The Armour Archive

Matthew Amt

if you are looking for armour grade strength, you want silicon bronze. Well, we're more interested in the tin content, for accuracy. Silicon bronze doesn't have any tin (or very little), whereas phosphor bronze has about 5 percent, which is in the ballpark for ancient bronze. Frankly, a major conce...

Matthew Amt

Thanks very much! All the input is much appreciated. Now we just have to put in a few calls and emails, and see what these places can do for us.

Matthew

Matthew Amt

Huh, that's an idea, thanks! Yeah, 2 feet is perfect for me. But Drew is surprisingly big, hee hee... (Well, turn it sideways and 24" may be tall enough!)

Hmmm, maybe Santa will put some bronze in my stocking....

Matthew

Matthew Amt

I have purchased bronze from McMaster-Carr within the last 90 days. But was it phosphor bronze more than 12" wide? Because that's as wide as they list that alloy. Same with most other places. try these guys.... Don't know the exact chemistry of this bronze.... m Neither do they, apparently! If it's...

Matthew Amt

Thanks, but we've looked there. They only show copper and brass, and only in 12-inch-wide rolls. Other places have many other alloys, including brass in much larger sheets (up to 4x8 feet), but none of them have phosphor bronze wider than 12". Good for helmets, but not for a cuirass! Thanks for post...

Matthew Amt

http://www.larp.com/midgard/

It includes links here and there to other helpful sites as well.

Enjoy,

Matthew

Matthew Amt

Ave! It's not bad (better than I could do!), though being a sketch it naturally lacks a lot of the details that make for "accuracy". Of course, the more details you add, the more you can get wrong! Yeah, the tapered block on the pilum looks a little long, and his cheekpieces are definitely a little ...

Matthew Amt

m m The shoulder sections connect to the girdle plates with straps and buckles on Type A, and with hooks on Type B. Type A's lobed hinges tend to be nicer than typ B's, with narrower "arms" and sometimes triangular cutouts in the middle. The center plate of the upper shoulder guard is rectangular on...

Matthew Amt

In ancient times, coppiced groves of ash trees were maintained for spear shafts. A tree would be harvested when it was thick enough along a usable length, then it was simply cleaned up and trimmed as needed. This meant that the shaft cross-section showed the entire grain, not just an arc of it, for ...

Matthew Amt

John Paddock, "Some Changes in the Manufacture and Supply of Roman Bronze Helmets Under the Late Republic and Early Empire", from The Production and Distribution of Roman Military Equipment, Proceedings of the Second Roman Military Equipment Research Seminar, 1985, ed. by M.C. Bishop, pp. 142-159. H...

Matthew Amt

I was briefly and very grudgingly allowed to borrow a copy from a friend, years ago. All I did was photocopy a few tunic and trouser patterns, unfortunately, since I didn't know enough to realize what I had in my hand. From what little I remember, it could be THE reference source for that period! Su...

Matthew Amt

Avete! Glad you like the site! Yup, iron helmets and many of the brass or bronze ones were raised in one piece. Spinning became pretty common for brass helmets probably in the late Republic. I haven't heard of any patterns online for a Roman helmet. You'd have to track down an armorer who is willing...

Matthew Amt

Well, that's as good an explanation as I've ever heard! Similar methods can be applied to medieval, Roman, and even Bronze Age scabbards. You've probably already seen my own Bronze Age scabbards, m m m And a detail of the mouth of that one, m It's based on fragments found on a later bronze sword, wh...

Matthew Amt

PTERUGES. Pronounced teroogays, more or less, always with a hard "g". It's a Greek word, and not one of their easier ones... And I *think* it's plural, not sure what the singular form would be. Now, everyone go and watch the Latin Lesson scene from Monty Python's "Life of Brian"! Khairete, Matthew

Matthew Amt

Might as well give this one a "bump"! I'm planning to be there, with some extra clothing and gear as usual. Any other Archivers coming out?

Matthew/Aelfric

Matthew Amt

Make the shield, lad, orc stuff is FUN!! (And this from a guy who is such an "authenticity nazi" that he was almost awarded the title "Feuhrer of Markland" (the Markland Medieval Militia).) Those spikes are really exciting in a crowded sci-fi con, so I made leather booties to cover mine. Yeah, all t...

Matthew Amt

Khaire! Well, I made my Corinthian crest the same way I've done Roman ones, m m m (Yeah, I need a few more good photos, particularly of the process!) First off, the crest block should NOT be taller at the front than at the back! That's an error started by Deepeeka in India resulting from a misinterp...

Matthew Amt

Zowie, that's quite a pile of questions! I have the feeling you'll end up consulting a LOT of books rather than just one or two. Presumably you're talking mainly about iron and steel production? Because copper and bronze date back a lot farther. Smelting of ores, casting, forging, heat treating (mos...

Matthew Amt

I've got the whole rig, and a whole "how-to" website for it: m m m m You do NOT want to use anything thicker than 18-ga for the shield! (Though I used 16-ga for the spikes.) It will be plenty heavy and strong enough, trust me. After wearing all the stuff at DragonCon a couple years ago, I came up wi...

Matthew Amt

Ave! Have you been to the Legio XX site, yet? m There are patterns there for all the plates and fittings. The "hinge base" you mention are for all the hinged strap and buckle fittings--each has a base which is riveted to the plate, and a "free element" to which is riveted a strap or has a buckle on ...

Matthew Amt

Okay, I'll chip in! Just to be different, here's my Bronze Age cuirass,

http://www.larp.com/hoplite/cuirass7.jpg

And the Marmesse cuirasses on which mine is partly based:

http://jfbradu.free.fr/celtes/les-celte ... messe2.jpg

http://www.csun.edu/%7Ehcarh001/496/armor.gif

You don't want to make armor out of STEEL, after all--it rusts! Hee hee hee...

Matthew

Matthew Amt

The earliest references I came to on mail were greek mercenaries fighting in Egypt in the 7thC BCE. I think it was Herodotus that was described their "mail of bronze" as the Carians disembarked. That must be a bad translation. "Mail" or "coat of mail" was often used in Victorian times and later as ...

Matthew Amt

Just because there is genetic influence from German areas in England doesn't mean that the Britons of Caesar's time were visually "German". The article is mainly about genetic descent, but there were also great shifts and influences in language and culture. And it does note that Tacitus points out t...

Matthew Amt

Any praise for MRL Not for their clothing, at least from a historical perspective. There are exceptions, of course, but I usually either cringe in horror or howl with laughter at their clothes. When they bother to use more accurate materials, it's sorta like gilding cardboard... Of course, for anyo...

Matthew Amt

Is this the weight of kit in melee, Or is this the weight of kit on the march? That estimate of c. 40 pounds that Dan and I give is for battle equipment alone. A hoplite from the time of Marathon or Thermopylae would probably be carrying LESS on the march, since every man had at least one servant t...

Matthew Amt

Roman literature (possibly Livy?) says that the Romans were introduced to mail by the Gauls. This probably happened around 300 BC, and the earliest known surviving bits of mail apparently date back to the 5th century (I think). I don't have any problem with the idea of mail being used in Britain and...

Matthew Amt

What Dan said, only I'd even estimate lower than that. My hoplon/aspis is 18 pounds, and might be heavier than the originals. My linothorax is about 11 pounds, and I have a much earlier-style bronze cuirass that is only 9 pounds. My Corinthian is under 5 pounds, and the Higgins Armory museum says th...

Matthew Amt

Hoo, boy, not sure I can help on this one. I'm a hardware guy--who needs all that history stuff? (Hee hee!) Yeah, coulda been the Jugurthine War, almost certainly was if it was indeed in North Africa. But there was a lot of early back-and-forth action against the Samnites in Italy, and I believe it ...

Matthew Amt

Linen likes to unravel, so before washing a new piece I always zig-zag the cut ends. If your sewing machine doesn't do a zig-zag, just do a quick hem instead. Then give it a good harsh washing, like a hot wash and a cold rinse. You can line dry it or toss it in the dryer, but either way you will nee...

Matthew Amt

MAtt, Is the info on the plates being heat treated published? I do not remember having heard this before but it would be interesting to read up on. This first showed up in a brief article by David Sim in ARMA: Newsletter of the Roman Military Equipment Conference, v. 10, 1998, "Report on Two Sectio...

Matthew Amt

No heat needed, the metal's too thin for that. I usually just bend them by hand, maybe over my knee. Something rounded like a log is very helpful to avoid kinking. Or a sandbag and a rubber mallet. When in doubt, practice on some scraps. I made my first lorica on the floor of our spare bedroom. I di...

Matthew Amt

From what I can tell, trousers first seem to appear in Europe with the early Iron Age, maybe at the end of the Bronze Age. (No earlier than that, for the simple reason that they have to be IRONED!! Bwa ha ha!!) They were well known by all Celtic and Germanic peoples, as well as farther east. They we...

Matthew Amt

Wow, that is WILD!! You should sculpt the rest of the body to go with it! (Including cuirass, greaves, shield, etc.) Skip the tools, the gods would come down and smack you for hubris if you got much better.

Congrats!!

Matthew

Matthew Amt

I'll google up the RAT site in a moment. Shoulda given you the link! m Thanks for the imput, it was rather interesting. I had considered getting/making a suit (is it complicated?) for myself; its simply stunning. Ah, you've never been to the Best Roman Site on the Net: m m As Glenn says, the plates...

Matthew Amt

Avete! There have been HUGE long discussions about this over on the Roman Army Talk board in the past year or so. In short, there is no simple answer. The lorica segmentata seems to disappear about the time of the development of centralized armor manufacture and actual state issue of equipment in th...