The Armour Archive

I got three layers of cotton batting into the liner, and pinned it all in place. One layer is pretty much the size of the lining, and the other two are smaller by the width of the seam allowance. This is to minimize bulk around the edges.



The actual quilting did not take more than about a half an hour.



To sew the lining to the leather strips I use these mortician's needles. They have a three cornered cutting point, and a slight curve. The cutting edges get through the leather without much trouble and the curve lets me get the point back out of the work. The part where they are only curved at the tip makes them a lot easier to use than "round" needles.



Here's what a typical stitch looks like. I get a lot of use out of these bent jaw pliers to handle the needle. What we don't see here is that I have used my left hand to manipulate the leather so that I don't stab the point into the steel. This is largely about maintaining the point.



Here we can see that the neck edge of the lining needed to be trimmed a bit to produce an even hem.



After trimming, I turned the raw edges under and whipped the fold down to the leather.



This is what the lining looks like in place.



Here is the front view with the falling lame up.... and down.



Mac

Pretty handsome

The middle plate of the bevor...does it articulate on the two rivets at the side, or is it hard riveted in place on the 'bib' (for want of a better term) with the center rivet? I can't see that the disassembled middle plate has a hole in the right place to take a rivet...

The neck plate now attaches to the main plate with two rivets. The central in the neck plate lines up with one of the lining holes in the underlap of the main plate. That was a construction hole. It is now plugged with a decorative rivet in the neck plate, and a lining rivet in the main plate. The final assembly has a bit of movement, and will spring back up when depressed.

Does that make sense?

Mac

I'm back from Metlab with the last of the armor parts. These are the ones that didn't take properly, and had to be stripped, repolished and retreated. They were starting to get tired of seeing me there, and I was beginning to weary of it myself.


Everything looks OK, and I am greatly relieved.





Mac

Beauty made real. You do very nice work Mac.

Thank you, John!

Mac

Mac wrote:The neck plate now attaches to the main plate with two rivets. The central in the neck plate lines up with one of the lining holes in the underlap of the main plate. That was a construction hole. It is now plugged with a decorative rivet in the neck plate, and a lining rivet in the main plate. The final assembly has a bit of movement, and will spring back up when depressed.

Does that make sense?

Mac

Perfect sense, thank you.

So.. I seem to have gotten a bit ahead of myself the other day. The greaves get locating pins that will fit through holes in the demigreaves. In my enthusiasm, I gilt the pins that I had made up some weeks ago.



The problem is that they really don't fit well because of the crests of the greaves.



I can't remember what it was that I had intended to do here. Perhaps I was going to flatten the crest locally to make a better seat for the pins. Well.... the time for that sort of thing is past, and I needed a different solution. I needed to make new pins that would embrace the crest of the greaves. For that I needed to make a tool. The first step was to make a cardboard template of the crest line at the pin location.



The tool is a length of 7/16" W-1 drill rod with a 1/8" hole and a sort of pent roof face that matches the cardboard template.



The new pins were turned up out of 1/4" cold rolled rod. The rivet shank is a bit over long, and the reason for that will become obvious in a bit.



The pins fit into the tool thus. (I hardened and tempered the tool off camera)



A few careful whacks with a moderately heavy hammer shapes up a crotch at the base of the rivet shank.



At this point, I chuck the pins by their overly long shanks in a 1/8" collet....



... and turn the upset parts back down to some semblance of 1/4". They only really have to be sort of 1/4", and sort of cylindrical. This is not rocket surgery.



That's more like it!



Now, I've got the hinges and pins installed on the fronts, and the strap loops and turning pins installed on the backs. I still need to prepare the straps and buckles and get them attached before I can join up the greaves. It's almost always easier to attach all the fittings to plates before the assembly is complete.



Mac

Another day, another tool. This one will be for making the plates that go over the fixed ends of the straps. These straps will be 3/4" wide, and so is the tool. Yes, those are turning marks on the face. I had the tool in the four jaw chuck of the lathe to get both of the ends nice and parallel. Give a boy a lathe, and everything need turning.



I made up a couple of prototypes to be sure that it was working OK, and then set up to make a batch of them.



The blanks were cut from a 1" wide strip of .032" mild steel. The corners were cut with a shears, and then then rounded and deburred on an 80gr disc.



Each blank is clamped between the tool and the vise jaw so that the overhang is nice and even. You see now why I wanted the ends of the tool to be parallel.



The exposed edges and one of the corners are hammered down with a small square faced hammer.



Then the tool and the blank are rotated to expose the other corner and edge.



These are hammered down in turn.



After going back and touching up the first corner, this is what they look like. The marks from the vise jaws are going to make the clean up a bit tedious, but I have not yet made smooth jaws or jaw covers for the big vise.... some day.



The batch is now ready for the clean up steps. There are more of them than I will need for this project, and the extras will get tucked away in a drawer with the tool and the template in case I need them some day.



Mac

Here are some pics of the greaves assembled.





Mac

Some months ago, I made a tool like the one I described above, but for 1" strap. This was to make the plates for the tasset straps and the cuisse straps.



...and I used it to produce a bunch of plates.



At the time, I was marginally pleased with the results, but now that I compare them to the plates I made for the 3/4" straps I more or less hate them.

So, I made up a new tool with sharper corners like the recent one.



Here is a prototype 1" plate from the new tool, compared to one from the old tool. It's really more like what I should have done in the first place.



This is that same plate and two bigger ones from the same tool. The big ones will go on the cuisse straps.



Mac

Here are those 1" strap plates after cleanup and gilding. I am using the temporary straps to serve as templates for the length of the final straps. Note that while the overall length is the same, I have shifted the buckle a bit.



Likewise, I used the temporary lacing tabs as templates for the final ones. The new leather is blacker than this pic shows.



To mount the lacing tabs to the upper lames of the cuisses I have ascertained that the correct rivet length is about 1/2 of the stock length. This is how I think about rivet cutting... I might say that they must be "just over half", or that I need to "cut off just over one diameter" or some such thing. It sounds pretty vague, but in practice one can cut them quite accurately this way.



Some rivets all cut to the same length and ready to go.



When the rivet is through the plate and the leather, this is how much I leave for the washer and the peening.



The amount of rivet sticking up through the washer is just enough to catch with the hammer. The washer will sink into the leather just enough to provide the length for the head.



The internal leathers are mounted to the upper lame.



The hinges will be riveted onto the main cuisse plates. I stamped numbers into them months ago to make sure that they got back in the same places.



The three parts of each cuisse have all their ancillary stuff riveted in place and it is time to assemble them together.



The upper lames get riveted onto the main plates first. They are attached by those two leathers as well as a sliding rivet. The construction hole on the medial side has been pluged with a brass headed rivet.



The backs got riveted on next, and the cuisses are complete for the night. Tomorrow I will assemble up the knees and attach them to the cuisses.



Mac

Is there a particular reason for assembling the legs in this order, or is that simply how you've decided to do it on this particular occasion?

The basic idea it to assemble things so the the object does not get unwieldy any sooner than it has to. To this end I like to attach any leather I can to individual plates. Likewise, I attached the hinges to the main plate rather than to the back because it was easier. The back went on last because at that point the whole assembly becomes difficult to control... although, having the cuisse strap in place already helps to keep the back from flopping around while you are riveting.

It may seem counter intuitive to attach straps and buckles before anything comes together, but it's really easier and safer. Remember, we want the armor to get through the assembly without getting scratched. Anything we can to to make sure the assembly goes easily and smoothly is worth considering, even if it seems like the crazy way to do it.

Mac

Elaborating on the above theme of the order of assembly....

I've already got the straps and buckles attached to the demigreaves even though they are not yet attached to the knees.



It just seems like the most convenient time to do it. The straps have to be a length that goes around the greaves, whether or not they are attached to the knees. If I put them on now, I don't have to deal with a heavy or floppy assembly while I'm fussing to get the length right. The pin keeps them in the right place, so there is no need for anything else to be attached right now.

Mac

Mac, do you always make your own buckles and strap fittings? I would have thought it was more efficient to hire someone who specializes in bronze casting or locksmith's work, although maybe not when you are copying a single statue!

I am enjoying seeing the strap arrangement which you chose. I wonder why they put so much of the strap that closes the greave on the surface where spurs and pollaxes can get at it? Did they really need a strap running from the lateral edge of the front plate through a loop on the back plate to the medial edge of the front plate when the 'spring' of the greaves should hold them shut on their own?

At least, that is how I thought 14th century greaves worked, based on photos and some things you and Wade have said ...

Sean M wrote:Mac, do you always make your own buckles and strap fittings? I would have thought it was more efficient to hire someone who specializes in bronze casting or locksmith's work, although maybe not when you are copying a single statue!

I make them when I have to.... and that's usually. Most of the buckles on this armor started as laser-cut blanks. That's a big step up for me.

I'd be pleased to be able to buy buckles for armor, but they would have to look right and not break the bank.

Sean M wrote: I wonder why they put so much of the strap that closes the greave on the surface where spurs and pollaxes can get at it? Did they really need a strap running from the lateral edge of the front plate through a loop on the back plate to the medial edge of the front plate when the 'spring' of the greaves should hold them shut on their own?

Fifteenth C armor tended to have a lot more exposed strap than what came before or after. I don't know why.

The 14th C guys had only as much strap on the outside as they had to. We don't have a lot of extant material to go by, but what we do have has a lot of straps that emerge out of slots . The 14th C artists seldom give us much to go by as far a straps and other fastenings are concerned. They seemed to want to downplay them, and that's consistent with our extant material.

In the 16th C we see a lot of greaves and vambraces being closed with mechanical fasteners of one sort of another.

I don't think we can really know if these changes were driven by practical concerns or by the vagaries of fashion. I suspect the later, though.

Mac

Thanks Mac! This thread is helping me see how you can go from photos or artwork to a functional arrangement of rivets and leathers and straps. I can see those double straps in the old B&W photo at.

http://www.historicenterprises.biz/jour ... lorian.jpg

Just realized that yesterday has been three years since this thread started. I for one am really going to miss looking forward every day to see Mac spin his magic. Thanks again for that privilege Mac. It is truly a work of art to behold.

Mac, are these just your normal pewter eyelets?

Tom B. wrote:Mac, are these just your normal pewter eyelets?

Do you mean "Mac, are those Billy and Charlie's finest quality pewter eyelets!?"

Yes. I think pewter is a reasonable material for this application. I thought about gilding them, but then I remembered (all too well) the experience I had gilding the eyelets for Toby C's armor. The surface finish of stone-cast pewter has a lot of micro texture, and the result is that they suck up a surprising amount of gold and end up looking like they were done with cheap rattle-can spray paint. They were very disappointing on several levels.

Mac

bartholomew wrote:Just realized that yesterday has been three years since this thread started. I for one am really going to miss looking forward every day to see Mac spin his magic. Thanks again for that privilege Mac. It is truly a work of art to behold.

Thank you, Danny! It's been dragging on far too long, and I am excited to see the end approaching. It's not at all clear what I will do afterwards.... I might have to turn my attention to fixing the dozen or so things that I have been putting off around the house. There are rooms to remodel and bricks to repoint. That will all have to be after the inevitable postpartum depression that accompanies the end of all big projects. Who knows, though... perhaps I can stave that off buy building the telescope I have been buying parts for.

Mac

Sean M wrote:Thanks Mac! This thread is helping me see how you can go from photos or artwork to a functional arrangement of rivets and leathers and straps. I can see those double straps in the old B&W photo at.

http://www.historicenterprises.biz/jour ... lorian.jpg

Here's a better view of those straps on the statue, as well as a comparable example in a painting. Micheal Pacher is responsible for both of these, although he probably did not actually carve the statue.



Mac

Like before, I used the temporary knee straps as a template for making up the new ones. The hole that is marked in black pen is the one that represents the correct length. On the new straps, I made that length be the center hole of five.




The knee straps are riveted into the knee cops. Having the straps buckled helps to keep them out of trouble while riveting.



Here are all of the knee parts laid out in order, and ready for assembly.



First I assembled the lames to the demigreaves.



It's important to check and make sure that the parts are in the correct order and on the correct sides. I use punch marks an chisel cuts.... "round on the right" and "lines on the left". These marks have been in there since the parts were fitted in the first place.



Next, the "demicuisses" get their lames.



Here, one of the demigreaves and its lames are riveted to the cop.



... then a "demicuisse" and its lame get riveted to the cop.



Both knees are ready to be riveted onto their cuisses. This order of assembly makes the riveting easier than if I had started with the cop and worked out, or started with the cuisse and worked down. The only rivet in the whole process that is difficult to buck is the one on the demicuisse which is situated above the knee wing. To make that assembly easier, I used a temporary fastener on the opposite side to hold things together while I balanced the knee and the cuisse on the tin block.

The legs are done now and on the stand.





Each cuisse and knee took 53 brass capped rivets. It's remarkable how fast I go through those things. I think I've got about 40 or 50 left. I'll put off making any more until I get closer to using those up. That will make it easier to count how many I will have to make.

Mac

This is like watching the last few episodes of a great TV-series. I am aching to see what happens but at the same time know that I will have an empty void inside of me when it is over..

I've just been wondering how fiercely the spiders must work in Mac's shop if he's been dusting for three years.

I'll be in my bunk.

Mac, could you go over your process for gilding?

Love the legs, they look fantastic. Can't wait for the rest of the armour.

Thanks a bunch for this thread.

Ilkka

Mac: Also I was wondering if during the final assembly process, some of the parts will never be accessible for any oiling or cleaning again. Do you give them any sort of wipe prior to putting them all together?
I understand that the plating process makes the outer surface more durable. Will this be enough to maintain it's luster for a long time?
In the use of the harness scratching will undoubtedly occur to some parts. Can there be any "touch up" or is the "scratching" making the outer surfaces appear more or less authentic?

Just amazing work MAc! So cool to see this coming together.

"I love it when a plan comes together!"

RPM

Mac wrote:It's not at all clear what I will do afterwards....

If I may make a suggestion... find an editor and turn this thread into a book.

Alex Baird wrote:

Mac wrote:It's not at all clear what I will do afterwards....

If I may make a suggestion... find an editor and turn this thread into a book.

Seriously. This is a great idea. The back and forth that we've all had is incredibly valuable.

Mac wrote: It's not at all clear what I will do afterwards....
Mac

Surely Toby needs a new suit by now!


I second turning this thread into a photo heavy book on the armours contruction. A lot of invaluable tech in this.

A little birdie told me that Toby could at least use some new gorget plates on his salade with built in bevor that Mac made years ago...
That could be something small to fill in a gap time. Should be really easy on the elbows too.

Wade