Finished my first pauldrons!!!

[Ironic]

Well I'm done with them, don't have any pictures with them on me yet.





I made my own buckles and you can see that I made one of my own washers.

[Vladimir]

A fine start.

Are those grommets I see in the top view?

[Ironic]

A fine start.

Are those grommets I see in the top view?

Yes....why? Did I do something wrong?

[McCuistion]

Fine looking start. I notice you riveted the lames rather than using leather straps. It's easier, but I wonder what the negatives would be; certainly articulation.

I think the grommets comment is just interest. You're probably going to lace the spaulders on. I for one like your own buckles and want to make some, too.

[Vladimir]

I saw them in the first pic, but could not see them in the second.

That's all.

I noticed the washer, but failed to notice the buckle.

[Konstantin the Red]

A fine start.

Are those grommets I see in the top view?

Yes....why? Did I do something wrong?

Heavens no. Grommeting point holes is something right, at least from a function point of view. Keeps your points from fraying on the edges of the holes. It's even a chance to decorate. Picture this: you've got your holes and the grommets; now fix up a couple of brass (or steel) washers with the edges swiss-filed into some daisy-wheel decoration. The fancied-up washers go on the grommet shafts and the grommets are then set. Pretty, isn't it? And not a lot of bother. Maybe dishing the pretty-washers a bit so they lie upon the metal of the shoulder cop like they were glued on.

What Vlad said: a fine start. You got the metal to do what you wanted it to do and you did it nicely -- neat clean lines, like somebody cared and worked carefully. Personally, I would call these big spaudlers, rather than pauldrons, because of their layout -- but the skillset in assembling either kind of shoulder armor is much the same. There is ample -- and highly regarded -- precedent for big-spaudler shoulder protection: the Archduke Sigismund and Archduke Maximilian suits of c. 1480 in the HRE both have them. They are more comprehensive than spaudlers usually are, but their articulation and their relative plate proportions declare them spaudlers.

For me the defining element of a pauldron vs. a spaudler is the shape and extent of the plate that cups the shoulder point. The spaud shoulder cop goes straight down the arm, not expanding towards the pectorals nor the shoulder blades, indeed making no attempt at coverage of the outer half of the pecs nor the armpit. The pauldron cop flares out to cover these to whatever extent its design calls for, such as the later asymmetric pauldron arrangement where part of the right pauldron is cut away for the convenience of the lance and the left pauldron is kept full-sized for better coverage of the vulnerable left side towards which lance strikes will be directed. Flat blanks for such plates look like bow ties, small in the center and broad at either end -- very different from the blank a spaud's shoulder cop starts from.

And that, brother, means you could make a set of pauldrons too, with what you know now and the tools you presently have. The bow-tie plate gets a lot of dishing in the narrow middle portion to cup it around the point of the shoulder, and much milder dishing to the other portions, to curve them over the pecs and shoulder blades. The bowtie ends don't even have to be symmetrical in their respective lengths; the long and particularly large end goes to the front to cover the breastplate cutouts needed to allow the arm to go forward and across. That kind of mobility doesn't happen to the rear, which is why you can always tell a backplate from a similarly profiled breast -- less cutout at the arms, indeed if any at all. Though usually there's just a little.