The Armour Archive

I'm thinking that those lines represent a welding flaw in the original plate and that the punching operation forced the plate to delaminate locally. That made the two sides of the hole "volcano" differently under the action of the punch. When the deformation was hammered back down, the sounder side of the hole ended up pretty round, while the defective side acquired some funky asymmetry.



The more I "play this film clip" in my head, the better I like it. The deformation of the hole seems just about right. Sadly, there's no way to test it with out having an identically defective plate. I wonder if it can be simulated (defect and all) in some more tractable medium... like Plasticine clay.

Mac

I see that we have moved to a fresh page. Be sure to go back and check out the updates I posted at the end of 53.

Mac

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:For what it's worth, here's a bit of working life finish hiding under a liner washer on a North Italian morion from the last quarter of the 16th century. It looks much the same as one I saw under a brow reinforce on an Italian celata of the late 15th century, basically a mirror finish slapped on top of a rather coarse grind, roughly 120 - 150 P grit. It would look a bit... strange to modern eyes, I think.

IMG_4400sm.JPG

James would you happen to have other photos that might help us evaluate Mac's theory?
Photos of the other side and/or zoomed out a bit here.

I'm going to start a new thread, or raise an old one. The 100 K limit is cramping my style, as always.

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:I'm going to start a new thread, or raise an old one. The 100 K limit is cramping my style, as always.

James' New Thread: Rivet holes on real armour - ATTN BLACKSMITHS

Yesterday was mostly spent continuing the finish work on the gauntlets. I used 80gr discs of various sizes to further the work on the flutes of the metacarpals.



After that, I did the small flutes with a one of the many "surface conditioning" and "deburring" wheels that litter the shop. I buy different grits and hardnesses of these things, hoping to find something that will do well, but they are mostly expensive disappointments. This one is sometimes "just the thing" though. That "8AM" is the important part. The "8" is the firmness of the wheel, the "A" is for aluminum oxide, and the "M" means medium grit size. This is a Norton product, but the designation is roughly comparable across manufacturers.



It did an OK job on the small flutes.



For the big flutes, I used one of my set-up wheels. I started experimenting with these a few years ago, and sometimes they work brilliantly. They have 220gr aluminum oxide and a commercial set-up wheel cement over felt, with a closed cell foam padding. They are a bit of a pain in the ass to set up, but they are dirt cheap to run. The one in the pic needs to have its "head" removed and a new layers of grit and glue applied. Perhaps I will renew my fleet of these next week.



The resulting finish on the big flutes is good.



The finish is far enough along on some of the parts that I thought it time to do the file work on the edges.



I did not photograph any of the work on the cuffs, but it followed much the same path as the metacarpals.



Mac

Looks amazing, Mac! How fast does that big wheel spin? Is it a regular small grinder motor?

I typically run it at my second slowed speed. I'll check what's written down on the machine and report back, but it's less than 1000rpm. [edit 875rpm] The motor is (I think) 1/2 HP, and while it usually does what I need, I do crave something with a bit more poop.

Mac

That is just unreal....wow...just wow...beautiful work on every piece Mac!

Mac,

When will you put the slots in the gauntlet articulations?
I know on the legs you waited pretty late in the process but it seems you said you should have done it earlier.

For reference, here are the speeds of Mac's Grinding Machine:

2450 RPM
1715 RPM
875 RPM
612 RPM

/salute
-J

Yes. That's is. I spin that wheel at 875 rpm.

(Thank you, Jeremy)

Mac

Tom B. wrote:Mac,

When will you put the slots in the gauntlet articulations?

Right Now!

Here are the parts laid out with the blue marker pen showing the overlaps and the proposed limits of the rivet slots.



And, here they are with the slots cut and the bolts put back in. The pics show the extents of the motion.



I've also got the file work pretty much under control. When I get the next stage of polishing done, I'll show some pics of that.

Mac

This evening, I began the rather tedious task of finishing the finger plates. These parts heat up fast, but they are too small to hold with gloves. The good news is that it looks like I can start in with the A65 Trizact belt....at least for the cannons. There are very few hammer marks and this belt seems to be able to deal with the ones that there are. I will know more tomorrow when I go back over them using a padded platen to get rid of the facets.



Mac

The knuckles had hammer marks, so they needed a pass over the hard grinding disc before they could move on to the A65 Trizact belt on a curved platen.

Here is what I look like while slowly burning my fingers. I kept four knuckles within reach, and as the one I was working on became too hot, I set it down and picked up the next one in line. That worked pretty well.



The finger plates are all ready for the next step. That probably be the same grit over a padded platen for the cannons, but the knuckles will probably go to the 220 set-up wheel.



Mac

St. Florian is the patron of firefighters, so maybe he will protect your fingers. Thank you for taking the time to make photos, post them, and turn your notes into forum posts!

How common are gauntlet fingers with "cops and cannons" in that place and time? I think we would all pay a good deal to have a chance to buy a few 15th century men at arms a drink and talk about the pros and cons of different solutions ... then find the taberne or Weinstube where the journeymen armourers hang out and ask the same.

I notice that the Gothic armours in the KHM have scale fingers on their current gauntlets, although their owners might have chosen different gauntlets for different kinds of fighting. Not sure if we have references to that like we do with swapping visors or lengthening plates, now that I think about it.

I'm really only counting on St Florian to keep my dust collector from catching fire. The burnt fingers are my own damn fault.

My impression is that "cannons and cops" is the run away favorite format for Gothic gauntlet fingers. Many of them did not have have cops on the distal knuckles, but cops on the intermediate knuckles seems to have bean pretty much the norm.

Mac

Thanks Mac. That agrees with modern taste, but after looking at 14th century sources, I had been getting a feeling that they were very 'English' at that time.

The A 62 in Wien only has five or six scales per finger ... the rest of that armour is so exuberantly articulated, but when they got to the fingers they chose a simple solution. And of course scales out-lasted "cops and cannons"!

Sean M wrote:Thanks Mac. That agrees with modern taste, but after looking at 14th century sources, I had been getting a feeling that they were very 'English' at that time.

The A 62 in Wien only has five or six scales per finger ... the rest of that armour is so exuberantly articulated, but when they got to the fingers they chose a simple solution. And of course scales out-lasted "cops and cannons"!

The gauntlets on A60
Ref_arm_1124 PDF

Having spent several hours with the A 62 gauntlets in my hands, I concluded that while the fingers are real and could well be by a member of the Helmschmid family for a later(?) pair of gauntlets, they do not belong. The A 58 gauntlet Tom linked to (often appearing on A 60) has fingers that are most likely.

Oh, and regarding slot cutting; I have seen, on a few examples, evidence of three chisel cuts added to the fitting hole to complete the rectangle and tear-out around the sides from where the plug was pushed out. I can't say that everybody did that, though. I haven't seen much evidence of filing to clean them up.

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:Having spent several hours with the A 62 gauntlets in my hands, I concluded that while the fingers are real and could well be by a member of the Helmschmid family for a later(?) pair of gauntlets, they do not belong. The A 58 gauntlet Tom linked to (often appearing on A 60) has fingers that are most likely.

Ohoho! I guess working from a piece of art has one advantage, in that there is a complete 'whole' without worries that things have been mixed up or replaced after the last time the armour was worn.

I think that some scale fingers have a special solution for the intermediate knuckle, since the finger bends there the most (and it is the most exposed to direct blows).

I've finally got the gauntlet parts polished to the same level as the rest of the armor.



The ends of the thumb plates looked a bit naked, so I gave them pierced hearts to match the ones on the knuckle plates. Our sculptor does not show any decoration on the thumbs, but he lets things get a bit vague in the places that are hard to see, so I don't feel too bad about adding some flavor to an otherwise boring part.



I guess I need to figure out how I'm going to brace the pauldrons, and start getting the arms ready for the kiln.

Mac

Look at you Mac, going freestyle on the thumbs!

Isnt it tedious punching and filing the hardened work? I assume it is to prefer to do filework before hardening?

I was just going to ask the same question.... how hard is it to pierce and file hardened armour? Also .... phenomenal work on the gauntlets! Actually all of it!

Well, I'm sure the hardness of the plate also helps to keep mistakes from getting out of hand too quickly.

The sharp corners created by the file work cause stress concentrations this would make it too risky to do before heat treating.

Remember how he kept the nice radius at the knee to wing transition until after heat treatment?

The filework is not difficult with the armor tempered back to 750°f. It's a lot like filing up the teeth on a woodworking saw. Worn out files are pretty useless, but fresh ones cut nicely.

Likewise, the armor punches well at this temper. The old Roper Whitney goes through with a bit of a "bang", but it's not so hard as to blunt the punches. Normal drills will work as well, but they have to be sharp, and sometimes they need to be touched up half way through a hole. One has to watch the ratio of chip production to noise to know when it's time to resharpen.

It would be more pleasant to be able to do the filwork on soft steel, but as Tom pointed out, that would increase the risk of cracking during the hardening process.

Mac

Yesterday, I began turning my attention back to the elbows. The first thing that I wanted to sort out was the decoration of the inner edge. It's clear that the edge has pierced and filed work, but it's not clear exactly what it's supposed to look like. The two elbows on the statue are slightly different, and there is what appears to be some loss of material.

Years ago, I had concluded that the decoration looked more of less like this.



That the two central elements were meant to be fleurs, I had deduced primarily from the photo from which I made this image. It seamed to me that I was seeing one more or less intact fleur and another that had been damaged or carved with less care.



Looking again, and comparing this image with others (under magnification) I can now see that I misinterpreted the information.

This shows the same elbow from a different angle....



...and this is another (mirror reversed) view.



It's clear from these two pics that what I had interpreted as a fleur de lis was really the superimposition of a bi-lobed element and the elbow strap.

For comparison, here are a couple of views of the other arm. The decoration here appears to be all more or less the same height, and to be composed of bi-lobed "chess rooks". Note that the sculptor has made the holes all in the same line on this elbow, whereas they are at two different heights in the other.



Obviously, I needed to change my interpretation to match my new understanding. This is what I cam up with last night. You can see where I had previously center punched the hole locations, and that the new locations will punch out all traces of the previous idea.



Now.... the more I look at the images, the more I think that the elements on the corners should also be bilobate. I drew them like that initially, but abandoned that idea last night. So, I will go back and re-sketch them that way and see how I like that.

I hope to get that finalized later today so I can move on to correcting a couple of things in the elbows themselves.

Mac

Mac, your attention to detail is absolutely impeccable! It really is an inspiration to see how often and how critically you look at your assumptions.

Not sure if any of my images are any better but here is the Google folder where I put the St Wolfgang images I have:

St Wolfgang Altar Images

I am not sure but loading these into an image editor and adjusting things a bit might help to clarify things a bit.

Here are some zoomed in shots from these images:





This next one is a bit bigger click to load the slightly higher resolution image:

Here's the latest. I don't like it as well as what I had last night, but I think it's closer to what the sculptor had in mind. In the end, it's not about what I "like"; it's about what's right. I may make the outermost lobes into something more like points..... I'm resisting that because I don't want them to be sharp or "catchy", but I think that is what I am seeing.



Mac

Mac wrote:Here's the latest. I don't like it as well as what I had last night, but I think it's closer to what the sculptor had in mind. In the end, it's not about what I "like"; it's about what's right. I may make the outermost lobes into something more like points..... I'm resisting that because I don't want them to be sharp or "catchy", but I think that is what I am seeing.



Mac

I agree, especially from Tom's pics, that the end points seem to be above the plane of the center section. I too wondered about how catchy that might make them. Alternately they might act like stand offs to prevent the entire edge from catching on the cuirass overlap or arm hole.

Test piece?

This is what I've settled on for the shape of the edges.



I went ahead and punched the holes and took the edge down to an approximation of the final shape. There is still a bit of room to change things, but this is how they will be for the hardening.



After that, I went over the both of them and picked out any spots that looked like they would not grind out readily. I'll look at them again before I put the wires on, but I think they are ready.



The next subject that needs addressing is that of how to close the lower cannons. I'm on my own here, since out sculptor did not even bother to show cannons at all. My first thought is to put a strap and buckle on them, but I'm concerned about it catching on the gauntlet cuff. I guess I need to make a little survey of the surviving Gothic lower cannons and see what they did.



Mac

Johann ColdIron wrote:

I agree, especially from Tom's pics, that the end points seem to be above the plane of the center section. I too wondered about how catchy that might make them. Alternately they might act like stand offs to prevent the entire edge from catching on the cuirass overlap or arm hole.

That does appear to be the case with the left, but the right seems to show the center rising above the corners. I'm trying to sort of split the difference as much as I can.

Johann ColdIron wrote:Test piece?

I can't think of an easy way to test it. It's one of those things that the historical maker of Gothic elbows would just know from experience.

Mac