The Armour Archive

I've been thinking about making a set of rondels for my elbow cops. I can get 20 or 22 guage stainless steel locally, in small pices that I could cut roughly 3 to 4 inch discs out of and put a shallow dish into. My question is, if I took two 20 or 22 guage dished discs, fastened two of them together in a nested fashion '))' , with a multitude of shiny brass rivets, would it be strong enough to withstand SCA combat, or just crumple up?

The issue really revolves around cutting the material. I can work it a bit, but I lack decent cutting tools.

Thanks all

Vilhelm550 wrote:I've been thinking about making a set of rondels for my elbow cops. I can get 20 or 22 guage stainless steel locally, in small pices that I could cut roughly 3 to 4 inch discs out of and put a shallow dish into. My question is, if I took two 20 or 22 guage dished discs, fastened two of them together in a nested fashion '))' , with a multitude of shiny brass rivets, would it be strong enough to withstand SCA combat, or just crumple up?

The issue really revolves around cutting the material. I can work it a bit, but I lack decent cutting tools.

Thanks all

I must be repeating my self.

It depends.

How much do you really get hit in the crook of your elbow?
How much do you like knocking dents out?
How will you attach them to the cops?
What kind of stainless? How hard?
How are you willing to work the stainless?
Is it temperable, and will you temper it?

We had some stainless that was probably 20g and we couldn't bend it. Well, we did by using 1" steel round stock and pounding the hell out of it over the open jaws of a vice. Just got it curled up to form the neck plate on a gorget. It made great armour.
We made whole arms from 21g 1070 that wasn't tempered at all (they did dent). Tempering would probably have done them wonders. They were barely worked. The cops (which were worked) held up pretty well but the wings cracked off and the guy just wore them without the wings for years.

So, "sure it will work as described", or "you only need one layer", or "not a chance, it will get dented" depending on all of the other variables.

Helpful, eh?

Wade

Left flat, no I doubt that it would. Dish it, chisel it back towards the front, refine the creases from the front over a good edge while raising a nice central point then it might. The work hardening and the 3D structure will give it a lot of stiffness to resist bending and denting. Not bullet-proof but stronger.

Sean

If you need to go with thicker metal, just cut it like the armour's of old did, with a cold chisel. All you need a big-hunk-of-metal, any will do (an old vise, etc). If you want to protect the surface of your big-hunk-of-metal, you can put a piece of scrap metal on top of it first then chisel out your part. You don't need to even go all the way through the metal to cut it, just enough so you can bend it and break it off. If you use a small cold chisel you can get very close to any curves in your part and not have to do too much clean up afterwards. Very cheap and all it takes is just some elbow grease.

To be a little more useful, Tom rolls the edges on his rondels and they seem to hold up pretty well. He doesn't even seem to dish them.

I made some dished ones from .... I think it was 18g but I haven't attached them to the cops yet. So they haven't had the chance to get hit. I keep going back and forth on whether I want the dish to go out or in. and whether I want to lace them on or rivet them.... I have seen laces on a brass. I bet if they were laced on many of the times they were hit the force would be absorbed shredding the laces and the rondels would hold up pretty well.

Wade

I use a hole saw for rondells, they come in a variety of sizes and I can make a perfect circle with one in less than a minute, A big 4 inch size make take 2 min.
If a want to lay brass on top its a breeze as I can cut out a brass slug in the same amount of time and its a perfect fit.
Use them at a slow speed with stainless so you don't heat up the teeth.

wcallen wrote:To be a little more useful, Tom rolls the edges on his rondels and they seem to hold up pretty well. He doesn't even seem to dish them.

I made some dished ones from .... I think it was 18g but I haven't attached them to the cops yet. So they haven't had the chance to get hit. I keep going back and forth on whether I want the dish to go out or in. and whether I want to lace them on or rivet them.... I have seen laces on a brass. I bet if they were laced on many of the times they were hit the force would be absorbed shredding the laces and the rondels would hold up pretty well.

Wade

Mine are welded on to a cop, but then held to my arm so that they look like the tied on types you see in some effigies

Mr Allen, I apologize for making you repeat yourself...I did read that thread and my feable synapses didn't synthesize the information. Can I blame a busy life and not enough caffeine?

I did a set of the Zweihammer gauntlets in 18ga stainless, so whatever specs that material has, that is my frame of reference. I like them, the material was interesting to work with, and is durable for how I fight.

Adam, now you got me thinking. I have a decent drill. I'll have to take a trip to the local home-improvement warehouse and see what hole drills they have for reasonable prices. maybe they carry...Kick Plates! I bet I could drill a door kick plate...just thought of that...

I only plan on making the one pair for attaching, most likely with laces, to my fanless cops. I want to craft decent pieces with little monetary expenditure. I got elbow grease aplenty!

Thanks for the responses.

Vilhelm550 wrote:Mr Allen, I apologize for making you repeat yourself...I did read that thread and my feable synapses didn't synthesize the information. Can I blame a busy life and not enough caffeine?

Sorry, that came out wrong.

I just find that I say "it depends" a lot to a lot of questions. It is either because there really isn't one perfect answer for a lot of things, or (similar idea) authentic armour was made in a lot of different ways at different times for different purposes.

Anyway, if you are lacing them on anyway, just make a couple of rondels and see how they do. They won't have taken all that long and they won't use a lot of steel. They may just work fine. If the bend every once in a while, unlace them and straighten them out. No big deal.

Wade

No worries.

I'm honored that you, and everyone who replied, shared your knowledge with me.

If you've got a decent drill, why not rivet them to the cop? Laced to the hauberk sleeve probably was late thirteenth/early fourteenth. Is it a matter of {fidelity to a} date?

20ga SS will resist about like 18ga mild, of course. Add some brass sheet decoratively pierced and you've got that extra going for you, for little weight and little cutting difficulty.

So when do you budget 40 dollars or less for a saber saw and a fistful of metal blades? Slow and noisy, but like a little steam engine of that description, it will still get you there. And with wood cutting blades, it makes you wooden tools like shield presses (and the shield shaping therewith), slappers for shallow curves in metal, and finishing sticks to powder the leather faces of with emery for finishing armor surfaces old school. (And quietly, too, I guess.) Got frightfully hefty leather? Linoleum slicer blade... Useful critter, the saber saw. [This para is now overtaken by events]

No saber saw, but I do have a handy little jig saw...So far she's made me a round shield and a big platform for a big wedding cake...

The rondels I plan will be laced directly to the cop...my armor is a mix of mid 14th C Scandinavian and Germanic armor. I might have to look at repurposing somthing if I can't acquire raw material easily....I think I saw some brass door knob hole covers somewhere that looced promising.

Thanks again,

Jigsaw as in arm and platform and micro-skinny blade -- a tool on a bench?

Some people say "jigsaw" and "saber saw" indiscriminately, and they shouldn't.

The great big Sawz-All type is a reciprocating saw, for the bigger jobs.

OK, I call it my skil-saw.
Like this guy, but not this guy;
http://www.skiltools.com/en/AllTools/Ca ... id=4495-01

Then you've got what you need. I'd call that, with of course hacksaw-type blades, at least "decent." Also with some light oil or even water applied to the cut-path to keep the blade from heating up and going soft. Carries the heat right away from the critical saw-teeth.

You have to clamp metal you're sawing down at every imaginable point all around to arrest the vibrations. You can fix the metal down to a sacrifice piece of scrap wood and saw wood and metal together. A larger sheet of metal can also have a sandbag or anything else damping plopped onto it.

Vibrating sheet metal probably eats more blades than overheating, reliably busting them into pieces, but both need to be avoided. Sawing aluminum tends less to heat up the sawteeth than to stick to them and clog them up if you try and push the saw along too fast. Be unhurried. Somewhat coarser sawteeth may help -- or keep a pick or awl handy to chip the clogs away.

Extra-small narrow blades help with really small and ornate piercings in sheet brass if you choose the ornamented-appliqué route, with an inexpensive set of Swiss files for cleanup and getting the corners. You can make something that looks like jewelry, especially by comparison with the usual run of SCA equipment, even with fairly simple cut-outs. For early- and mid-fourteenth imitate the kind of decorative motifs you see in Episcopalian churches and cathedrals, and the same in funeral brasses of the period and somewhat after -- trefoils, cusps, and that. Using brass escutcheon pins, tiny brass nails, for riveting such pierced brass onto the steel is cute.

Vilhelm550 wrote:Mr Allen, I apologize for making you repeat yourself...I did read that thread and my feable synapses didn't synthesize the information. Can I blame a busy life and not enough caffeine?

I did a set of the Zweihammer gauntlets in 18ga stainless, so whatever specs that material has, that is my frame of reference. I like them, the material was interesting to work with, and is durable for how I fight.

Adam, now you got me thinking. I have a decent drill. I'll have to take a trip to the local home-improvement warehouse and see what hole drills they have for reasonable prices. maybe they carry...Kick Plates! I bet I could drill a door kick plate...just thought of that...

I only plan on making the one pair for attaching, most likely with laces, to my fanless cops. I want to craft decent pieces with little monetary expenditure. I got elbow grease aplenty!

Thanks for the responses.

Kick plates are plated, when cut or drilled you expose the mild edge and they rust.
Some may be solid brass, but the ones I have seen are plated.
You can often find brass "cut-offs" for sale on E-Bay, just search "brass sheet"

'Sawing aluminum tends less to heat up the sawteeth than to stick to them and clog them up if you try and push the saw along too fast. Be unhurried. Somewhat coarser sawteeth may help -- or keep a pick or awl handy to chip the clogs away'

Aluminum is , for lack of a better word, gooey. Use oil when cutting or drilling aluminum to avoid this kind of thing.

Be very wary using a holesaw as large as 4" in a hand drill. Clamp the work piece down, and if possible, use a side handle on the drill. As soon as the teeth start to break through the material, the drill will try to wrap you around itself. A drill press is a lot safer. And as mentioned, use a low speed for stainless, and for larger diameter saws in general. Light oil lubrication to the cut helps also.