The Armour Archive

Mac

Konstantin, That pic is from L'Ã‰pÃ®tre OthÃ©a, a work of fiction by Christine de Pisan from around 1400. It is said to be a story about temperance in the form of a treatise sent to a young prince by the Trojan goddess Othea. It is one of several works by the same author which are contained in the s...

Mac

Here are some early 15th C illustrations which unequivocally show linings in the mail ventails of basinets.

http://manuscriptminiatures.com/the-boo ... 4431/1429/
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/the-boo ... 4431/1433/
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/the-boo ... 4431/1439/
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/the-boo ... 4431/1445/

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Sad tidings....

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I think we can quite reasonably conclude that closed cuisses were not at all uncommon in the late 14th and early 15th centuries; even if important authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries thought them impossible.
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Mac

Per wikipedea.... Safety wire is commonly .020, .025, .032 or .041 inches in diameter, but .021 and .051 are also available, and usually made of stainless steel, but is also available in monel and inconel alloys for high temperature applications and copper for break-away applications .....different ...

Mac

Konstantin, I read your post several times, puzzling over your recommendations of ring sizes for mail. Is it that you are only aware of one gauge of this wire? It is well to know that soft, "black iron" wire comes in a variety of gauges. I have used 16ga and 18ga for welded mail. Either wo...

Mac

i know this may be a novel concept to you, but how about doing some research, and emailing/calling the company and letting us know? Sabastian, Jo Jo asks a lot of questions, but for the most part, they are *good* questions. I think it shows that his head is on straight. It's sort of refreshing, rea...

Mac

Micharrr, You are exactly correct. The mail is "sewn" on with wire. The wire passes alternately into and out of the holes in the bottom lame of the fauld and through the mail (which is on the inside), forming a sort of "running stitch". The holes are strongly counter sunk on the ...

Mac

James B, Pewter belt buckles may well have been more common than you think. After all, the London (?) girdlers' guild did bother to complain about them. We have seven pewter buckles in our personal collection which were certainly for belts, as well as one isolated pewter buckle tongue. In the Museum...

Mac

Finnacan, Some of our buckles are stronger than others, but none on them are frail. We use steel tongues on many the smaller buckles, and pewter tongues on most of the larger ones. Some of the longer tongues are cast around a steel pin to give them more strength. Tell me which buckle you are interes...

Mac

Leonardus wrote:As to opening my own armory, my metal bending skills are not to the point where I would feel comfortable about selling my work. But when they improve, I just might.

I look forward to seeing this.

Mac

Mac

Where on the outside of my thigh should the edge come to? I know it looks quite wide overall, and you're right about the knee, but I do have rather...um...er....I have much wider legs than normal for my height. Dave The depth when view from the outside of the thigh whould taper from top to bottom. ...

Mac

I don't know Charlotte, but you can tell it's the one they liked to use, by the direction the loop goes.

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So Mac, you mean the upper edge should be, like, kissing the Iliac crest? Yes. The high point of the cuisse should be somewhere in the "pocket" of the iliac crest, just below where the bulge of the abdominals. I just took the pattern as is and moved it farther up my leg to the suggested l...

Mac

Ok, How about....? "Sow bug gauntlets": for those multi-lame travesties with edges that stick out like cheese graters when they are flexed. "Pill bug gauntlets": for the better crafted examples that have the decency to present a smooth surface when flexed. "Armadillo gauntle...

Mac

Aussie Dave,

Make it taller! Much taller. Like 3 or 4 inches taller. The upper edge should go all the way to the "waist" band of your (modern) pants.

Think of the articulated part at the top of the cuisse as a tasset.

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If there a reason why the "clam shell gauntlet" could not be called a "mitten gauntlet"? Does it differ in some way from what is usually called a mitten gauntlet?

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What you don't know is that I tied my shoes in slipped granny knots until I was 10. Pull out the bottom loop and you have the most common knot for points. :P Nah, square knots are easy to get out. Just pull one of the laces until it "straightens out" and slip the knotted lace off of it. T...

Mac

clamshell gauntlets are made with several over laping plates each plate has a slight dish to it with a rounded edge these loosely resemble the shell of a little neck clam. Clams are pelecypods. Phylum mollusca, class bivalvia. They have only two moving parts. Their shells (valves) are roughly mirro...

Mac

Now that we have solved the riddle of the "soup cans", can anyone tell me what makes a gauntlet a "clam shell".

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Aussie Dave,

That's only the hammer work. If they get heat treated, that will consume some more time. If they warp in the process, it could take a few more hours to straighten them out. Grinding and polishing will take another day.

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Mac

Koops, I'm with ya' as far as saying that the author was not an armorer. On the other hand he does not say the edges of the front and back of the greave "butt up", but only that "the edges shall be of exactly the same curves". This is true even if, or perhaps especially if, the e...

Mac

It may well be that this is merely the armor related background information in a publication about something else altogether. Perhaps it offers context for an armor find in an otherwise unexciting report filled with potsherds, shoe soles and rusty nails.

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Gaston,

I was convinced that I was right until I actually tied the knot through a couple of holes in a piece of scrap steel. I was wrong. you are right. It is indeed a square knot.

I have edited by above posts to acknowledge my error.

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Here is what I get. I started with Findlaech's transcription, which provided an excellent starting point. Speculation based on context in in square brackets []. Illegible stuff is noted with.... Likely but uncertain transcriptions are in parentheses (). "One takes up...................alty impr...

Mac

Do we have a teacher or lecturer among us? I was thinking: maybe if we get all the phrases we can from the page and run them through a plagiarism detection program, as is used by most universities now...it will hopefully tell us that 100% of the submitted text iscopied, and may be able to tell us t...

Mac

James Anderson III wrote:
Great idea. The phrases I found turned up naught in google, even individually.

Ditto
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Mac

This book is of interest to me because I have been hearing people mention it for decades. It's always the same, though: they saw a copy once but don't remember where, a friend of a friend says he saw it.....It has the character of an urban legend. I had always supposed that its existence was more wi...

Mac

Does the "memory challenged" third party have more than the one page?

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Mac

I think there was more than one way to tie points. I personally have always used a slipped "granny" knot with one bow. It is like a sliped reef knot" except that both of the overhand knots are tied in the same direction. Basing it on a "granny" rather than a "square&quo...

Mac

The knot on the alabaster sabaton is a "surgeon's knot". m Unlike a square knot, it will not "capsize" into a two half hitch. This makes it less likely to come undone by its self. (edit! I am wrong about this being a surgeon's knot. It is a square knot. see Gaston's post below) Mac

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Okami,

You have also seen this book? Can you remember where? Who showed it to you?

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Aussie Dave,

Where did you get the page in question? What sort of facsimile is it? Is is a photo copy? Did you handle the book? If someone gave it to you as it is, do you recall who it was?

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http://www.themailresearchsociety.erikds.com/other_research_articles.html The Mail-Maker's Technique by E. Martin Burgess Thank you! That saves me the trouble of going out to the shop to find it. Follow the link to Erik's page and look in the article called "Further research......" It has...

Mac

I'd be interested to see a close-up of the 'drop 2 rows' method of tapering the sleeves. It sounds like something I've done in the past as a guess, but it would nice to see the proper way. Eric, There are two methods of doing this. One produces a slight bunching in the fabric, and the other makes a...

aventail linings