The Armour Archive

I'm about to sink some money into my shop and one of the things on my list is a slip roll. However, in my online research I find lots in 2 catagories:
under 18G for less than $100
and Over 18G for hundreds upons hundreds more.
I dont need one of the 3 or 4 ' long rolls... 24" would be fine.
just something that will do up to 12G mild and have the ring roller grooves at the end.
I cant believe I'll need to sink 700-1000 into a roller. I know the cheap Harbor Feight one can be forced to do more that it's rated for. But I'm not really stoked about destroying even a cheap $100 tool and quickly having to replace it. what are all of you using and where did you get yours? Anyone getting rid of one?

I had to buy the 400 dollar roller from harbor frieght and I still broke the roller trying to roll 16-14g mild steel. I fixed it with a bit of effort and have had no problems with it post fix.

Once you get up past 16g you might want to look for a "plate roll" as well. Seems like there are industrial machines designed to work with 1/8" steel which go by that moniker. Of course, they won't be 24", either.

I think that for armoring, you're looking at a dingus.
I was thoroughly convinced that I needed a bead roller, once upon a time.
I bought it, and spent the next couple years resenting the fact that I spent money on it. Now I use it frequently, but for things I never thought I would use it on, after about 12 hours of modification to get it to work right, and it still needs more modification, and ideally new tooling that'll run me a couple hundred.

I think that the slip roll will probably take you down the same route. I also think that for a fraction of the money you can do wood forms and ratchet straps to get the job done, and you can drill a hole in a pipe and make gigantic maille links out of 1/4" barstock, and snip them with $20 bolt cutters.

Sometimes being poor is a virtue.

I use a variation on madmatts pipe bolted to the work table. It works well and it's a bunch cheaper then a slip roll.

As for bar stock I have a HF barbender and several dies made from salvaged pipe. The planatary gear roller was also an option but I found a deal on a used bender.

I liked the idea of a slip roll and continue to watch auctions and industral salvage places incase one shows up at a reasonable price.

I've an old, old, OLD Pexto "combi", basically what the HF is a "knockoff" of. I have used the slip roll feature exactly ONCE! since I bought it. There is so little in armouring that is an even curve that it's not worth the bother to me. Now, I use a variety of "pipe" stakes every day I'm in the shop.

a/s

Basically I was thinking of using it for rolling basic great helm parts, cuises, spangen bands, and such. I hate the "faceted" look I sometimes get when bending parts over a horn with a rawhide mallet. I do it by hand sometimes, but it would seem a roller would produce a much more professional look much quicker.

Yes, except almost all of those parts taper. More than the slip roll will handle well. And they generally get creases in stupid places - which also annoy the roller no end.

We had a really good roller. Got it used. There was a time we used it for some things, but it was a pretty short time. Generally for some of the quickie armour for ren faires. Not much else. We used hammers/mallets and bickhorns or sometimes the huge bending forks.

We did use the jenny for rolls. Again, not a lot because we did mainly 14th and 15th c. stuff and it rolls the wrong way. If you get into 16th c. stuff it is better, but then you decide you want to do the cool stuff and the rolls need to taper and you are back to hand work.

Or you can get really advanced and find out that there is almost no flat armour anyway and have to start mildly dishing (almost) everything and the roller becomes even less useful.

Wade

Cones and tapers are fairly easy with a slip roll if you take your time and use the multipass technique.

Unless you're curving aluminum shield blanks you don't need one. They're also good if you're mass producing something.

The cheap ones are absolutely not going to work. I got one of the cheap 3-1 combo machines from princess auto. Bent the rolls on 18ga and brought it back.

Two 2" pipes mounted 2" apart from each other works really well. Is really cheap and does things a slip roll won't do. And you don't have to spend as much time getting it set right for the curve you want as it would have taken you to shape the one piece on the 2 pipes.

Spend money on something more useful. A ring roller on the other hand is very useful. I use my slip roll but I'd still like to have a ring roller for grills.

ruthardus wrote: I hate the "faceted" look I sometimes get when bending parts over a horn with a rawhide mallet. . . . it would seem a roller would produce a much more professional look much quicker.

Use a considerably larger diameter pipe and a soft-faced mallet, stepping across your piece in very short steps so there are many large-radius bends -- each of a small deflection -- all across the piece. Practically a sliproller look right there.

Rollers are quick. But they only give cylindrical and conical bends that would still need a lot of hammer time to give the slight dishings that give so many historical pieces their exact effect.

A 100-ton hydraulic press shoving rounded hardwood rams into your metal blanks might have a speed advantage, and fit better into your budget at two to four hundred dollars. Since this approach necessarily pushes a series of dish curvatures into a metal blank, you may get a medieval effect easily this way. Caveat -- I haven't tried this one either. Has the neighbor-friendly feature of bending metal quietly.

a 30 ton press will prob do, I dish 1/4" steel with mine and bend 1 1/4 square

It is possible to fabricate your own slip roll. We made one in my old fab shop to make steel wheels for things like gas carts and whatnot. Of course my boss was an old school metalsmith from England and really was not free with his explanations of what we were doing. Alot of "Here hold this" and "Just shut up and watch" LOL. Anyway you might be able to locate a local Fab Shop to make you a good one.

Cheers,
Andreas

On a side note: I bought my Aluminum shield used, the person I bought it from had it curved on and English wheel, it still has the marks from the wheel.

15 minutes ago I was round at justin lee bakers place, some here may know of the wheels he makes and sells on ebay / ebid.
he was just packaging one up to go to canada when I left

Well, if you're going to have one built, start with the book on how to do it...

http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/slip/index.html

The only problem with this one is that everything would need to be scaled up - better sprockets (as in, gears), jobbing out the end plates to get them plasma cut instead of leaving an entry cut, beefing up the set screws (and going to acme thread), and generally sizing everything up.

It's a decent how-to, but its more for the idea than doing it exactly this way.
I bought the book thinking I'd like one for non-armor related projects. But I ain't building one unless it'll also do a kettle brim....

could someone direct me to mad matt's method please?

I did a bit of searching and found the instructions.

http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... light=pipe

I did a bit more searching and found a youtube vid useing the same concept.
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=95873

I actualy just have a gap in my 2x4 work bench thats just about right for shallow curves and some bending.