The Armour Archive

Who's made one?
Who has good pics of one?
Who wants to help a fellow out?
I tried to make one for my kettle earlier but all I did was end up wasting some buttery soft vegtan leather that I had with embarrassing results.

Aw, c'mon, Lucian. If you don't tell us how it came out so embarrassingly unsatisfactory, we can't suggest any fixes. BTW, any pix of your kettle floating around, naked or clothed?

The failure you had is not all bad, you know. For now you know something about how not to do it. That's more than you knew before. Not fun, but more than you knew.

Snipping out preliminary fittings/trials from cheap-o cloth can get the fit right, and work as patterns for more expensive stuffs as the next step. Patience pays off, particularly when you're learning, which I guess is the case here.

Do you want to tackle mail of any sort, if cloth and leather just refuse to cooperate? Even the humble galvy butted can be kept from looking glaringly out -- if necessary. And if you cultivate a great bushy ficus-tree of cultivated patience, there is yet the riveted mail -- cheap in wire, expensive in man-hours.

Didn't Roak do one of these? And/or Brother Amos?

Lol, I now know that if I make the leather too snug to the bargrill it looks like I have a brown leather turtleneck sweater that covers the sides of the helm.
I was thinking that maybe it needs to be made out of two pieces and sewed together in the center of the back of the helm.
I made one or two mock-ups a couple of years back out of cloth and then did the final in leather. I ended up cutting down the length of the leather because too much of it bunched down by the gorget. Alas, I now have no extent copies of how I did it, nor the original length, but it WAS done with one piece and I suspect that the bunching down at the neck was a result of using a single piece of leather and getting the "tube effect".

I need to make it out of leather or cloth for now, as funds don't permit me to do mail.

I think Brother Amos does mail but I don't recall what Roak does.

Konstantin the Red wrote:Aw, c'mon, Lucian. If you don't tell us how it came out so embarrassingly unsatisfactory, we can't suggest any fixes. BTW, any pix of your kettle floating around, naked or clothed?

The failure you had is not all bad, you know. For now you know something about how not to do it. That's more than you knew before. Not fun, but more than you knew.

Snipping out preliminary fittings/trials from cheap-o cloth can get the fit right, and work as patterns for more expensive stuffs as the next step. Patience pays off, particularly when you're learning, which I guess is the case here.

Do you want to tackle mail of any sort, if cloth and leather just refuse to cooperate? Even the humble galvy butted can be kept from looking glaringly out -- if necessary. And if you cultivate a great bushy ficus-tree of cultivated patience, there is yet the riveted mail -- cheap in wire, expensive in man-hours.

Didn't Roak do one of these? And/or Brother Amos?

Now we're gettin' somewhere.

Sounds like you made a tube where you really needed a cone -- or a funnel shape. It would flare out hugely, dramatically, at the bottom edge of your cage- or slat-bottom, to spread out upon your shoulders. Not so much center front and back, but quite a bit side to side. Assembled, the helmet's shape would kind of resemble a gazebo on top of a potato chip. A Pringles, at that.

You'd want it to be in several pieces, say six of them all the way round. The flaring sections would be more or less inverted capital Y shaped -- the narrow part against the cage, the splayed part to your shoulder. The section for the front and the center back, likely much less so, only spreading out a little. A very narrow cone about the helmet cage, quite a broad cone over the shoulders -- but still sloping, not straight out flat to either side. Your shoulders slope down from neck to shoulder point; follow that.

If necessary, add in more triangles in the shoulder part. It'll look all right if neatly sewn.

And building it this way, I would not try and cut the hem line at first, but assemble and fit the whole affair, making it sit right about the helmet, about the neck, and lying well upon the shoulders. The hem ends of the segments just run wild. Then, the last thing, cut the hemline after marking it out.