The Armour Archive

I would apologize for the info dump, but I'm sure you guys don't mind.

Here's some stuff I've been working on lately. As always, I welcome questions and criticism.

Here is a brigandine I finished recently. The chest plates are 16g mild steel, the rest is 18g. The shell is 3 layers of canvas, and the rivets are roofing nails. It's nice to be finished, since it's been on my work bench for months, but I'm fairly disappointed with how it turned out. Yes, it looks decent, but it does not fit me, and I didn't really "nail" the profile, either. The good news is I think I could make adjustments to my pattern and method so that the next one looks and fits better. The bad news is when am I ever going to have time to make another one of these bastards!? Maybe if I got a belt sander and a punch. Cleaning up the edges with a file and drilling out all the holes took a crazy long time.










All of the plates are sealed with a mixture of beeswax and linseed oil. I wasn't really thorough about removing all the rust before sealing them, so there's still a bit of rust sealed in there, but I left this (mostly finished) sitting around my damp basement for 3 months while I was in the bush and it did not accumulate anymore rust so I think it will be okay. Some of the plates were heated to an ugly yellow when I warmed them up to melt on the wax using an electric stove.



If there's ever a contest for ugliest tool, I'm sure this thing would at least be a runner-up. I made it in a rush to peen the rivets on the brig plates around the waist.

Next up:



This is a fancy party mask that I made for fun. It's made of aluminum and brass and tooled leather.

More things:

Kettle hat, made for fun. I got a cheap 120v wire-feed welder on sale, and I've been having fun with it.






The evolution of a buckle. This is the first time I've taken a serious crack at buckle-making, and I was very pleased with the result. It's rare that I try to make a thing and then it actually goes well and I don't mess it up and get frustrated. I actually got pretty excited and insisted that all my roommates come look at it.

last one for the day.

I'm working on a churburg arm harness, and it was going fairly well until I realized that I've messed up some proportions and now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it. I made some adjustments to my pattern to correct this problem on future attempts, but it leaves me with a bit of a conundrum. Once I got to this point, I decided it was time to leave it for the day and ask the advice of the hive mind. I realize that this inquiry might get buried in my avalanche of posts, but I didn't want to flood the forum with a bunch of different threads, so here we are.



I've gotten to the point where I've fitted two lames to the cop, but as you can see, the cop is too wide. The line where the cop meets the fan needs to be reduced by a centimetre or two, and the distance between the points at either end of the widest part of the cop (from this angle) needs to be reduced by about the same (slightly less). Since I got these proportions wrong and I was using them to determine the size of the fan, the fan is now too big as well.



On the other cop I traced out the material that needs to be removed, but I can't decide if this is even worthwhile. Should I finish the arms as is, or maybe just leave them as articulated elbows and sell them off cheap, or should I hammer shut the holes I've drilled, trim off the excess material, rework the fans and refit the lames? Or maybe trim down the cops and leave the fans a little oversized?

Thanks for the pics.
I like post with pics.

To me it is all looking good.
The brig is fine IMHO.

Hal

I LOVE that mask!

I would put aside the cop for another project, were its proportions will be just fine.
The problem with the brig is that torso plate are too flat, and that those nails are a bit big, and I fear the will make a scissor effect when they touch with the uppermost plate.

Hey Signo, I thought about using the cops for a different project, but I can't think of one they'd be appropriate for. I think all elbow cops need to be narrower than the ones I've made. I think I will just trim them down, even though I think it will make the fan end up looking funny. I think the articulation will work better that way, and it will be a better lesson is articulated joints. I'm still learning, after all.

Yeah, I thought the torso would be more puffed out when I was making it, but I saw as it started to come together that it fits far too loose around my waist. Imagine that the waist was shrunk down by at about 4" in circumference, while keeping the chest and lower fauld circumferences the same. It would naturally cause the chest to puff up more. It's really the central problem with the whole garment. All the weight sits on my shoulders, and my waist is just floating in a rigid metal loop. It's really quite frustrating, and something I think I could dramatically improve on next time.
The nails are too big and it makes the garment look strangely flashy in an off-putting kind of way. Also they do indeed have a scissor effect when they get squished too close up to other plates, but this only happens of a very small proportion of the rivets. Most have enough "breathing room". Luckily, one of the advantages of the triplet pattern and the multiple layers of canvas is that the occasional scissor effect doesn't seem to have too much of an affect on the overall structure and appearance of the brig.

Got some work done on these arms. Ended up trimming the cops to more accurate proportions, and started work on the vambraces.

Here are some full sized drawings and some pieces cut out. The proportions look a little stouter than the original. I guess I have bigger forearms than the original owner.



My patterns were too curvy, it turns out, but there should still be enough material to get the job done. Good thing I only cut out one arm's worth.

Raised the lower vambrace cold. This is going to take a lot of plannishing. I might do the next one hot. I might even think about plannishing this one hot.





Here is the original for reference.

What sort of stake did you use to shape the forearms?
I agree, hot would assist your shaping.

Thanks for all the great progress pics.

Hal

For most of the forearm I just used ball stakes of a couple sizes, then for the cuff I used a sort of crappy home-made bickern looking thing.

Carving a handle for a knife I'm working on.




I have too many projects on the go right now. I'm on a mission to try to complete all my ongoing projects before I start more. I think my shop also needs better lighting.

I kind of like the dramatic lighting on the final knife picture. Looks very rustic. And since i didn't get to comment earlier I also like the corazzinna. Any thoughts about what you will do for shoulder protection with it?

Sean

Thanks Sean. I thought a lot about shoulder protection to go with the brig. I was mainly looking at King Rene's book of the Tournament for reference and ideas and that seems to show pauldrons, but I had also considered a matching brig-style spaulders. I need to do more research on different shoulder protection styles in that time period. It's definitely a little bit of a confusing topic for me. It's all academic now though, since I ended up selling the brig.

Aluminum bear mask that I made my girlfriend for a halloween costume. It was done in time for halloween, I just thought to post it now.

That is wicked cool!

Awesome work Tableau, thanks for sharing M8. Keep up the good work.

Have a good week

Pitbull

Working on this arm still. The forearm has been a lot harder than I thought. Why did I think it would be easy?

Looks like the cop needs to be deeper, but all in all, very, very nice work!! Does the mouth of that last mask articulate? and can we see an inside view?

If you look at the earlier pictures of the cop, you can see that it is deeper than it looks in this last picture. It's definitely weird though. The point of the cop is centred between the inside of the elbow and the start of the fan, but I later realized that the articulation on the original actually happens just after the start of the fan, so the point of the elbow is off-centre. Coincidently this seems to like up with the off-centre point of real elbows, so it actually works pretty well. I couldn't find a good view of any originals to see if this was a feature historically, but I feel like it was not, and if it was, it was probably not as off-centre as my version.

Yeah, the mouth of the bear mask articulates at the same point as your jaw, and is held closed by elastics from the inside so that when you open your mouth the mask "talks". I can snap a picture or two tomorrow.