The Armour Archive

I'd need help with figuring out how to make a surcoat. I have the general Idea of it but I'd like to make it fairly accurate and still look good at the same time. For the record I am 6'2" and nearly 300lbs, I'm looking to make a sleeveless surcoat at about ankle length with four cuts from the waist down: one on each side, the front and back all equal length from the waist to the surcoats bottom end. I'm thinking of making it with grommets in its side so I can lace it up for easier entry and exit with little worry of ripping any seams that would otherwise be there in the absence of a grommet and lacing system.

What I really need is reference pictures so I any of you guys out there have the long surcoats you'd be doing me a world of help if you could post 2 pictures, 1 of you wearing the surcoat and the 2nd of the surcoat by itself laid out flat on a hard surface e.g. table, floor ect.

Also if your surcoat isn't sewn together at the sides it would be great if you could lay it out flat and unfolded at the shoulders so I could see its shape and reverse shape to better determine how best to cut the material and hem it.

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to take the time to help me in the endeavor.

Look at the martial surcoats articles:

http://www.cottesimple.com/

No clue if I have any photos. My surcote was basically four squares of cloth, sown half way at each seam, slit half way on top of the sides, half way from the bottom in front and rear. It was more complicated, being my arms, but that's the general shape.

Not perfect, real basic, but it's simple and you can fight or even ride in it.

How tight ya making this thing, Slaught? Surcoats are easy, drapey things. 14th-c. jupons, contrariwise, fit close over your body armor and stop about the hips usually, certainly no longer than upper mid thigh.

About all you want to do is slope the shoulder seams down and out; IOW not straight across, but a bit more like a house roof to follow the slope of your shoulders. Everything else is rectangular. The sides are open nearly down to the belt, and then you have some side seam down to where you're putting the side slits -- a couple slits you really don't need for accuracy, IMHO. If you do away with those slits, the seam just continues on down to the hem -- maybe a bit of opening down there if you really think you need it.

Silk got used, and you can tell that by the look of the creases and wrinkles in the surcoats. Bleached linen too. In this application, with all the ease and airiness of a draped surcoat, natural-looking blend fabrics would be okay because something this open doesn't get a chance to trap heat.

Could you give us a rundown on the armor you've got underneath your surcoat?

Here is a full length surcoat of mine. It's basically a large tunic pattern from shoulder to waist then a flair to the proper length. If you make it with seams up the middle of both front and back it makes it easier on you when you finish the edges and attach the quarters.








edited for my third grade spelling

@Angus Thats exactly what I'm looking to make same length and size the only difference would be color scheme. I've got my materials already bought White for the main surcoat and red for the cross. Templar theme.

EDIT: The white is made out of linen I think its a blend mixture 60/40 the 40 being cotton and the 60 being something else, and I know the Templar Order forbade wearing blended cloth and materials but I had to make do. The Red is Muslin 100% Cotton. And I pre-washed everything to make sure any shrinking it does happens before I put it together.

@Konstantin pretty much my vision of it would be how angus has his set up. The armour I'd be wearing under it would be a padded gamison of some sort with a shirt of mail worn over that. I'll have a great helm (still working on getting that put together), I'll be wearing steel half-plate greaves over my boots and maybe half plate bracers on my forearms, chainmail gloves and those wood block/slats worn on the shoulders with the coat of arms on it. I cant remember what they were called but I think they were more for decoration than actual armour function but thats pretty much it.

SirSlaughter357 wrote:I pre-washed everything to make sure any shrinking it does happens before I put it together.

I have a templar habit, White mantle (cloak) with red four pointed (straight) cross on the left shoudler. Do yourself a favor and wash your red a couple more times in hot water to make sure it's not gonna bleed. Nothing says tough guy like a nice pink surcoat.

Sir Slaughter, like this?
My gambesson was not close fitting enough and was too baggy at the arms as is visible here. What you can't see are my gambessed quisses and knee cops.

Here is a very basic drawing of a surcoat pattern.

I would finish all the edges first, if you have a serger, use it, if not a simple zig-zag stitch will keep in from unraveling and looking like a rappeling tower for a garden gnome.

Sew the gores in (they give you that full, flowing look that you want) and don't hem the bottom until the garment is together.

Cut your hem on a radius and then hem it. If you sew it straight across, when you wear it, it will fall to points at the sides.

Your arm openings and neck openings should be faced (which is the hardest part but gives you a finished look that you will appreciate.

To get them correct I use the same radius of a sweat shirt that is baggy on me, cut them smaller than you think you need and adjust a little at time because it'll look like 13 pounds of hammered dog shit if you try to add fabric back in.

If you have some cheap muslin, make a surcoat out of that before you cut into the your good fabric, then use the muslin mock-up as your pattern.

DON'T FORGET THE SEAM ALLOWANCE!!!!!

AngusGordon wrote:

SirSlaughter357 wrote:I pre-washed everything to make sure any shrinking it does happens before I put it together.

I have a templar habit, White mantle (cloak) with red four pointed (straight) cross on the left shoudler. Do yourself a favor and wash your red a couple more times in hot water to make sure it's not gonna bleed. Nothing says tough guy like a nice pink surcoat.

Thanks for the tip, I just put it into the washer again. Should I do the same with the white or just the red?

@angus yup, again aside from a different color scheme thats pretty much it. The chainmail shirt will be longer in the sleeve though, a little tighter too (not form fitted but not super loose either) and a bit longer in its shirt length mid to lower thigh most likely (assuming your isn't but I couldnt see so I figure I'd go ahead and state it regardless)

Not sure if I'll use elbow or knee cops though and if I use rigid hand protection which I'm considering (due to the amount of punishment my knuckles take in an hour of practice) Ill likely go with some sort of articulated finger gauntlet or maybe articulated mitts but that I believe would be far out from the period I'm trying to closely simulate which is the end of the 12th Century during the 3rd Crusade from 1189 - 94 (I think it was 94).

Even the half-plate shin greaves and bracers would be pushing period accuracy, however I suppose so would using a Longsword (my favourite and most preferred weapon), but we'll see.

EDIT: Oh and I'm not sure how accurate it was to period, but regardless I'll be wearing either knee high pull on boots or knee high buckle up boots beings laces on shoes/boots are outlawed in the Templar order being directly related to "Pagans and Infidels" as their rule books says.

That and I'm not a big fan of shoes. Even in this day and age I'm rarely seen wearing anything other than either my CAT steel toes or my HD Biker boots, so I guess you could say I'm a boots guy through and through

SirSlaughter357 - out of curiosity, what game are you playing? SCA, Dagohir or something else?

@angus ok so for the pattern you put in the attachment, I'm just a bit confused, I get the part about the template being scaled to a quarter of the garment and to cut four of them, but what is the gore for/what does it do and if I wanted four slits of even length one in the front, back, left side and right side instead of the typical front and back only, would I still need to add the gore and is there anything different I'd need to do otherwise.

I haven't said so yet but I'd like to thank you all for your help thus far, your links and input is making a huge difference in my understanding how to do this.

Sasha_Khan wrote:SirSlaughter357 - out of curiosity, what game are you playing? SCA, Dagohir or something else?

No game, I'm not a part of SCA... yet I have to aquire transportation e.g. a car/truck before I'll even think about joining as I've heard where I live their meets can vary in location which is usually a good distance from where I'm at.

Pretty much its just myself and a few friends whom enjoy Medieval history and are all enthusiasts of Medieval swordsmanship and even more broadly martial/military arts and tactics as a whole. So pretty much its just a small group of guys who go out every so often in armour and blunted swords/axes/spears ect and beat the shit out of each other usually followed by a lot of booze and a bon fire with story telling

Though sometime we indulge in our mead first then when we spar we feel less pain because were numb and were a little less in control so it kinda helps up train to keep control of our senses even when intoxicated and if nothing else it makes story telling more fun after we've beat each other up and are already drunk ahhh good times.

Ok so I actually by accident stumbled across this picture which I cropped to focus on the guy in the Templar surcoat. His armour is pretty much exact to what I'd image myself wearing, especially the shoulder armour which, after seeing this I've decided I like better than the wood slat design I was going to go with.

The only things I'd change about this is make the surcoat longer and add the side slits to it, change the design/size/location of the cross, add a full sleeve shirt of chainmail under his plate pauldrons and bracers and of course his bracers and greaves are full plate front and back, I'm more of a fan of the half plate look. Other than that I like his steel gorget, and though it isn't pictured with him here, I found another picture where he's wearing a sugarloaf helm, I'm still a fan of the ealier Barrelhelm/great helm but I could see the sugarloaf growing on me.

By the way does anyone know what those pauldrons or whatever he is wearing are called, where they were most often worn (what country/region) and what century?

The gore pretty much does what the slit does -- except that it's solid matter doing it. If you were to spread a gored surcoat out smoothed and flat on the ground it would look like an inverted capital Y. However, fore and aft slits will allow you to ride a horse without looking like you're packing some washing along. (Doubtless to the bafflement of your foes.)

Your "game," as we insist on saying since no actual fatalities are intended, then, is Rebated Steel. And the more you decide to insist on safety rules/tactical protocols so your buddies don't get crippled out of the game, the more a game it becomes. It's not a bad thing, for all that.

Very very few people go playing games with steel sharps. It's hardly polite to cut someone you've been introduced to.

Since SCA armament is, as these things go, "pretend weaponry," we can and do hit faster and harder than the steel-gamers do. As you can imagine, our confidence in our lessened lethality is good.

Wash the red fabric to try and eliminate bleeding therefrom -- and wash the lighter fabric to pre-shrink it so its length doesn't change. Width will differ little if at all after a shrink-wash -- a wash or two with hot water and hot dryer. It's a question of the sheer length of the warp threads, which run the entire length of the bolt and have a lot of scope to get up to funny business, versus the weft threads which only run across the bolt of cloth -- so as little as 36", more usually 45", to as much as 60", rarely. Red tends to bleed, blue to fade. Dyemakers have worked very hard to eliminate these things, and have had much success, but not absolute even today. And natural blues like indigo are still around, acting like they always did.

Those shoulder bits are ailettes. French for wingie thingies. No shit.

Your guy is sporting a peculiarly advanced gorget that has much to recommend it for throat, spine, and inner-shoulder safety, teamed with spaudlers of fifteenth-century dimensions if not exactly their form. Yes, they have the look of "redesigning the wheel" to them, rather than a try at reviving spauds like in this picture, or that armour -- he got close. Independent spaudlers developed early in the fifteenth century and ran all the way through the sixteenth, easily, and were particularly favored in Germany throughout the fifteenth, even with the development of the true pauldron roughly the middle fifteenth as the latest neat stuff from Italy. They are a lightweight and very mobile defense. The true pauldron is more comprehensive and really took over when the close helmet came in. The pauldron also evolved to become more mobile and articulated, its main plate becoming increasingly subdivided into articulating lames. The gorget is just way ahead of that style of surcoat, is the peculiar part. Looks about like the kind of gorget you put under a close-helmet or a burgonet, both of these being latter-day sorts of helmet. With pauldrons.

From the Holy Roman Empire in 1470-1480 there are a couple famous suits with shoulder protection that you'd have a tough time saying if it were biggish spaudlers or quite small pauldrons -- the Sigismond and the Archduke (later Emperor) Maximilian, who lent his name to an entire style of plate armor, ribbed and fluted.

In the latter fourteenth century, the ancestor of the spaudler might be called the "spaudleroid articulation." We believe this was permanently attached to the top of the rerebrace by three vertical interior leathers, covering the point of the shoulder, and having a leather tab at its top end to point the entire arm to the shoulder to suspend it. Your guy in the surcoat likely has something similar done beneath the cloth there. Design spaudlers from the cop downwards; they must be primarily about the point of your shoulder, all else being gravy.

The half greave is also known as the "schynbald;" I think what's known as the "gutter greave" may be a little more comprehensive than that -- yet still distinguished from the fits-like-a-coat-of-paint "cased greave" in front and back halves.

Yeah we fight full contact, I have several fingers mostly on my left hand that are deformed and disfigured due to being broken multiple times over the years. Our system is unique I say that much, we spar usually one on one but sometimes in teams of 3v3 or 2v2 depending on how many show up. We also do sword drills and in armour calisthenics for better stamina and familiarity in wearing armour. Our mentality is battlefield though, not tourney in that, if you disarm your opponent in battle, your not going to wait for him to pick up his weapon to continue, your going to try to finish him off, so in the chance that one man becomes disarmed, usually he's going to rush the other guy and they'll fight over his sword.

I've watched a lot of ARMA ring fighting clips where almost every time one man looses his sword and it gets almost every time to be a ground and pound wrestling match in the first 20 seconds, our stuff is nothing like that while grappling is used I was always taught, if you didn't train to grapple and fight on the ground, make sure thats not where you end up, but a lot of its close quarters. Also we don't restrict ourselves to limited target areas, while the opportunity rarely presents itself, for us a groin shot is just as legitimate as a head shot or a torso shot ect.

All of that being said however, the honor system we "play" by is mostly left up to each man to decide for himself, so if say for instance Nick feels it dishonorable to strike someone in the back of the head or while they are unable to rightly defend themselves then he simply wont, and no ones going to judge him for it, but for instance if Levi decides war is war, and does so, then it was his opponents foolish choice to turn his back on his enemy and therefore again Levi wont be judged for taking advantage of the situation and his opponent would do well next time to mind his surroundings and his enemies position or suffer the same fate until he's figured it out.

Pretty much we go until its clear the opposition is no longer able to defend themselves, or until they yield, which usually starts out verbal in which combat is halted and is confirmed by the yielders taking a knee and pointing their sword tips towards the ground/driving it into the ground. We had to implement this rule later on after someone though it was a good idea to fake surrender then surprise attack out of nowhere, he put a guy in the hospital after hitting him in the head (thinking they won he removed his helmet).

I don't have any plans on riding horses in armour or combat anytime in the near future, I still have to get my own place and a vehicle ect so buying a horse for mounted combat is, while something I've always wanted to do and plan to someday, will not happen anytime in the near future the way I figure it the surcoat I make now will be long worn out by the time that day approaches me. That being said, am I to take it that it is your suggestion to forget the quad slit and instead go with the gores and front/back slits only? Would the gores be easier to do than the quad slit?

Thanks for the info about the armour, yeah I figured thats how the spaulders were put together, I've seen the inside of one before though I had little time to study it before my old friend put it on so it was little more than a quick glimpse but if i remember correctly each layer of the spaulder was connected by small leather straps riveted from one layer to the next which is what I'm guessing give it such a free ranged of mobility yet providing adequate protection.

I figured as much when I saw the picture while roaming the internet. I knew the spaulder had to be late medieval/early renaissance and that a surcoat of that design would have been rare in the 15th-16th Century that and at that point in history anything resembling the Templar Order would have to be purely fictitious beings the Order was disbanded in the early 14th century with Jaques de Molay (probably just misspelled that) being burnt at the stake and what few Templars were able to flee the what I'd call a witchhunt going to places like Scotland and parts of England and other places out of Louie's and the Popes jurisdiction.

My guess is his "kit" is what I understand you guys call it here on the forums, is probably a montage` of his favourite armours/softparts and weapons from various periods of medieval history. So while not historically accurate to a specific period or in unison, it does look good, and draws from various points in history.

cool so I'll wash the red a few more time on hot and dry on hot should I also do the same with the white linen? I know as much not to wash them together but serpate of each other and anything else lol. How many time will I have to wash the red before its bleeding effect is gone? Again I appricate this advice, yeah the last thing I would have wanted was to end up with a pink surcoat, that'd be just about as bad as a pink monk's habit, which I must ask also would it have even been likley for a Templar knight (white surcoat) to wear a habit of any other color other than white when not in combat? would they have worn a monk's habit at all, surely they wouldn't walk around all the time in chainmail and a surcoat, that couldn't have been practical. Browns were used for the habits amongst the Sergeants am I right? but then they had black surcoats with a red cross.

I'll post a picture here in a few hours, of the cross design I plan on making for my surcoat.

Two washes on the red should do it, really. Three, tops. And about one wash less on the white. No need to get all OCD on your laundry!

The Templars ran afoul of Philip IV of France, and not so incidentally Pope Clement V, in 1307, so that era's garb is where their styling stops, when they all got killed in nasty ways circa 1314. The Order changed name and management in Portugal in 1317, calling itself simply the Order of Christ, with the distinctive cross-potent sign of that Order that decorated the sails of Portuguese explorer ships in all the known oceans. Whole 'nother story, though. These were Templars who escaped the French massacre with hides and fortunes intact.

The Hospitallers (like the Templars, they too were bankers, but had better luck) and the Teutonic Order (don't know if they were bankers), lasting centuries longer, evolved their habit past the thirteenth century -- stuff looking a bit more doublet-ish in its cut. They'd have their respective Orders' surcoat and shield, but dressed pretty well beneath these pieces of insignia, howsoever pious they might be otherwise. Lots of martial praying, I gather.

The noncombat kit for Templars I understand to be monks' habit, and in colors that were recorded.

Yep, gores to either side, riding slits fore and aft. Won't hurt at all to get used to the arrangement. Easier or harder to make? -- meh, it's a wash. Cloth is, in the main, cloth. Some, like linen, ravels; some, like t-shirt tricot, doesn't. You cut it, you sew it together, you hem it; it's just another material. A surcoat is really about the simplest sewing there is -- even the exceedingly humble T tunic has sleeves, and a surcoat lacks even these. Surcoat's bulkier; that's it. Start measuring and cutting -- we already know you can type okay on a computer!

Konstantin the Red wrote:Two washes on the red should do it, really. Three, tops. And about one wash less on the white. No need to get all OCD on your laundry!

lol I suppose there is some truth in that though I'm pretty much OCD about everything haha.

Konstantin the Red wrote:The Templars ran afoul of Philip IV of France, and not so incidentally Pope Clement V, in 1307, so that era's garb is where their styling stops, when they all got killed in nasty ways circa 1314. The Order changed name and management in Portugal in 1317, calling itself simply the Order of Christ, with the distinctive cross-potent sign of that Order that decorated the sails of Portuguese explorer ships in all the known oceans. Whole 'nother story, though. These were Templars who escaped the French massacre with hides and fortunes intact.

Yeah I said Louie but I wasn't sure if it was him or Philip and I knew it was a IV who had the debt issues. For some reason my brain was registering Philip II as a 3rd Crusading King and Louie IV as a Greedy little punk. While the first part is correct I know for sure, now that I think about it, maybe your right and it was Philip IV who had a debt vendetta against the Templars.

Konstantin the Red wrote:Yep, gores to either side, riding slits fore and aft. Won't hurt at all to get used to the arrangement. Easier or harder to make? -- meh, it's a wash. Cloth is, in the main, cloth. Some, like linen, ravels; some, like t-shirt tricot, doesn't. You cut it, you sew it together, you hem it; it's just another material. A surcoat is really about the simplest sewing there is -- even the exceedingly humble T tunic has sleeves, and a surcoat lacks even these. Surcoat's bulkier; that's it. Start measuring and cutting -- we already know you can type okay on a computer!

True enough about the computer part. I have acquired a surcoat, while shorter in length than I'd prefer, I'm using it as an outline. Pretty much I have 5 yards of white linen at 50 inches wide, folded in half and I'm using this surcoat as an outline. I'm pinning the surcoat to the white fabric and extending the pins I'm putting in it another yard in length, i'll use this as an outline to cut giving myself 1.5 inches of room for the hem at the bottom and any mistakes I might make on the sides.

I still plan on using grommets and a lace closure on the sides under the armpits for easier entry, its either that or make the armpit holes larger, but then I dont know how to do that without screwing up the design of the surcoat all together.

Once I finish pinning it together I'll take a picture of it and post it up here along with the cross design I plan on using, Its already pretty late here though so It might not be until tomorrow before I get the pictures up.

Just don't close the sides up much above the waist -- armholes all the way down to your short ribs. Surcoats are airy. The body part is a rectangle -- okay, two of them. Head hole at the top, joined together by sewing along the shoulders, remembering to slope these seams some, sides not joined together at all until practically the belt, split skirts made ample by the two gores beneath that. Some hemming, and the structure's done. The Templar cross can be put in at any time.