The Armour Archive

has anyone worked on, or thought about building a modern suit of armor, instead of just replica's of what's been done before? I'm not talking about Starship Troopers style power armor, but something that benefits from 21st century materials sciences.

btw. Hi, my name is Alex and I'm new here.

People make armor out of stainless, aluminum and titanium all the time, so sure.

Composites aren't a good idea, they don't like impact very much.

And the only thing we can really improve on is the materials, they perfected the function back then, it was a matter of life and death.

Welcome Alex!

Yes, I suspect many people here have toguht abotu building armor which expoits the strengths fo modern materials.

One of the main reasons we do more of our work making historical armor is that we're workign on defending against historical threats, so the historical [or close equavelants] materials are fairly efficient choices. Cap-pie plate armor done in medium carbon steel made the one handed sword pretty useless AND its easy to wear and move about, so it seems to be a pretty darned efficient choice for sword type threats.

On the other hand, its less efficient against WWII small arms, but that didnt' stop the Russians from putting steel plate armor on some of their engineers. I recently got a handle an original piece to make a pattern and reproductions for WWII re-enactors. Its just steel plates and leather hinges, but it stopped handgun fire [several large dents] and kept that engineer alive long enough to meet someone carrying a rifle [one large hole over the heart]. It wouldn't help against a flamethrower or landmine.

Modern body armor meant for stopping bullets is pretty cool, and uses 21st cen material science to the extreme. I've no first hand experience, but I've read before that most would not stop a knife or sword despite stopping a pistol bullet just fine. It still wouldn't help against a flamethrower or landmine. I've often wondered what would happen if youused a trebuchet to dropp a 200lb rock on an M1A1 Abrams tank? They'll handle machine gun fire and all sorts of other stuff, but a big rock?

Some will doubtlessly argue that hte SCA has been putting blue plastic to work for 40 years, and therefore is using modern material science to make armor.

Match the armor to the threat.

What threat do you want to counter with this modern armor?

Happy Easter!!!

Futuristic armour is useless against Ewoks with sticks. Return of the Jedi proved that.

If only the troopers had been wearing steel plate.

Marco-borromei wrote:Match the armor to the threat.

What threat do you want to counter with this modern armor?

Thats exactly what I was going to ask.

Cheers,

My brain is a little fuzzy.
I can't rember if it was sean powers or ugo that did work with space suits.

There's actually a lot of effort going into modern armor, because there's money in it.

There's been quite a controversy with Dragon Skin, which is billed as the next big thing in small arms protection. However the US Army isn't buying it, and the controversy comes from the people who buy into conspiracy theories, who automatically think that if the US Army isn't believing the marketing hype then there must be something rotten in Denmark.

The other thing I remember reading a couiple times is an effort to come up with a spray that you can use to treat ordinary clothing, which will make the clothing go rigid when it is impacted. I don't think it's going very far though - maybe enough to make it temporarily resemble something like the rental sheets at a fleabag motel, but far from being able to protect against anything.

Of course I don't think any of us is lucky enough to be employed doing that sort of thing. If you're asking about using modern materials to make medievalish armor, then what the others said: it goes on all the time. Even using mild steel is doing this: medieval armorers would likely have loved to be able to get materials with properties as consistent as we get them.

losthelm wrote:My brain is a little fuzzy.
I can't rember if it was sean powers or ugo that did work with space suits.

Ugo's IMDB entry reads out a plethora of work genres. From Witchblade to GI Joe.

And yeah, he did space helmets in Serenity.

Chris Gilman does the space suits.

Yep, that would be Gilman, I've done spacey stuff for him ...under his direct supervision!!!

Ugo wrote:Yep, that would be Gilman, I've done spacey stuff for him ...under his direct supervision!!!

Shiney.

the only armour commission I've had in the last 5 years was a leather covered hardened stainless brig, with a type 3a front opening spectra shield vest as it's underside.

I asked what it was for, and I was told that the man I was making it for used black powder guns a lot, and wanted some extra protection.

I should have some pictures of it in construction somewhere.