The Armour Archive

Dierick

Heh, your insane.

That is some serious devotion. No way in hell I would make my own rings, my hands are killing me with blisters just from knitting the rings and closing them.

Dierick

I have eight helm halves laying around where I finished one side and proceded to make another of the same side.

Dierick

As I'm still very much learning the art of armouring, I have many such moments. My most memorable was when I learned that articulation should be pivoted on the points of the rivets, rather than leaving the rivets loose and gappy enough to 'articulate'. I think that was the point when I really starte...

Dierick

ps, glad to see your back working on stuff again.

Dierick

I polish right before I put any rivets in. I generally want to be able to polish, rivet, polish the rivets, and have it done.

I dont know how many times I've gotten over anxious and riveted before I polished, only to have obvious lines in seams and articulation that the buffer cannot get to.

Dierick

This one time, I wa like polishing this vambrace on a grinder, and I get a call on my cell phone, so I reach to pick it up because i was expecting this call from this hot groupie girl, and it was her, and I slip the vambrace under my arm to hold it as I pick up the phone, and I go like, "hello...

Dierick

While that's true, it would be very difficult to get the wire to coil around the mandril along the longer dimension. It would be much easier to coil round section wire and then flatten the ring. Why do you think so? Think along the lines of bending a sword in a circle along the edge. Nearly impossi...

Dierick

Oh hell.. at the shop I used to work at, the first thing you _DID_ was check to see where your ground was mounted, and what the welder was at. A couple of the most notable (and repeated) tricks were A) Crank the Tig way up and clip the ground to the steel chair leg. B) Paint a piece of paper pitch ...

Dierick

Thats why Im not in favor of things like stainless steel armour and titanium as they tend to promote a blissful mentality that ones armour is immortal and indestructable....the armour may be fine....but the components like buckles, straps, rivets etc....do wear out and can break. It can tend to pro...

Dierick

I was thinking about the titanium bargrill thread earlier, and it got me thinking about someone actually hitting hard enough to break a bargrill like that. Which in turn led me to think about the construction rules like rivet spacing and overlap and the such. Does anyone have pictures of catastrophi...

Dierick

I knocked myself out with the welder the other day. My tig is hooked up the leads on the arc welder, and has a tendancy to give me a little shock when I rest both hands on the metal to start a spark. Nothing big. Well, my dad uses the arc welder to weld some heavy duty stuff(over an inch thick), so ...

Dierick

Mostly for dress and non sca use. I dont know if it would be living history worthy though, if I look up without the cheeks on, the hinges and inner edge are obvious.

Dierick

Definitely interested.

Dierick

Destichado wrote:*sigh*

What a waste, to cover up such an original helmet with an ugly old coif!

Ah, but its going to be a nice burnished flattened ring/wedge riveted coif that will be sewn to leather along the top edge of the cheeks, which are bolted onto the hinges so they can be taken off.

Dierick

I can't see how they would have a problem with that, as long as the helm was sturdy enough. I've never held anything titanium, but I would imagine that it couldn't be that noticeably lighter than a 16g visor.

Dierick

OUt of curiosity, what makes you think that that image is showing an armet with a kettlehat brim on it? To me at least, i'm seeing a kettlehat with an aventail on it.... ...Weld the top to the brim leaving about a half an inch of the top coming out the bottom of the brim. Attach the cheeks on hinge...

Dierick

Got a bit more done the last two days. You know, I really thought this would be a fairly easy breastplate. I was really really wrong. I got one pass done through the middle to get a general shape to it, but it still needs two or three more passes to get it deep enough. I was going to do a pass throu...

Dierick

Looks similar to a byzantine helm I started working on awhile back: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v297/Christoffel/Reinactment%20Armour%20Pics/Helms/Byzantine/th_IMG_0059.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v297/Christoffel/Reinactment%20Armour%20Pics/Helms/Byzantine/th_IMG_0058.jpg I used a l...

Dierick

7lbs sounds reasonable. Most of my helms are between 8 and 9lbs and thats usually because of extras like maille or removable parts.

Dierick

Here is the pair that I used. Don't criticize the shaping or style, I have done that plenty myself. This was when I was still a beginner. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v297/Christoffel/Reinactment%20Armour%20Pics/Old%20Armour/pointed_couters.jpg 18g mild cold rolled and they held up fine.

Dierick

http://www.greydragon.org/library/underwear1.html http://www.greydragon.org/library/underwear2.html http://www.greydragon.org/library/underwear3.html http://www.theweebsite.com/ http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.medievalproductions.nl/compagnie_de_ordonnance/pictures/doubletpattern....

Dierick

Dierick - I would not lump raising into one main category, it depends on what you are raising. I work with 1050 spring. Hardened and tempered, 18ga 1050 will outlast 14ga stainless for dentage and wear, hands down. I would wear an 18ga 1050 spring helm before I would wear a 14ga stainless helm if t...

Dierick

Depends on how you are going to make them. If you are raising them, they will probably crumple quickly. If you are going to roll them into a cone and weld/rivet them, they should hold up. I had a welded pair that I used frequently and held up well enough. Both dented, but that one dent on top seemed...

Dierick

I was having trouble with this, so I drove a three inch nail through the top, leaving about an inch sticking out, and bent it over the side. One on each side. Its kinda redneck, but it works great.

Dierick

When you are shaping the front, think motorcross helmet. You need to push the chin out a lot more. The shape of the skull also needs to be looked at. The front and back need to be pushed out more. Think more along the lines of a smoothed off rectangle on your head than a circle. The area of the helm...

Dierick

I don't see much of a difference between the first two, outside of the brow reinforce. As for making one without heat, its possible, but hard. Much harder than using heat. The first one the sight is formed from the space between the bottom of the helmet brow and the top of the visor. The second has...

Dierick

I don't see much of a difference between the first two, outside of the brow reinforce.

As for making one without heat, its possible, but hard. Much harder than using heat.

Dierick

I figured I would post what I learned in the process of trying to make one: The center bar should be welded on the outside of the helm, between the skull and the reinforce, should be a solid deep weld, and should be ground down very well so that the crease in the center of the reinforce covers it up...

Dierick

Thank Durasteel for inspiring this. I'm sure some of these have been posted before, but I know not everyone has seen them. They are pics I have collected over the last two months in the process of putting together an early 15th century harness. Dont ask for sources or info as I have no idea. If I sa...

Dierick

Beautiful pictures!

I think I'm going to upload a bunch of pics I've saved and post them in a new thread.

Dierick

Perhaps if the bottom of the grill was made of sheet, and formed like a bevors chin, and worn in conjuntion with a gorget, the mobility problem would be solved, and most of the look maintained. I thought about trying that with mine, but its simply beyond my level to make something like that right n...

Dierick

I started one, but ran into problems with the grill. I was trying to make it with a seperate bevor over the bottom of the grill and that was where the problem was. Fitting the grill under the visor is easy if you don't mind welds inside of the helm.

Dierick

layered fabric, for one, and most importantly, armour that isn't made as heavy as most of the sca armour is.

the points around the bicep make the arm fit really well, keeps it from sliding down and digging into your inner elbow.

Dierick

wow, awesome help guys!(and gals). god I would love to have a copy of the tailors assistant, but the cheapest I could find was over $100 for a used copy. Once spring break is over here and the schools open back up, I'm going to get a hold of the local community college library and see if they can ge...

Dierick

After a couple of weeks of reading up and googling around, I feel that I have enough information to ask some fairly educated questions that will put me on the path to making a decent houppeland. I hope... I'm portraying 1425-1440ish northern europe(dutch living in prague). I believe I would be weari...

sca damage to armour

Early 15th century picture thread (kastenbrust)

having a hell of a time with houppelands...