The Armour Archive

Mac

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Mac

Barbados, Many of the rivets that one sees on armor are not what they appear to be. While some are indeed articulation pivots, others are merely filling holes left over from early in the construction process. The corresponding holes on the plate below these "blind rivets" are frequently se...

Mac

Carnifex, I believe the most common way to make a collar on a mail shirt uses a cross grain join over the shoulders. You must, of course, (as Konstantin says) fill in the "corners" to make the neck opening round first. You will also have to arrange for an opening so you can get your head t...

Mac

Barbados, The most likely thing here is that the pins which support the pauldrons are riveted directly to the shoulder straps. In Greenwich armors, the shoulder straps are steel plates which are hinged to the backplate. The straps attach to the breast plate with pin and hook arrangement. That weird ...

Mac

Stanislav,

That's a very handsome helmet. Nicely done!

Mac

Mac

Dam it looks like we are all falling apart. My left pointing finger feels a bit messed up after two days of hammering on the sallet. I gues im holding the pliers wrong and a lot of the vibration gets transfered onto it. Now it feels like if you smack it with a hammer, that kind of numb feeling. Hop...

Mac

Hey guys, I had surgery on mine 8 days ago, already I'm noticing the difference, except for the whole" I got cut open" kind of pain it feels great, Going to PT for a while to get the muscles back to hammering shape but range of movement is better than before surgery. Drawing & sculpti...

Mac

That's pretty nice.

In one or the other of Benvenuto Cellini's books he describes how he did similar work in gold. It was a cope clasp for the Pope I believe; with angels in high relieve and God the Father sitting on a throne with a big ass gem stone.

Mac

Mac

What I meant was that if you put the extra material in the back (where we put it) and the rivets must go 'out', then an arm is either a right or a left from the minute it is made. If you put the extra on the bottom, you could put them on either arm. Wade Oh, I see what you mean! As soon as you put ...

Mac

Maybe they really just made them to work on either arm, but they wanted the rivets to point out, so they put the bend at the bottom? Wade Wade, I'm not following you here. It doesn't seem to me that the rivet orientation has anything to do with the elbow bulge location. If you turned them inside ou...

Mac

Wade, If my memory serves me, there are also some like that in Graz. I've seen pics somewhere, but can't remember where. I'll look in the guide books. A thing I am noticing about sleeves is how the elbow bulge is on the "bottom", rather than the "back". This appears to be typical...

Mac

Gaston,

Let me draw your attention to Billy and Charlies' line of pewter goods.

www.billyandcharlie.com

Mac

Mac

Sha-ul, I think that using hardened steel makes a very big difference. If I were making fingered gauntlets in mild steel, for the SCAjun hurley burley I would use 16 ga. for the bodies and 18 ga. for the fingers. By contrast, with spring tempered 1050 I feel that I can get away with .042" (19 g...

Mac

Jiri, I had always been skeptical of the "frying pan" finishes. However, I see that many people are getting creditable results from them. I think that it is entirely possible that some of the armors I have seen were really baked oil finishes, and I just did not recognize them. It's always ...

Mac

It looks so much like something the SCA has been making for decades. Proof that a fighting community will use the most efficient methods of protecting themselves? Keegan, I think not, really. It just shows that if you are intent on having a steel collar to fit a human being's neck, there are a limi...

Mac

Kilkenny wrote:Besides, Mac - you never make gauntlets for full size people anyway :wink:

There is much in what you say. The bigger your hands are, the less is matters if you have a few layers of steel crammed between your fingers.

Mac

Mac

Mail collars appear in inventories as "pisans", "pizains", and similar words. They seem to have been the default thing, really.

I have seen the pics of the thing that Doug is talking about. My jaw dropped when he showed them to me. You're all gonna' love it!

Mac

Mac

Irish, Enamel is sort of a vague term when applied to paint. I think it is mostly used when one wants to convey the impression that the surface is somehow better than just "paint". If I recall correctly, RustOleum calls their product an enamel. The paint layers which I have seen of armor l...

Mac

Jon, I have seen a number of things which seemed to be original finishes on black and white armor. I've seen coarse black oxides; like fire scale. I've seen fine black oxides; like the "rust bluing"of firearms. I've seen iridescent dark blue oxides; like "heat bluing". And, I've ...

Mac

Actually, if you just make the finger plates wide enough to bridge over and make contact with the rattan on either side of the finger, that would satisfy the rules as well, and be less clunky than padded gauntlets. Mac T I am afraid that I must disagree with you here. In my experience, building gau...

Mac

Mac has instigated me to post (no pun intended) some pic's of cullet securing systems. In that last pic, what were the latches on the fauld used for?? any ideas? Ckanite, Do you mean the hooks that are passing through the posts on the culet? They are so you can remove the culet. Removable culets we...

Mac

I have had good luck in the past with epoxy paint for Japanese armor. In particular I used Pratt and Lambert's "Pallgard". Unfortunately, it only comes in a few colors, but you can do a lot with them. A few drops of red mixed in with the black makes really authentic looking black. It produ...

Mac

Aaron,

I searched the books in my library this morning, and I'm not coming up with any images which show the cullet attachment. Perhaps someone else out there has a pic... (come on guys...!)

Mac

Mac

Barbados, There are a number of different schemes for attaching the tassets (laminated leg defenses) to the breast of a 17th C cuirassier's armor. In the pictures you are working from, they are attached to the fauld lame of the breast with a pair (each) of straps and buckles. The medial strap of the...

Mac

Alcyoneus, My understanding is that the test used on the Genhuillhac armor (Shore scleroscope) will show the outsides of domed objects to be harder than the insides. This is an artifact of the test method, which drops a diamond tiped hammer on the test piece and measures the rebound. The delaminatio...

Mac

I suggest reading Anglo's book and perhaps a decent translation of Duarte and make your own conclusions. Jeff, Have you *got* a good translation of Duarte? I've got the one that Brian published, and it's pretty dubious. I've compared parts of it to a modern Portuguese version, and there are some im...

Mac

audax wrote:http://www.isokineticsinc.com/category/hand_finger_exercise/product/tb_26100-tb_26102

I just sent for one of these, because I'm ready to try anything.

Mac

Mac

The largest silver sheets that I could find online was 6 x 12". If I were to raise a beaker, I would imagine I would need a sheet 12 x 12", right? William, When I spin pewter beakers on a lathe, (which is really a sort of "power raising"), I use a 6 1/2 inch disc. You probably d...

Mac

Stump, It's almost certainly printed from a cut, but I hesitate to say that it is contemporary with the incident. It looks to me more like a twentieth century wood (or perhaps lino) cut. I am, of course not an expert, and am prepared to be proven wrong. Wikipedia uses this pic in their page on King ...

Mac

Heinrich H wrote:My son says that sounds like a sad r2d2 singing...

Heinrich,

It is the sound of Angels weeping.

Mac

Mac

Hi Mac, thats neat you learned to play a handsaw, I always wanted to mess around with that. What kind of music does it go with the best? Country?, Folk? Medieval? Have a good one. Happy Halloween Pitbull Pitbull, The saw is at its best with slow melodic tunes. Think Christmas carrels and "aud ...

Mac

Like in the old days when people would play a hand saw, making different sounds by bending it to different positions. Pitbull "Old days", Hell! I learned to play the musical saw rather recently! (Is there any one else out there who plays? Perhaps we could jam at Pennsic next year....) Mac

Mac

I have to admit that the headdress in this image m looks like a cylindrical structure on the back of her head. On the other hand, in this image m we see the same sort of thing that is going on in the brasses. That is to say, the face is 3/4 but the structure appears flat to the viewer. If it really ...

Mac

I think that there are a number of different veil options being represented. My sketch shows my understanding of three of them. The view is from slightly above the head, to show the hidden caul. The first is a square veil worn diamondwise. The second is a slightly larger square with the point turned...

Mac

http://utu.morganlibrary.org/medren/single_image2.cfm?imagename=m126.162ra.jpg&page=ICA000143473 http://corsair.morganlibrary.org/icaimages/1/m126.162ra.jpg I see this as being strongly related to the headdresses in the brasses that Tasha posted above, but not related to the Woodville headdress...

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