The Armour Archive

Looks handy. Indeed, there is no limit to how many different tools an armourer can have.

Today I drew in some lines for the fluting. I am not sure I am ready for the fluting yet, but it's good to get the lines on the armor. That will give me some time to evaluate and correct them as needed.

Here's the thing. When you first make something, anything, your brain needs time to evaluate it. The left-brain says "Well, that's done!", and the right-brain says "...it looks a bit... you know... off...?". The right-brain then says "This is good! You don't know what you're talking about!" while the right-brain says "...that line there...i sort of feel it's..." "Shut up! It's good".

As the object sits in the shop for a while the right-brain gets a chance to keep nagging until the problems reach consciousness and than you can fix them.

Here is is from the front right. (I don't have the camera angle right. This is from about 10 feet away and about lever with the armor's waist. To do it right, I think I would have to sit on the floor from about 15feet away. )


and the back.


Mac

Back in April, on page 14, Alix Baird put forth the idea that the mystery line that appears in this view may actually be a continuation of one of the flutes on the main plate of the pouldron.



Well, Alix, You may be right about that.

In this view, we can indeed see one of those flutes in that location. The one on the statue looks more like a "step" than a "flute" per se, but it sure is in the right place.


It's a faint blue line here in the detail. It shows up well "in person", but I don't seem to have enough pixels at my disposal for it to show clearly in the blowup.


Mac

Well. That was short lived. It turns out that the mystery line is definitely not a flute.

I was looking on the web for pics of shoes on soldiers from 1470, and what should appear but another image of an old friend. This pic is from Historic Enterprise's site. It is from a different angle than any I already have. It shows the group of three flutes on the shoulder. It also show that the sculptor intended for us to see that mystery line as the edge of the main plate. There's not doubt about it, he carved three lames in the front of the right pouldron and two lames in the back. Like I said earlier, while there are ways to make that work, the most likely thing is that the sculptor just plane lost track.



I wish I had seen this picture earlier. On the plus side, this pic does show what that group of three flutes does in the front, and my guess was about right.



Mac

Today's project was fluting the upper arms. I started with the lowest "tube", with the intention to work up from there. A conventional fluting stake will not get into a shape like this, so I had to use offset stakes. I started with one whose whose working surface is crosswise because it seemed like I could get most of the fluting done with that.



Anything I could not reach with that stake, I got with this one.



Fluting always distorts the work, so did the pieces one at a time, and checked them against their opposite numbers as well as against their mates. You can see here that the tubes do not distort much at all in the process because of the inherent strength and the symmetrical nature of the fluting scheme.



The first lames were readjusted to fit with the second lames.


Thinning the overlaps before riveting the tubes made it possible to flute the seams. I was hoping this would be so, and it worked better than I feared it would. Here, I have taken off the sharpy marks with acetone to make it easier to inspect the job.


The second lame/tube is much like the first except for the armpit cutout. The green line represents where I might cut the plate further. I will only flute up to the cross lines for now. If I decide not to cut it further, I will come back and complete the fluting.



I got to use a straight fluting stake on the third lames because they are open on the backs.



All three lames fluted and reassembled.




I rather enjoy fluting, but it is elbow intensive. The blows are very "dead" and the whole weight of the hammer must be lifted each time. This is exactly the sort of thing that injured me in the first place. With that in mind, I am quitting for the day, and will pick up fluting again tomorrow.

Mac

That is awesome Mac, very nice.

When finished and assembled, will the upper canons have leather straps on front and back, or 'loose riveted' at back and leather at front?

Mac, that is truly amazing! Between those arms and the latten edge that you have there, I am in awe of your talent. This thread should really be compiled into a hard book... not only your work but all of the comments as well. The back and forth between all of us with you is really invaluable. It's more like sitting in a classroom as opposed to just looking at pretty pictures on a screen.

For the main pouldron plates I get to use the straight fluting stake. The straight stakes are always a bit easier to use than the offset ones. There's less vibration and less tendency for the stake to "get away".



I started with the double flutes at the lower edge.



This caused the expected flattening of the plate, an evidenced by how it no longer fits.



I corrected that before going any further. With a complex piece like a pouldron, easier to flute a bit and correct a bit than to do all the fluting and then try to figure out how to get things back together.



The wings got fluted gradually, starting from origin of the spray, and working all the flutes concurrently. The places where the metal has been hot-worked are difficult going and they have to be hit more aggressively to keep the flutes looking right.



I finished them off on the inside to make the cross section be less abrupt.



Back together again while I contemplate the assault on the summit. Those flutes on the top of the pouldrons are somehow iconic to this armor, and I want them to look right.



I made the first pass the same as all the other flutes.



To no one's surprise, they are no where near dramatic enough.


So, I went back over them hot. Having established the flute cold, it was easy "find the tool" again when the metal was hot. I tried to hammer well to the sides, so as to let the tool push the center up.



That's more like it!



The shoulder flutes received the same hammering from the inside that the ones on the wing got. That smoothed them out nicely. I then wrestled the plate back into shape and got the lames bolted on. A nice even heating of the main plate to "just barely" or "not quite" red stress relieved it so that it no longer tries to fight the other plates.



Color me a wimp, but that's all I have in me today.

Tomorrow I will attend to little details of fit. Soon, I must address one of the most vexing questions of Gothic armor... "How the hell are the rondells supposed to attach, really?"

Mac

Jason Grimes wrote:That is awesome Mac, very nice.

Thank you, Jason!

Mac

Ckanite wrote:The back and forth between all of us with you is really invaluable. It's more like sitting in a classroom as opposed to just looking at pretty pictures on a screen.

Excellent! That's the sort of thing I was hoping for.

Mac

Aussie Yeoman wrote:When finished and assembled, will the upper canons have leather straps on front and back, or 'loose riveted' at back and leather at front?

Mac

I love this thread. I'm always excited to read the new additions.

Earlier in this thread you were talking about way to end full flutes, and you mentioned that you can't terminate a full flute against another full flute. In the case of the shoulder flutes, can they safely meet because of the angle they're meeting at? I imagine it will be easier to get your grinding wheel in there than it would be to grind full flutes meeting perpendicularly. Even so, it must be a little tricky to grind the meeting point. Do you have a special trick up your sleeve?

Tableau,

If the flutes meet at a very acute angle, they will grind OK. There will be a bit of slop and overcut, but it will look alright. I certainly have my work cut out for me. This armor has a lot of them.

Mac

Much of today was spent dealing with edges and overlaps. Here's the front of the right pouldron showing where I planned to remove some material. That includes those points. I thought that I was going to use sliding rivets here in the front, but I have changed my mind and am going to have leathers instead. That makes the points a bit redundant since there are no rivet slots to partially conceal. In addition, when the front of a poouldron is mounted on leather, the lames will separate some as they collapse. That would make the points stick out. We don't want that, so off they come.



The next issue was to make the "reveal" of the second lame nice and even. The blue line indicates what will be removed. The green lines show me how much underlap the lames have. More on that later.



This looks tidier.



I have drawn lines on the outside to show where the leathers will run on the inside. For the front, these two screws mark the locations of the future internal leather securing rivets. The blue dot shows where I will punch a hole for the "anchor rivet".



Here's where the center leather will run. It is the most important leather in the pouldron because it bears the most weight. It will be a wide one secured withe pairs of rivets.



Because there is a wide space between the center leather and the rivets at the edges of the pouldron wings, there must be another leather here. These are not always found on pouldrons, but they are by no means uncommon. It need not be a very wide leather.



For a while, I thought I would make the front leather have pairs of rivets. I changed my mind later, but this is where a wide leather would go. The blue dots show where the rivets would go, but the holes would be in the uderlaping plate. I drew them here just to help with the spacing of the anchor rivet. That "X" in the circle represents the location of the center of the besagew. I have centerpunched the location lightly so I don't lose it.



The same thing for the wide, double-riveted center leather.



.... and for the intermediate leather, which will be narrow and be single-riveted.



Here are the plates, ready to be punched. I have erased all extraneous markings to avoid doing something stupid. All the green dots are to be punched. I also have green lines to indicate where I will cut away some excess underlap.




I looked at the motion I was getting in the MKII pouldron, and saw the single-riveted leather I used there was moving nicely. The leather was pivoting on the rivets and that yielded a bit more through than I might otherwise have gotten. So, I changed my mind about the front leather at the last minute, and decided to go with single-riveting.



The center leather holes all punched. I find it worth while to run a dremmel over the insides of the holes to remove the burrs from the punch. It gives me peace of mind.



The intermediate leather.



I also spent time today messing with the upper arm lames/tubes to get more and freer motion. I will post some details of that tomorrow. Friday, I hope to try the arms on Will McLean, so I have to get them all temporarily leathered up tomorrow.

Mac

Mac,

I found it interesting that the central leather was offset from the tab for pointing the pauldron.
After seeing this and thinking about the implications, it seems to make sense, but could you help explain the reasons?
I would like a more full understanding.

Well, I've never seen an inside shot of a gothic pauldron, but I was always under the impression that the upper lames of such pauldrons were just secured by the side rivets and pivoted like they did prior, but now you are making them articulated entirely on leather. Then the side rivets are decorative ones and the holes are merely construction ones for easier heat treatment ( like the holes on the sides of milanese faulds and cullets)?

Tom B. wrote:Mac,

I found it interesting that the central leather was offset from the tab for pointing the pauldron.
After seeing this and thinking about the implications, it seems to make sense, but could you help explain the reasons?
I would like a more full understanding.

Tom,

I am a bit surprised that they do not line up as well. I put the tabs where I thought they needed to go a couple of months ago. Yesterday I put the central leathers where they needed to go. I am sure that the central leather is where it has to be. I will reevaluate the tab placement when I try the armor on Will (Galeron) tomorrow.

Mac

Nicknizh wrote:Well, I've never seen an inside shot of a gothic pauldron, but I was always under the impression that the upper lames of such pauldrons were just secured by the side rivets and pivoted like they did prior, but now you are making them articulated entirely on leather. Then the side rivets are decorative ones and the holes are merely construction ones for easier heat treatment ( like the holes on the sides of milanese faulds and cullets)?

Nick,
In a normal gothic pouldron I would expect that the rivets in front would be simple pivots of perhaps sliding rivets, but these are not typical Gothic pouldrons. They sit closer to the neck, and the medial lames are more vertical than usual. In addition, we have those weird upper arms. All of this adds up to a situation where we need to get all the motion we can out of what's there.

There will be three leathers in addition to the normal rivets in the back. I'll try to get a pic that shows that clearly today.

Mac

I see, thanks for clarification, these Saint Florian sculpture's pauldrons are really weird.

Lovely work. As usual. You inspire! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you, Otto!

Mac

I did not take as many pictures as I might should have today because I was doing a lot of fiddly stuff, and by the time I thought about taking a pic, the time was past.

Here is a detail that is supposed to show how I flared the lower edges of the lames/tubes a bit to get more motion. It doesn't really show up well, but that's all to the good, really. The fluting hides the shape a bit.



This pic is showing two things. The first is that I decided not to cut any more away from lame/tube number two, and thus I finished the flutes. The other thing is that I realized that I need the upper and lower rivet hole open. The upper one will serve as an anchor for the medial internal leather. The lower one is a useful place for a construction rivet. Having a rivet there will help in the heat treating. Because I am loosing two structural rivets, I must add another two in between.



The new rivets are in, and two that are slated for removal are centerpunched for drilling.



This is how things are supposed to go.



Drilling out rivets is always a risky business. If the drill was nicely centered and the rivet was straight, all is OK. If the drill binds, the worst that happens is that the rivet spins. However, if the rivet is not coaxial with the drill, when the bit catches on breakthrough, the turning of the rivet binds the drill and snaps the end off quicker than you can say f**K.



I broke that drill bit twice today. The second time a piece of it struck my arm. It's important to keep your face out of the "plane of destruction" when drilling anything.... especially old rivets.



The upper rivets of the lower lames/tubes got removed as well. The hole will serve to start the medial leather, and will also provide a mate to that construction hole I mentioned earlier.



...like this.



The green lines show where the internal leather will be. I have also made a notation by the holes that will be turned into slots. (Aussie Dave, I finally decided what I am going to do there.)



The upper arms dissembled. The holes for the leathers marked and the underlaps ready to be trimmed some more.



Here I am planing out where to anchor the ventral (front) leather. It's going to be a near thing. The sculptor has not given me as much room as I would have liked.



The leathers are all planed out on the inside and the lengths are marked. This is something I do even when I am not taking photos of the process.



The first leathers are riveted to the lower lame/tube. Note; the dorsal (back) hole had been elongated into a slot. About six nibbles with the RW punch and then some smoothing with a file doe the trick. I finish off the end with a round file to avoid leaving square corners. The real ones have square corners, but I am afraid of them.



Lame/tube two is leathered in place. The underlap lines serve as guides when establishing the holes in the leathers.



Same thing for lame three.



The pouldron lames and the main pouldron plate are assembled pretty much the same way. The dorsal rivet will (probably) not be a slider, though.



The two assemblies united. I am using bolts for the anchors and the dorsal rivets. They will serve for the testing, and facilitate the numerous disassemblies and reassemblies.



I had indented to only make up the left pouldron/arm assembly for the fitting tomorrow with G, but I was dissatisfied with how the upper pouldron lames mover. I therefore decided to make up the right with a couple of changes. First, I spent some time "breaking" the leather. I had not done this for the left, because I was lazy and the leathers are temporary. I also trimmed away some more of the underlapp at the places where the leathers go. (I thought I took a pic or that, but apparently not.)



The results were good. The left moves better and I will do the same to the right before it gets assembled for real.

This evening I turned my attentions to attaching the old vambraces and elbows. I used the leather that were already there, and it was just a question of two rivet holes on each arm.

Now the persistently vexing question of attaching the besagews. The first thing I tried was a short length of leather, attached to the pouldron with an arming point. I did not like the way they tipped forward.





It seemed like I needed something to push the besagew out from the pouldron a bit... some sort of pad. The easiest thing to do was to double the leather under the bolt. That seems to work rather well.





A different view.



And, another.



Mac

Educational as well as inspirational!

You really have a flair for fluting. Looking forward to how they sand and finish up!

Oh, and I love it when a drilled rivet head pops off like that! The drill bit, not so much...

I had a pretty successful fitting today with Will McLean (Galleron) standing in for my Patron. A few things need attention, but overall I am pretty satisfied. I have taken the rest of the day off in celebration.

Mac

I hope you are able to show photos from the fitting. The translation of this harness from our slim-waisted friend to your contemporary American sized patron has me riveted. It speaks volumes of your understanding of the style and form.

-Adair

Adair,

I hope to write someday on the subject of fitting armor to people of different shapes and sizes. It is complex topic, but one that is very important. Keep prodding me, and perhaps I will start another thread on the subject. It will require some gathering of thoughts and some drawings.

What I would really like to have to give substance and example to such a lecture is this. I would like a set of images. They would show people from several different views; front, back, side, and perhaps 3/4. The set would include at least four and perhaps a dozen different body shapes. They would all be to the same scale, and from the same angles and distances, so that comparisons could be made directly from one image to another. These could be photos, or good drawings, or some sort of computer generated thing.... so long as they were accurate.

Mac

There are basically three points that need to be addressed and adjusted to make the pouldrons and arms work better.

The first is that the front edges of the pouldrons are in too tight a contact with the breastplate. This keeps the pouldrons from moving over the cuirasse as smoothly as they might. The fix will be to simply flatten them a bit. This will be hot work at the hem, followed by a slight adjustment of the lames and main plate. This will be followed by stress relieving the assemble. All of the leather will have to be remover before that can happen, so this may wait until I have made the other adjustments.



The second place that needs attention is the cut outs of the upper arms. These make contact with the breastplate when the arms are across the body. Taking a half and inch away here will make a big improvement.



The third issue is with the elbow cops. The upper part of the wing tends to bind against the upper arm whey the elbow is bent. The blue lines show where the wing must be flared more.



A thing I was surprised about was that the pouldrons did not sit on Galleron like they do on Massimo. Perhaps G's upper arms are a bit longer than I think.... I made the length of the new pouldrons from top to elbow to match the length that worked on my Pattron at the last fitting, so I imagine they will end up a bit higher and closer together on him.



In this pic, G has posed more like the statue, and that pushed his shoulders back a bit. The result is more like what I expected.



The "St. Florian pose" from the front.



Galleron was just asking if he could take the armor off and I asked if he did not want to try the helmet. "Oh yes, let's!"



...and here with the helmet tipped back so we can see his smiling face.


Thank you, G!

Mac

A thing I was surprised about was that the pouldrons did not sit on Galleron like they do on Massimo.

I don't like how my paulons sit on my wooden self either. I think it's a flesh issue. Anyway, thanks for the pics! It's nice to see the armour in use.

Glad to help, Mac. The last two pictures illustrate the "nose in the sallet" position so common in 15th c. art. Visibility is pretty good, and the face is relatively well protected.

Galleron wrote:Glad to help, Mac. The last two pictures illustrate the "nose in the sallet" position so common in 15th c. art. Visibility is pretty good, and the face is relatively well protected.

It is. Couldn't tell if you were smiling or not!

Most of the glancing surfaces lead away from the face. Someone would have to pool cue you right between the eyes or hit you with a flat tragectory quarrel to strike home.

And if you think something is coming at you, you just nod!

Johann ColdIron wrote:

Galleron wrote:Glad to help, Mac. The last two pictures illustrate the "nose in the sallet" position so common in 15th c. art. Visibility is pretty good, and the face is relatively well protected.

It is. Couldn't tell if you were smiling or not!

Most of the glancing surfaces lead away from the face. Someone would have to pool cue you right between the eyes or hit you with a flat tragectory quarrel to strike home.

I was wearing Mac harness. Of course I was smiling!

This is amazing. Can you imagine walking on an SCA list field wearing something like this?

Steve

I don't know if I could take the chance of abusing it so much...