The Armour Archive

Cap'n Atli

I kept looking at the bench shears, and wondering why you were asking...

Handled grindstiones work really well with a large labor pool; keeps the apprentice busy.

Cap'n Atli

When I was up at the Walters last month for the Novgorod exhibit, I stopped by the "Collectors Cabinet" and checked out the armor exhibit. Some nice stuff, displayed in an intimate setting. Note that the information cards might have several identical copies in the holders, so you may have to search ...

Cap'n Atli

I've posted an extensive analysis of migration period Anglo-Saxon spears on the second page of: m As a general rule, Viking spears tend to have thicker shaftsthan their A-S equivalents, and closed sockets. Anyway, at least it will provide you a baseline; and we'll just need to wait for someone to do...

Cap'n Atli

After chatting with Paw Paw and Jock a few years ago, and seeing how Pat Fulcher rigged his, I broke down and entered the "Gaseous Age" and purchased the NC Tool Ã¢â‚¬Å“Whisper BabyÃ¢â‚¬Â

Cap'n Atli

Looks nice.

Cap'n Atli

Silly Viking! Let the crew do the fighting!

Cap'n Atli

What brand/style/type/size did you get?

How's your fuel usage? (Just lugged 370+ pounds of coal back frrom a local smith @ $0.12 pound.)

Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?

Cap'n Atli

I think the key problem here is that itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s based almost wholly on the sagas, with some interpolation from woodworking tools and maybe some non-Scandinavian weapons thrown in. As IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve pointed out earlier, the sagas are a very slippery source, and over the years IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve grown to trust...

Cap'n Atli

Maryland National Park Service sites:

http://data2.itc.nps.gov/parksearch/state.cfm?st=dc

Virginia NPS sites:

http://data2.itc.nps.gov/parksearch/state.cfm?st=va

DC regional NPS sites:

http://data2.itc.nps.gov/parksearch/state.cfm?st=dc

Lots of cool sites and places!

"If the Smithsonian is the "Nations Attic" then the National Park Service is the back yard."

(Uncle Atli's Very Thin Book of Wisdom)

Cap'n Atli

Closer, but still not the one I'm looking for.

The crossbows, though of inteest, are secondary to the actual siege picture.

Thanks for the help.

Cap'n Atli

Thanks for the inspiration; I pulled a copy via Inter-Library Loan last night. They were surprised (and downright pleased) that there was an available copy in the system.

I love librarians.

Cap'n Atli

Somewhere I've got a near contemporary illumination of the Siege of Paris in 885; notable because it's one of the earliest illustrations of crossbows in use.

I poured through my library last night and can't seem to find it. Anybody have any references?

Cap'n Atli

Variations on this theme were common around the turn pf the previous century. Like many combination tools (and weapons) they usually weren't very good vises or anvils. Quality of the anvil varies, with some of them being cast iron. Some, however, are competently made of steel, so they tend to be som...

Cap'n Atli

Murdock wrote:HAW!!!

When that issue of Conan came out i was.....
DUE IN 6 MONTHS!!!!!!
yall can feel old as crap now

Why, I'm old enough to be your...

...say; what was your mother's name?

Cap'n Atli

How much did the B-3 end up selling for?

Cap'n Atli

Hank wrote- "I must admit to be quite saddened that it appears that the large majority of those posting are familiar with Vikings nly through comic books are lousy movies." Lame, Hank. Cheap shot. Be nice. People admire you. -Sean A. Garrison Vitus Editor Truth hurts, does it!? I may be thick, but ...

Cap'n Atli

Thanks for posting that. The site has been considerably updated since my last visit. I'll have to post it to the LSCo Yahoogroups bulletin board.

Now, with that spur to my ambitions, I just need to schedule some more work sessions on the SÃƒÂ¦ Hrafn.

Cap'n Atli

brookswift wrote:hehehehehehe, those are awesome. i love the beachball shield.

Actually, that's a gen-u-wine umbrella skin facing that shield. Our folks used to go around and salvage dead umbrellas after a windy day. Some gathered enough black umbrella skins to make a complete troll costume.

Cap'n Atli

Here ya go!

Late '60s or early '70s Marklanders at the University of Maryland!

Cap'n Atli

History is a lot like navigation: If you keep track of where you've been, it gives you a better idea of where you are and where you might want to go.

I have a picture of some ancient Markland freon can helms on my home computer. I'll try to post them tonight.

Cap'n Atli

Assuming, of course, that it really is Hank, and not someone posing as Hank just to troll the board. (We've had that happen before, including somebody posing as me. ) Somehow, having read some of his recent articles in Blade magazine (and endless amounts of his copy in the catalogs over the years) t...

Cap'n Atli

That's the quid pro quo part in my post above: without a model, the artifact would not exist in this particualr form. I've always interpreted the X as decorative or suspensive strapping. ...and were it not for that one artifact, someone would state: "Oh no, we have absolutely no evidence for such a ...

Cap'n Atli

Looks a bit like the stone axe (found and hafted by my Great Aunt) that I traded to my father-in-law for my wife. He still has the axe, I still have the daughter.

Yep, the "old ways" die hard in our neck of the woods...

(No lie!)

Cap'n Atli

I think that there's an Anglo-Saxon fragment of pottery of a water bottle made to look (shape, inscribed straps) like a water skin.

I'll see if I can find my Anglo-Saxon pottery book, or ask our potter, Jan Derry.

If they're making ceramic models of leather objects, then quid pro quo...

Cap'n Atli

HoweverÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ Ã¢â‚¬Â¦if you're cheap, or doing low-tech Y1K, or metal dishing surface deprived, yes you can hot-dish into a wood stump. The denser the wood, the longer it will hold up, and I usually keep a sopping-wet old sweat sock (or something a little more classy at a reenactment) to dampen it...

Cap'n Atli

Or, like my friend Drey, you can spend a chunk of the day drawing it out into a spiffy cross-guard for a sword. (He did mention that starting with the stock a little closer to size would have been the wiser course. ) Anyway, it's a good low/medium carbon steel, not high performance by modern cutting...

Cap'n Atli

Hubba Hubba!

Cap'n Atli

One local gunshot victim (long story) fled into the tidal marshlands, and the body didn't turn up for a year. He was well within a hundred yards of the road and the known site of the shooting, too. Bogs are good places to dispose of the unpopular/badly-wounded/folks-who-are-hard-to-explain. Anglo Sa...

Cap'n Atli

I'm under the impression that one can count the suviving viking oarblade styles without running out of fingers on one hand. Does anybody have any good illustrations or photographs of original examples?

Cap'n Atli

CapÃ‚Â´n, I envy you for your ship, my property is 20 miles from the coast. I have to be satisfied with a longhouse since the river is to small to sail in, even with a small viking ship. The trick is to have friends (maybe lots of friends) on the coast, or at least far enough downstream to be navig...

Cap'n Atli

I vaguely remember the "Wankel" shield showing up in Scadian cartoons as a joke back in the early '70s. It might have been in the Knowne Worlde Handbooke. Since a lot of folks in Scadia have a good sense of humor, and a lot of other folks are somewhat Ã¢â‚¬Å“trustingÃ¢â‚¬Â

Cap'n Atli

Very cool - but what do you do when it rains? Doesn't the wind get blown through those ends and soak everything inside? Actually, we took the smaller sails from the Gyrfalcon and hung them fore and aft for the evening when we needed more shelter. The robins along the heads made them very easy to ti...

Cap'n Atli

If you start to draw up an agreement, send me a p.m. and I'll send you my telephone numbers if you want to chat. Since this is what I do for the NPS, I'm pretty good at checking for land mines.

Cap'n Atli

On the other claw... One iron hoard that I read about contained everything from an early 11th c. spearhead to a worn-out Roman period axe. You tend to hoard any useful scrap when your working metal, and the Mastermyr chest had a number of small scrap pieces contained therein, many of which were not ...

Cap'n Atli

As long as you size the amount of oil to the work (or vice versa) the "tank within a lidded barrel" system should work just fine. If you decide to upsize, you'll need to plan accordingly. Some smiths swear by a layer of oil over water, the oil slowing down the quench and the water providing a heat-s...

Help: Siege of Paris, 885 Illumination

Illustrations of Viking Oar Blades