The Armour Archive

Sasha

<B>Kind of a silly question, since the armour I make is so bad I hate to wear it... But how much could a professional armourer make once they have established themselves? But boy, it would be nice to give up the corporate life! </B> Well, lets see.... It can be profitable, but the costs are pretty h...

Sasha

One of the rules of thumb I learnt in blacksmithing is that a spring pushes (or pulls) both ways. This may seem obvious until you see some of the Rube Goldberg things that people put together without taking the time to think about this. Unfortunately annealing the spring will not make it easiier to ...

Sasha

I like oil tanned leather too. It is just a hell of a lot cheaper then good veg tanned. I do not use the oil tanned for my vambraces because I hate oil tanned leather. Ii used it because I have a LOT of it lying around. http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif My "raw materials" room has escaped t...

Sasha

Okay, class got out early today and I headed over to the shop with a piece of scrap metal to have a play with the gel-hammer. The sample piece was a bit of galvanised 16ga. the anvil was a piece of chinese cast crap that was for sale in the shop. I found the hammer to be pretty good. It does miss th...

Sasha

You find them on the sides of cows. I just made them myself. I used oil-tanned 2mm leather for mine. no reason that chrome tanned wouldn't work. 2mm seems to be a pretty ideal thickness, just roll the cuffs to and back to get a reinforced double layer. I would avoid using alum tanned stuff because i...

Sasha

grrrr! Raw hide faced is what I meant. It is also what I assume he meant. The first home made leather faced hammer I built actually used coiled leather in place of coiled raw-hide....it worked, I suppose...but nowadays I buy the raw-hide disks/coils and fit them to the hammers I build. The other iss...

Sasha

KWARMOUR, Beware, be very ware indeed! This is one of *The Topics* which gets the napalm flying. To be perfectly truthful, no one knows exactlty what the "ideal" form of block in period combat was (edge or flat). The one thing we do know is that a block that kept your head on your shoulders was seen...

Sasha

Lead hammers have their upsides and downsides. For my opiniion, they have no upsides that make them superior then either a copper faced or leather faced hammer. If you cast the whole head in lead the handle will keep enlarging the hole till it flies off the handle in a most amusing way. If you make ...

Sasha

Find a minimum gauge of mild steel that your helms MUST conform to...then measure the thinest parts of the finished helms. In the case of spun domes (especially the badly made ones) this is in the stretched "valleys" or ruts left by the shaping process. In the case of helms made in halves it is at t...

Sasha

My web addy will not do you much good.... To paraphrase Monty Python "It burnt down, fell over and then sank into the swamp....but the next one WILL stay up" In addition to the massive faults with the site, the idiot Baron who thinks he can control my site's content just because i reside in his bord...

Sasha

You ask a dificult pack of questions. Unfortunately the best answer is hat you wiill need to conduct tests on the brass and bronze that you can get in your area. Brass and bronze have radically different properties based on which "details" of the alloy formula the makers are "pushing" in your area. ...

Sasha

The three pratchet books in this seriese are : Truckers Diggers Wings Written before all of the discworld stuff and then revised. The story deals with the thousands of Gnomes living in a london department store, unseens by the humans. Devided into dozens of cultures and religeons by the regions they...

Sasha

Yeah...But you wooses at Boeing just played with aluminium. http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif And I part with a quote form Terry Pratchet in the "Gnomes" books. 1st gnome: "What do we do if we have to pick up and move again? We won't always be able to just steal a lorry, you know" 2nd gnome...

Sasha

If your drill bit is sharp then the burrs it leaves should be minimal. At this point you can either take a larger drill bit in hand and just sit the tip on the hole you have drilled and give it a couple of half twists with your hand. The burrs come right off. A small and cheap hand tool that works o...

Sasha

Unfortuantely it is often different. The original chart that the marshals handbook was written from was actually a British gauge chart! in the US (and lately in Australia) commerciall standard 16ga steel has been 1.51mm instead of 1.6mm This is a small difference, especially sice no one (NO ONE) in ...

Sasha

ummm....Guys! You're supposed to be armourers! Drill the sheared pin and instal a new one made form harder metal (or bigger diameter). The worst you risk is : a) shearing the new pin b) breaking the next thing up the line to be stress-vulnerable c) wasting 20 mintues and still being left with a piec...

Sasha

Harold wrote: Ohh wie toll! thats cool krag, dont mind the foriegn language its just the german jumping out of me umm...well...yes... Your personal habbits are your own affair. I think the less said about it on the archive the better though. http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif Sasha

Sasha

Unfortunately a dead-blow hammer is actually less efficient then knowing how to use a normal hammer properly. Basically you need to re-power each blow rather then letting the hammer do most of the work. This will wear out your wrists far faster then learning how to strike with minimum vibration and ...

Sasha

Noise is definately the big issue here. After seeing someone buy a "big" shopvac with the three articulated vaccuum arms for three workstations....and the fact that it was gathering dust in someone's workshop because it was just too bloody loud to make it worthwhile, I built something that works nic...

Sasha

NO! You must use heat to anneal very hard wire and then you can do whatever you like with it. Putting hard wire through a set of rollers will damage the wire and possibly damage the rollers. Attampting to put it through a draw-plate WILL dmagae the draw-plate and may damage YOU because whent he tan...

Sasha

It really isn't as insane as all that. I got better with one day of "practice" (not breaking the wire with the drawing pliers, not having the draw bench release too suddenly and take out a fist sized section of the wall etc). I think you need to understand a bit of patience and craftmanship here. Dr...

Sasha

These guys are a metal weapons group based out of Queensland (known to Americans as "Survivor Country")...about 1800km form here. Thye are a fun bunch of people who subscribe heartily to the rivalry between the SCA and the metal weapons groups found in this country. Basically the SCA here is one out...

Sasha

At last my course comes in usefull! (just kidding, it has been usefull most of the time) I have spent the last 2 weeks drawing wire and chenier (long hollow tube, wire with a tunnel down it) for various projects. Square, hex and round. modern wire is hot extruded beofre being "refined" through draw-...

Sasha

You left out ennamalling and guilding. Also tin-plating. Basically, if it could bve done it was. Period armour could be found in any and all surface treatments that were available to the period. Fabric and leather covered, painted with eggwhite or gesso....it was all done. I picked up a book form th...

Sasha

All those who are not Richard. What the hell are you doing here? Is there no such thing as privacy on the net? http://www.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif Richard. I had a brain glitch.... In chat you mentioned the limited re-print of the ruinously expensive set of books.... What was the title again,...

Sasha

It is set for the queens birthday long weekend. I think this is the first weekend in July. But I will make sure when my lady (who is the one fitted with a calender chip) comes back. We have spent the last two days trying to buy a new car before our "trade-in" loses the power of independent movement....

Sasha

try for a mig unit that allows you to run a sheilding gas. Gasless units tend to be inferior (not in all cases). The flux core,innershield,outershiled type wires all have little "problems" compared to the plain wire and gas shield system.(in the case of innershield brand it has been found to be carc...

Sasha

Life has been busy and e-mails have been going astray. I got a couple of messages form you which I filed in the "I must get back to this person file" and then didn't. Sorry. I would love some cow tails. Anythig up to 30 would be great. Either salted or packed in ashes. I can tan them here. Are you s...

Sasha

I do not just curve my lames but dish them. This gives them better movement, closer fit and added strength.
Check my article onb using g-jaws for articulation in the essays section.

Sasha

Sasha

This machine is actually pretty much a clone of my Edwards Shear that I have praised here earlier. You can get it converted to single phase (not too cheap, buyt may still be better then paying for getting 3phase linked tot he house). I get excellent control out of mine. I can cut a 4inch diameter di...

Sasha

The prices vary greatly depending on where you are getting them form and whether you want a show-grade dog or a pet (always go for the best pet). Around $800 Australian is what they cost here....but there are many rescue and adoption centres run through the newfoundland clubs, from there you can usu...

Sasha

I had a newfoundland named Tannith to keep me company in the workshop. Mostly she just went flump on the old cloak in the corner or under a workbench for hours at a time. Always had excellent workshop sense and manners. Working out there has not been nearly as much fun without the huge lump of black...

Sasha

The answer to both is "Yes". It is also so that the tenth boss in an evening you are bashing out does not stand a significantly better chance of jumping out of your hands and whacking you on the forehead then the first one. Also, if you count the number of hands required to use a two-handed sledge, ...

Sasha

This jigs still allow you to destroy a shield boss by stressing or over-stretching the centre metal....it just allows you to do it with speed, ease and comfort. Basically you need to get some practice and ruin a few more before you get a feel for it. I find that the one thing you really want to avoi...

Sasha

"Use the fork, Luke!" There were discussions a while ago (several times repeated) about the making and using of articulation rivet-forks. You will find that it helps keep the rivet from "fattening up" in the bit of shaft that is working the articulation. If your rivet has too much room to upset insi...

Sir Richard, I need some info on *that* set of books

Sir Richard, I need some info on that set of books