Dusting off the cobwebs

[Tableau]

Amazing work as always mac!

Sorry if this has already been covered, but do you not anneal your work before hardening?

[Mac]

The amazing systems you have in place to ensure everything is perfect it really fantastic.

I devise these dodges out of inspired desperation. It is my sincerest hope that by offering up my methods, I can inspire others to come up with (and promote) better ones.

One of my children was looking through a kids book and he came up and asked if I knew the experts in it.... sure enough it was you and Toby Capwell. I actually told him he had met Toby before but he may not have remembered as this photo was Toby in armour and he met with us at the Wallace.... I was surprised there was a photo of you in the book!

I'm a bit surprised as well. I had more or less forgotten that there were pics of me in that book. Strangely enough, my hair was still brown then. It goes to show how long the current project has been dragging on.

Best of luck with your project. It is great to see this step by step.

RPM

Thank you, Randall!

Mac

[Mac]

Amazing work as always mac!

Thank you!

Sorry if this has already been covered, but do you not anneal your work before hardening?

Sometimes I make an effort to stress relieve the work, but I never do a full anneal. All the books on heat treating stress the importance of annealing, but these books are written with heavier sections in mind. In my experience, armor can go right into a hot kiln without any of the dire consequences that might accrue to drop forging dies and other heavy stuff.

So far as I can tell, all of my heat treating failures and troubles come from three fundimental sources....

--the armor sags under its own weight at the austinitizing temperature.
--the uneven stresses induced by quenching cause a part to warp, or move.
--the shape of the armor makes tension inevitable in some areas, and the contraction of cooling gets resolved by cracking.

Residual stresses just don't seem to be a big player in the heat treatment failures in armor.

Mac

[Mac]

Moving right along! The progress has been fun to watch. I may tool up to try spring steel one of these days...

Just do it, JG! You seem to have the ability to take big bites out of a craft and not choke. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Mac

[Mac]

I've started the grinding with the elbows because I thought that sound like fun.

Here's a grinder's eye view of the process. There's normally a shower of sparks, but I did not want to press too hard while I was concentrating on getting a picture. Pay no attention to the blood blister on my thumb. I did that the other day while I was making up the big corrugated braces for the pauldrons. It was cold that day and I had to wear my heavy Carhartt coat. The unaccustomed bulk at the wrist impeded the play of the hammer handle and I ended up pinching my thumb. I am less than pleased about that.



This is where I stopped to dress the edge of the grinding disc. The areas circled in blue are too deep to grind out without either digging a pit or making the metal too thin. They will be picked out from the back with a rounded hammer on a curved stake.



The first elbow is ground as far as I can take it with this disc. I will change over to a small diameter disc (that is to say, one that has been worn down to only a few inches in diameter) to continue.



I have to be careful not to let the edge of the disc dip into those big punched holes or it will produce a sort of groove across the diameter.

Mac

[Ilkka Salokannel]

Hi Mac:

Very impresses by this project and have been following it for some time.

On the finishing of the parts is your process:
1) Grind with grinding wheel to even out the parts, use alternate grinding tools to get into tight spots
2) After first pass of grinding, knock out the low parts to get them even and then give them a grind pass
3) Go to finer grits one after the other to the finish you want.

Two questions:
1) What seems to be the appropriate finish for medieval plate?
2) What gauge of metal did you use in the harness?

Beautiful project, can't wait to see it completed.

Ilkka S

[Mac]

Hi Mac:



On the finishing of the parts is your process:
1) Grind with grinding wheel to even out the parts, use alternate grinding tools to get into tight spots
2) After first pass of grinding, knock out the low parts to get them even and then give them a grind pass
3) Go to finer grits one after the other to the finish you want.

Yes, that's basically it. The grinding is to remove the hammer marks and "level" the surfaces. Everything beyond that is about getting rid of the grinding marks and coming to an acceptable looking finish.

1) What seems to be the appropriate finish for medieval plate?

That's a very good question. Unfortunately we really don't know. Most of the armor that has come down to us has been polished or had its surface messed with in some way or another. We can get some idea about original finish from places that have proven too much trouble to re-polish. Those spots under rivets that James A G has posted are a good example. We can also get an idea about original finish from paintings. The upshot seems to be that it was probably pretty shiny, but there may well have been a lot of scratches "under" that shine.

2) What gauge of metal did you use in the harness?

It is made of different gauges, more or less approximating what was typically done in period. For example, the gauntlets, greaves, and sabatons are .035". The breast and helmet are just over twice that at .075". The backplate, cuisses, and pauldrons are .042". The elbows and front tassets are .050". .... of at least that's my recollection. I could check to see what I wrote down on the templates if you would like.

Beautiful project, can't wait to see it completed.

Ilkka S

Thanks! .... me too.

Mac

[Ilkka Salokannel]

Thanks Mac for the info.

Guantlets, greaves and sabatons are 0.035" which is 20 ga
Breast and helmet are 0.075" which is 14 ga
Backplate, cuisses and pauldrons are 0.042" which looks like 19 ga.

Please check the templates as I am curious. I am working on my own kit and I did my enclosed greaves in 18 ga and the Churburg 13 is in process out of 16 ga (everything in stainless steel: too much rusty conditions on the Wet Coast - Vancouver BC). I could have done the greaves out of 20 ga and cut down the weight.

Thanks
Ilkka

[wcallen]

The thicknesses Mac is using reflect the design approach used in authentic armour. Different parts of the armour are different thicknesses based on the importance of that part of the body and how the parts need to interact with each other and move.

Mac provided his recollection of what thicknesses he used. They are similar to thicknesses many of the high end armourers are using.

I find it interesting to add measurements from surviving pieces into these discussions. Any measurement like that is a minimum possible - the material has often been cleaned which will make it thinner. It rarely gets much thicker over time (actually there are times when material may delaminate, rust between the layers and bubble, but that is generally something you can identify).

I find that these measurements show even more variability than we assume.

I added a thickness measurement taken from the breastplate I have that is most similar to being comparable.

http://www.allenantiques.com/A-237.html

This breastplate has been seriously re-worked over time, so I wouldn't trust anything from the lower parts. The best preserved upper plate shows a remaining thickness .085-.120. Gauges are terribly unreliable these days, but that is about 13g to 10g.

A slightly later breastplate with measurements:
http://www.allenantiques.com/A-66.html
(varies from about .030 at the sides to .11 in the center)

An earlly 15th c. arm:
http://www.allenantiques.com/A-186.html
(varies between .04 and .09)

A late 15th c. elbow:
http://www.allenantiques.com/A-214.html
(varies between .030 and .060)

Early 16th c. elbow:
http://www.allenantiques.com/A-185.html
(mostly .06 to .075)

Early 16th c. elbow, possibly very late 15th, very similar to a pair in Churburg:
http://www.allenantiques.com/A-199.html
(varies between .040 and .070 - with some indication that at least some of the variation is intentional)

What you will choose to use really depends on your goal. Some people want the lightest possible armour. Others want lower maintenance, and a few want to get a feel that is similar to the old stuff. I wouldn't say any of these is "wrong" they are just different.

Wade

[Ilkka Salokannel]

Wade: Thank you for the detailed measurements.

I have been using a simple rules, mainly for SCA use:
1) Shin and foot: 18 ga and 20 or 22 ga
2) Knee and Thigh: 16 ga knees, 16 ga for thighs but could use 18, if you don't mind the dents (for myself I build 16 ga legs and the best was a fluted 16 ga stainless set that held up under SCA combat very well due to the fluting re-inforcing)
3) Body: 18 ga
4) Arms, shoulder and elbow: 18 ga, 18 ga and 16 ga.
5) Hands: cuffs of 18 ga, with mix dished 16 ga knuckles riders and 18 ga parts in between for mittens and thumbs with full wrap around 18 ga tips
6) Head: min 14 ga tops in two pieces but prefer 12 ga to avoid dents, 14 or 16 ga skirts and 16 ga frames for grill visors.

These generic rules have held up well over 40 years of playing in the SCA, but since I am older now I am well aware that applying those rules to a suit of plate will give you a weight in the range of 65 lbs, as that is what my last suit of gothic worked out to.

Knowing the actual thicknesses give a better idea on the trade offs in building the next set. I know that some real plate armours weighed in between 45 lb on the low side to about 55 lb on the high side.

I may simply have to start considering tempered steel and get away from stainless.

Thanks.
Ilkka

[wcallen]

Unfortunately for all of us, what really matters is the final thickness and the characteristics of the material.

So starting with .050 for a piece might result in a final thickness of .050, .055, or .030 depending on how you work the material.

And really mild mild steel, 1050, 4130, 300 series stainless and 410 will all be very different.
Annealed, cold worked, hot worked, and hardened and tempered will all be very different for all of those.

I have had a pair of 14g cuisses that dented every time they were hit. The material turned out to be almost dead soft and probably had almost no carbon in it.

I have seen a 14g barbute get wailed on by the heaviest hitters around and never dent. First, we made it using "house" technology, so it got thicker and second we found out later that the material was some medium carbon steel, not mild. There was no intentional hardening or tempering performed on it.

I personally don't like the feel of a breastplate made from anything thinner than .07-ish, but I want some of the "feel" of a solid breastplate, not one that is flexible. It doesn't actually need to be "solid" in SCA combat, it doesn't tend to get hit much, but it feels better to me.

Mac is working in hardened and tempered 1050 in a style that has flutes. For a ... larger... person. The thicknesses he has chosen will likely result in a rock solid armour with a good feel that would hold up to most attempts at abuse. I don't know what the whole armour will end up weighing when it is done, but I expect it will be pretty "right" in the end.

I think a complete cavalry armour could often get to 65 pounds. The "Avant" is 57, but that is omitting tassets, a guard on a pauldron and one gauntlet and has its barbute instead of the original armet. It was also made for a pretty short person. My guess when I looked at it in person was that it was about right for my sister at 5'6". Others listed in Blair and Ffoulkes are in the 60's or higher. Infantry and less complete armours would be lighter.

But we digress.

Mac - when you are done, it would be fun to know the overall weight of the harness along with the approximate size of the wearer.

Wade

[J.G.Elmslie]

My guess when I looked at it in person was that it was about right for my sister at 5'6".

I got to take a poke at the Avant out of the case, and I'm inclined to say it might even be an inch or so less than that - What surprises me most is how its very deceptive when on the display stand - it always seems so much bigger and imposing, even when I know otherwise!

Just one example of the crasftsman's artistry to change the perception of the wearer, and enhance their form that Mac's written so many times here about.

[Tableau]

Thanks for the heat treating info. I've pretty much only gone through the heat treating process with tools and knives and such, and I'm usually pretty careful about annealing. But I have sometimes suspected that I'm being too careful.

[Mac]

Mac - when you are done, it would be fun to know the overall weight of the harness along with the approximate size of the wearer.

Wade

I can ask him his weight, but he'll tell me in "stones" and I'll have to find the conversion.

Mac

[Alex Baird]

Mac - when you are done, it would be fun to know the overall weight of the harness along with the approximate size of the wearer.

Wade

I can ask him his weight, but he'll tell me in "stones" and I'll have to find the conversion.

Mac

14 lbs per stone.

[Mac]

Mac - when you are done, it would be fun to know the overall weight of the harness along with the approximate size of the wearer.

Wade

I can ask him his weight, but he'll tell me in "stones" and I'll have to find the conversion.

Mac

14 lbs per stone.

Thank you, Alex!

I'm really only teasing him if he's reading this.

Mac

[Alex Baird]

I think it's a bigger tease showing him this gorgeous armor he doesn't have yet... the anticipation must be exquisitely painful.

[RandallMoffett]

Mac,

Desperation is a good impetus. There is no question time is a major component of such projects. I got a forge this January for my birthday. I have only had 5-6 times to start it up sadly but messing about and trying to get a hand on it before biting off a major project seemed less stressful road to take with my rather limited free time as opposed to rushing it. I still have a hard time not rushing because I have so many planned projects. Self discipline in the cue as well.

RPM

[Scott Martin]

Thanks for this thread Mac

I need to go back over some of the "recent" posts (like the last 400). You constantly surprise me with little tips that make my work better and / or faster. My gauntlet and saboton lines look much better with bevels I'm still trying to figure out how to get clean cut lines parallel to my flutes: the Glenbow has a very nice Maximilian breastplate (overpolished of course) which has really clean (engraved?) parallels adjacent to the flutes.

Thanks Mac for the info.

Guantlets, greaves and sabatons are 0.035" which is 20 ga
Breast and helmet are 0.075" which is 14 ga
Backplate, cuisses and pauldrons are 0.042" which looks like 19 ga.

Please check the templates as I am curious. I am working on my own kit and I did my enclosed greaves in 18 ga and the Churburg 13 is in process out of 16 ga (everything in stainless steel: too much rusty conditions on the Wet Coast - Vancouver BC). I could have done the greaves out of 20 ga and cut down the weight.

Thanks
Ilkka

Hi Ilkka, nice to see that you've finally stepped out of the lurking shadows!

.035" is actually 22 Ga
.040" is dead on 20 Ga (.042" is within the +/- tolerance for 20 ga)
.050" is 18 Ga

For the benefit of bystanders, Ilkka and I have had a running "discussion" around "sport" armour thicknesses for (*cough* decades *cough*) quite a while. I generally build my armour about 2 gauges lighter. That said (and following from Wade's point) we have different construction techniques and articulation tolerances. While his gear tends to require less maintenance, I don't think that either of us has ever been injured as a result of armour failure (Ilkka and I have both suffered over-training injuries which are not armour failure but brain failure)

As an example I tend to use 14 Ga for helms, and favor armets and sallets, which generally have re-enforcement plates on the brow. Ilkka favors bascinets and early sallets, which do not have the brow re-enforces. We both used stainless steel almost exclusively until it (recently) became possible to get carbon steel. Ironically it is much cheaper for Canadians to order carbon steel from the US. (If you are Canadian, onlinemetals.com now handles shipping and customs cheaper than UPS - important if you live more than 10 hours away from a major US city)

Wade: Thank you for the detailed measurements.
<Snip>
I may simply have to start considering tempered steel and get away from stainless.

Thanks.
Ilkka

Or you *could* use those sheets of 17-7 PH I left in your shop...

I'm still hoping to convert Ilkka to the "true path" of carbon steel, since we can drop another 2 gauges and get better strength and toughness than his "tank" armour (at about half the weight). My "practice" greaves are 18 Ga (mild) and I will probably go to 20 Ga for the carbon steel versions (following the long-ago discussion with Wade and Mac around the tendency of thinner stock to wrinkle - I hadn't realized how much compression greaves need to get the right shape!)

I don't think that I will ever go to "sport" armour like Dave Wise (Sir Alexis) since a 0.035" breastplate just seems crazy. I also doubt that I'll go as "realistic" as Wade. That said I prefer armour from 1430-1520, where the thicknesses / weights haven't gone up to resist guns yet (IIRC the Tyrol armour was 42 pounds, and it is complete)

Scott Martin

PS Merry Christmas to everyone!

[Mac]

This is my new tool. I bought it on Ebay just before I set off for North Carolina for Christmas. I feed it with scraps of PSA discs that have gotten too small for my smallest backing pad.



It works.... OK.... I'm using it to get into places where a wheel won't reach.



Over on the other side of the elbows, it's time to do the file work.



The first cut was with the Dremel tool and a cut off wheel.



The clean up was with files.



I may get to the polishing wheel after dinner.

Mac

[Aussie Yeoman]

Is that a bit of foam on the head of that tool? I don't quite understand at what I'm looking. Story of My Life, for the most part.

[Sean M]

Those are very sexy couters! Thanks for the photos of different stages of cutting and polishing.

[Mac]

Is that a bit of foam on the head of that tool? I don't quite understand at what I'm looking. Story of My Life, for the most part.

Do you mean the yellow stuff? That's 80gr self-stick sandpaper. The thing it's stuck to is one of the shaped rubber blocks that press fit into the oscillating plate. The machine has a short (1/8") straight line stroke. Unlike other sanders, the resulting scratches are straight, and not little circles.

I did a certain amount of clean up on these elbows using a random orbit sander. It does a nice job of avoiding the scalloping and waviness of regular disc sanding, but I've had to spend a lot of time getting rid of the swirly scratches. There's just nothing medieval looking about swirly scratches.

Mac

[Mac]

Those are very sexy couters! Thanks for the photos of different stages of cutting and polishing.

Thanks! I'm pretty pleased with the shape.

Mac

[Mac]

The elbows are polished to the level of the rest of the armor, and are sitting out of the way.



I started in on the grinding of the pauldron lames the other day, but today is the day when my Christmas Cold really came into its own, so I did not get a lot accomplished. It's hard to put your nose to the grindstone when it's running. Perhaps tomorrow I can get back to it.

Here's what I have so far.



Mac

[Chris Gilman]

"It's hard to put your nose to the grindstone when it's running. Perhaps tomorrow I can get back to it. "
Mac, just use a wet stone.....

[Mac]

Mac, just use a wet stone.....

Eueew!

Mac

[Jeremy.G]

Mac, just use a wet stone.

That's snot a good idea...

[Mac]

I managed to get a few hours of grinding in this afternoon. The "tight" spots got ground first with this dinky remnant of a disc.



Thees are the places where a full sized wheel just can't go.



The remainder was ground with this guy here. He used to be a 9" disc.



And this is what the main plates look like now.



There's still some more rough grinding to do on them, but I was beginning to lose my concentration and thought it better to quit for the day.

Mac

[Scott Martin]

Hi Mac

What abrasive are you using? It looks like a Scotch Brite pad on steroids.

Scott

[Mac]

It's a sort of angle grinder wheel. They are sometimes called "notchers" because pipe welders us them to grind chamfers etc. https://www.airgas.com/product/Tools-%2 ... 6253370275

I'm not sure if this the same model I'm using.... but it might be. I think I bought mine on Ebay, but you can get them at your local welding shop.

The important thing is that they don't flex or mince words. They just cut what's put in front of them. In many ways, they are the very antithesis of a scotchbrite wheel. Somewhere way back in this thread I discuss balancing and truing them. That's important for this sort of work. (ah! here is is viewtopic.php?f=1&t=169445&p=2745319&hi ... d#p2745319 )

Mac

[Mac]

I got to thinking about this over night and came back this morning to elaborate a bit.

The first grinding operation differs from all subsequent processes in an important way. It must remove the hammer marks and other small irregularities from the surface. It is a leveling process. This requires an unyielding presentation of the abrasive that will take off the high spots without flowing into the low spots. The first grinding operation defines the final form of the armor. All subsequent processes are just about removing scratches.

Mac

[Keegan Ingrassia]

That's a useful insight, and explains why some of my older pieces (started sanding with a flexible backing) have waves in the surface, while my greaves (that were first ground with a hard disk) do not. Thanks again, Mac!

[Mac]

You're welcome, KI!

That's one of those things that seems obvious to me now, but I remember the days before I understood it. I think sometimes about writing something on the general principals of grinding with diagrams etc., but I haven't done it yet.

Mac

[Mac]

I got a couple of hours of grinding in this morning, but then got swept away to a New Year's party in downtown Philly with old tango friends. When I got home this evening I got a quick view of Neptune before the clouds crept in. It's just below and to the right of Mars now.

The heat is still on in the shop, so I should get back in there and finish what I started this morning.

Mac