normal arrow... a "flea" ought to be a lot harder ...

Russ Mitchell

I heard recently on science daily, or space.com, that they were going to make a prototype fire engine using the water cutting technology... simply drill through to where your IR tells you teh fire is coming from: the article said that you could bore through cement like it was swiss cheese... can't w...

Russ Mitchell

Vogeljager, I assume your post is to me, so: 1. We spar, we do small skirmishes, and we play with other groups: Hungary has a number of groups, most of them small-mid sized, none of them anywhere near the numbers of SCA, Markland, or Regia. Think typical living history sized. So if we can get everyb...

Russ Mitchell

judge... combat...

we don't. And therein lies the difference. Our combats are for fun, and there's nothing at stake to win or lose. With that, and a smaller number of combatants, "judging" a combat simply isn't an issue. Everybody knows when somebody's just gotten whacked upside the head...

Russ Mitchell

Vermin, apparently we don't know each other very well at all... http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/biggrin.gif Let's fix that at Kalamazoo this spring: I'm scheduled to present my results and its implications to one of De Re's sessions there. In fact, the point of the presentation is to try to find so...

Russ Mitchell

If not, I'll pass...... Didn't think you'd be interested in the first place, and could care less about SCA CA, but to answer your questions, we used bows that were of the correct type for *our* environment, composite recurves, but we actually stacked ma...

Russ Mitchell

Malcom, actually, at home right now I have photos of the riveted mail shirt we shot at in Budapest this July. The mail bounced some of the arrows, and was penetrated by others, at thirty meters. Padding, too. If you want the pictures, email me, and I'll scan them for you.

Russ Mitchell

Androu's right. Real combat throws don't let you safely breakfall or roll out of them, unless you're so insanely competent that you didn't really have to be thrown in teh first place. It's not worth learning more than the very basic hot to fall down if you're doing it for real -- that time's better ...

Russ Mitchell

Could the arguement be made that a poorer knight may only have a short sleeved hauberk and simple bracers? You can make all kinds of arguments, but you must consider the context in which the source was made: the people depicted here were not "poor knigh...

Russ Mitchell

Alcyonus has a definite point. On the one hand, just because something has survived, does not mean that it is representative for its type. On the other hand, just because only one or two examples of something have survived, this does not mean that it was rare at the time (and just because something ...

Russ Mitchell

What if you had your sheilds up front with some halberds to back them up, and everyone else had bows... You mean, you want to do a battle with the standard Byzantine infantry formation? http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif

Russ Mitchell

Swiatoslawski, Arms and ARmor of the Teutonic Knights' Order in Poland... or something like that, don't have the title here at work. Goes into detail, and lots of it, and shows the very, very large similarities between the Order's gear, and that of the Poles, while distinguishing between those and c...

Russ Mitchell

Go nuts at revival. Read sca fighting manuals. Read Sun Tzu. Heck, read Clausewitz... even bigger heck, read Vegetius... but I'm a historian, don't mind me, I'd wind up giving you a thousand-dollar list... but this post *was* going to be a quick note on book of five rings: read Musashi once, then pu...

Russ Mitchell

Spider, if you hang with POD on a regular basis, but are way too skinny, why don't you bug him to introduce you to Kubik? I know he was thinking about it, and you can learn on a lot of stuff while fixing that little problem... I know it's not the *immediate* answer to your question... but it'll pop ...

Russ Mitchell

Your "source" needs to be slapped upside the head. A recent publication, author I forget... "The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives" has a pretty good intro.

Russ Mitchell

Name-brand battles... very rare. But fights, and fights involving armed and armored men... very, very common. Unless you start drilling down to the actual charters, you don't see the hundreds of instances where somebody is asking for the assistance of somebody else because they've come out on the lo...

Russ Mitchell

Hi there. They were all very common. I have done some advanced research into dispute settlements in teh middle ages, and though the "hatalmoskodas" of the Hungarians doesn't translate directly to the "inimicitiae capitalis" (blood feud) of the Empire and northwest europe, you do have, from England o...

Russ Mitchell

Taltosh, if you do see some in bulk, please let me know... even with that list, I'm striking out on everything except the little butt strips.

-RAM

Russ Mitchell

Egfroth, in addition, you could get folks out there in a Byzantine tagma per Michael...

sure sounds like fun, though: I love shooting at armored people, and bought a special extra-light (25 lb) bow, jsut for the purpose... but I don't think a recurve is really likely at a Hastings event...

Russ Mitchell

Definitely striking out with those two online... have to see if there's a difference between web and live stock...

Ivar, does Oregon Leather have a website? Am striking out here...

[This message has been edited by Russ Mitchell (edited 09-12-2002).]

Russ Mitchell

Thanks to both of you. Taltosh, I have a fourteenth-century chronicle reference on how the hungarians built their leather armour... I'd be looking at veg-tanned leather in side quantities... enough for a major piece of armour. (Could do it with cowhide, and it'd be a lot cheaper, but there are speci...

Russ Mitchell

Am totally striking out... none of my usual leather haunts seem to have it, yet holster makers use it, so I know it's around somewhere.... anybody have a clue?

Russ Mitchell

14th-century Italian... trying to avoid the "false friends" translation syndrome. I am assuming that this is leather, but does anybody have a dictionary handy? Relates to armor construction...

Russ Mitchell

Those are some **very** fine scales... could you suss out a guess on the Byz/E.R. scale dimensions?

Russ Mitchell

2-bow crossbows, or stonebows, were simply light hunting crossbows designed for nailing varmints. If you really mean internal, then the other guys are on the money. I saw a really nice stonebow survival shown on a slide at a conference with de rei militari. My assumption based on construction was th...

Russ Mitchell

There was a Polish kindred that used

NA PIVO!!

(loosely translates as "let's go for beer!")

Russ Mitchell

T-Bob, just basic buckles, the kind you can pick up anywhere. I'm just playing Russ of Damocles until AG gets tired of cussing me out and decides to make good. He shows his face here every couple of months, whines about not being able to afford to eat, and then goes back to trying to pretend I don't...

Need help from leather-oriented people.

Hey, Egfroth! Any of your nutcases ever tried to make a Sole

Source for horse hide?

Cordovano?