It will surprise no one that I decided to replace the metacarpal plates.
Digging out the old templates, I see that when I said the I roughed these out nearly ten years ago, it was nearer than I thought.
The first step is to trace out the old template, including the holes. These will be the holes I punched on the old ones, and since I will be keeping the geometry of the proximal end of the plate the same, they should work perfectly for the new plate.
I decided on a sort of two prong attack on the issue. First, I will move the knuckles over toward the little finger side a bit. This will rotate the body of the gauntlet toward the thumb. To do this, I traced the distal end of the template again, but this time a bit to the left.
Since I am replacing the plates, it's a good time to make any other changes I think they need. That includes a bit more material on the little finger side as well as a bit more on the thumb side.
Here, I am finding the locations of the knuckle plate pivots by marking through onto the
old template.
I transferred these to the new template by lining them, placing a pencil on the mark....and pulling the old template carefully away. The pencil not sits above the location, and I can make a mark.
That technique is a bit dodgy, and the result is a "soft" location. That's OK, though, I don't intent to rely on it. I have marked them with question marks. That will be meaningful to me if I ever look at this template again some day.
The proximal pivot marks are "hard" locations. I need to accurately transfer them to the template, and thence to the steel. I begin by bringing the leather punch (smallest hole) into contact with the cardboard and squeezing just hard enough to make an impression.
Then I check to see if the impression from the punch is well centered on the traced pencil mark. If it looks good, I bring the punch back and feel for the depression before punching the hole.
These pivot locations get transferred to the steel and lightly center punched.
After bending the plates into an approximate shape with a mallet, I started plannishing them up from the backs. There will be a bit of compound curve over most of the plate, and more on the sides.
The reason that there has to be compound curvature on the sides is to accommodate the fleshy parts of the hand. The bulge on the little finger side is underrepresented in most modern gauntlet work, but the real ones always have room for it.
They are starting to take shape.
I am taking care to keep the pair symmetrical. As I mentioned before, my right hand is deformed, so I can't get any meaningful information by trying the right gauntlet on. I have to make the left one correct, and make the right a mirror image.
As far as I could tell, the pivot holes I marked were going to line up OK, so I punched them and bolted the plates on. Everything fit nicely, so I sketched on some rough lines to begin the shaping of the knuckle end of the plates.
The initial shaping of the knuckle end of the plate happens over this stake. The metal does not have to go very far, so it can be done cold.
Making the knuckle plates fit involved finding the places that needed to be depressed and pushing them down. It's an iterative process that takes an hour or so. They are ready to be squared up now, and that happens on this stake.
After couple hours of fussing and fiddling, I marked and punched the pivots.
Here's what they looked like after I removed the crude green lines and drew in the real one in black.
At this point I could finally assemble one up and tape in a glove to see if it was going to work. The results were pretty good. The thumb hinge could sit in about the right place without any feeling of compression. At this point the new plates are officially "keepers" and I can feel free to make them fit the old work more closely.
The first part of finishing up the big flutes is to set them in over this stake. I use this square little hammer. It's just about perfect for this work.
The hills are getting sharp....
....but the valleys are still soft and round.
They need to be sharpened from the back.
You can see from the marks, that I used a couple of different hammers.
The work alternates from front to back until everything is sharp and smooth.
This brings of to dealing with the discontinuities between the new and old. I made the new stuff have this step intentionally...
...knowing that I could draw the metal of the lame out with a crosspeen in the back to make the edges match.
The weirdest part of gothic gauntlets is the way the edges of the plates are sometime cut away to accommodate the the wrist bump.
This space gets used when the the gauntlet is flexed, and the sliding rivets on ulnar side are compressed.
This is the amount that needs to be trimmed about from the crotch of the thumb.
I have marked it on the template as well.
Likewise, some material is to be trimmed from the little finger side. This is for sword pommel clearance.
I have the lines for the small flutes inked in, but I will spend some time looking at those pics on Tom's Florian and George page
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing first, in case I see something that makes me change my mind about them.
Mac
On the other hand, if you have high shoulders or a forward head carriage, that beautiful point smacks you as soon as you tip the helmet back. 
