The Armour Archive

I have store bought elbows with a round things on them.

I haven't seen anything I can use on our patterns archive yet.
Dr. Talbot's... Chartres Arm Harness booklet is two complicated for this.

I was looking for something simple with leather buckle straps.
Something to get by SCA rules around the 12/13C. or so.

I wish to protect the fore arm and the upper arm using the existing elbows.
I can fabricate from 18 or 16 ga steel.

I am not known for my historical accuracy.
However... your help would be much appreciated.

Thank you,

Hal

I'm a little biased but would this work?


Fairly easy to make, not bad looking, and in your time period.

Do what I did on the Halloween costume this year.

The elbows are simple cops with round things on them.
The upper arms are all any SCA fighter would really need. They cover the outside of the arm where you get hit. Add 1/2" or so on the front and most of the bicep is actually covered too since all you really need to do is catch part of the weapon on the armour.

The lower arm can be a full vambrace like I made, or it can be a half vambrace covering the outside of the arm. Again, that is where you get hit. I didn't do that because of 2 reasons. 1. I was going a little later (more mid century) and 2. I didn't want to do a full mail sleeve which is what would really be needed for my costumes. It wouldn't matter for the SCA.

Then you could toss on ailettes or rondels at the shoulder and end up with simple but very period armour.

This would get you reasonably accurate stuff from the late 13th c. with the half vambrace.

An arm done this way is very simple to construct and both more correct than many things and reasonably protective.

Or you could go over to a splinted thing. I would tend to go with narrower splints than dwarlock's arm, but I would be trying to imitate the German effigies. This would be later - mid 14th c.

Wade