Dusting off the cobwebs

[Jeremy.G]

Hey Mac- Looking great. And helpful for me as I think about tackling faulds on my own project.

Question: "about" how much Frontplate/Backplate overlap do you aim for?

[Mac]

Some of you were probably wondering whether I was just going to leave the misaligned hems on the backplate.



I can't remember how they came to be this far off. It has something to do with one or another of the partial replacement of the backplate. Well... the first thing that had to happen was oppening the hem back up. This was done by heating about an inch of hem and driving a sharp chisel under it. That got repeated until the hem was open to a point a couple of inches past where the correction would have to begin



The black line shows about where the top of the hem is going to have to be. Note that it tapers off gracefully to nothing.



The non hemmed underlap will have to be lowered.



Here, on the inside, we can see where the hem will be moved.



Having turned the hem out along that new line, material must be removed. I started the line where the hem had been opened but was not otherwise altered. This let me run my pen along the turnout, using the inside edge of the backplate as a guide. There is not need to measure a thing like this.



I closed the hems back up with heat and small hammers. I used a slightly rounded one to get things started, and finished of with a square faced crosspeen.



Mac

[Mac]

Hey Mac- Looking great. And helpful for me as I think about tackling faulds on my own project.

Question: "about" how much Frontplate/Backplate overlap do you aim for?

For an armor with no hinges, I usually go for about 1 1/2" (38mm). This time, I have left more like 2" (50mm). I may yet trim some, but probably not much.



Mac

[Jeremy.G]

I've learned 1,000 things from this thread.
(and will probably learn 1,000 more when I re-read it...)

[Kristoffer]

The early pictures in this thread are gone, does anyone have them? I was going to save this thread to a pdf but unfortunately many pictures are missing..

[Tom B.]

The early pictures in this thread are gone, does anyone have them? I was going to save this thread to a pdf but unfortunately many pictures are missing..

Which pics seem to be missing for you?
I just flipped through a bunch of the early pages and all of the pics loaded for me.

[Kristoffer]

Ah, my bad. I was on my phone reading trough the thread again and it seems I just had some issues loading the pictures. Great, now I can start saving the thread to my computer!

[Tom B.]

Ah, my bad. I was on my phone reading trough the thread again and it seems I just had some issues loading the pictures. Great, now I can start saving the thread to my computer!

Your posted has prompted me to get back to updating my saves of the pics and posts myself. I am pretty sure that Mac has all of the photos hosted on his Picasa / Google+ account, not just for convenience but also to help ensure they are safe.

[Mac]

The pics are all on Picassa pages.

Mac

[Mac]

The entirety of yesterday was devoted to fitting. My Patron stopped by on his home, and tried stuff on, made alterations, and took notes and pics from 9:30 in the morning to 10:00 in the evening.

For the most part, things are going OK. The cuirasse is fitting well. The shoulders fit better since I opened them out a bit from front to back.

We had a bit of trouble with the vambraces not closing over the mail. I ended up making up a new test vambrace with a bit more taper, and attaching it to the upper cannon with a slightly longer leather. I'll get pictures of that up when I return my attention to them a bit later.

The mail breyette continued to be troublesome. In the last fitting, we set the waist band at the level of the tops of the hosen, and found that the "fall" was too long. I was all ready to shorten it by removing a couple of inches from the "isthmus of perineum", but thought the the result would alter the proportions of the garment too much from the real ones. What we decided instead was that it really needed to be worn at the high waist. This will mean two things. The one is that I now have to add to the "fall length" of the garment. I figure on adding 1" to the top of the back, 1" to the top of the front, and 1" to the isthmus. This will bring the proportions and lengths very much in line with the surviving ones. The other problem is the one which we discussed earlier: that of the arming points for the cuisses. For the moment, I thing we are going to figure on passing the points through the mail. This will be relatively easy to do before the front flap is secured.

The last difficulty comes from the mail sleeves. The elbow "pockets" are too low, and as a result, the elbows are too tight. I have a "cunning plan" to transplant that material to a new location, and I'll get pictures of that when I do it.

Today, though... I will try to just chill out.

Mac

[Ian BB]

Sometimes I envy your skill Mac, but I don't envy you that day.

[RandallMoffett]

You know just being around when you talk about this makes me envy your skill but the fact you are a true craftsman. You always push yourself and your art. Amazing. I am sure this is going to be truly awesome!

RPM

[Mac]

Thank you, Guys!

The important thing in a fitting is to stay focused and in the moment. You have to keep thinking clearly, making notes, and taking pictures. If you let your self lapse into all sorts of "woe is me!" when things don't fit, it's all over.

Mac

[Mac]

Having taken a couple of days to chill out and collect my thoughts, I am starting in with fixing the problem with the mail sleeves.

This is my notebook sketch of what I plan to do. It's basically an "elbow transplant".



The first step is to remove the elbow "wedge".



The resulting wedge is not so tidy and symmetrical as I hoped. In addition, it contains some sort of weave error that I am not patient enough to sort out....



I will just replace the thing with a piece cut from leftover fabric, and hope that's less trouble than fixing this one.

Mac

[Mac]

The next step was number 2 in the sketch. That was to close up the sleeve.



In step 3 a new slit is opened 10 columns higher.



The awl marks the location where the new wedge of mail was patched in. I ended up making a new piece out of an off-cut, rather than trying to regularize the old one.



The completed sleeve. I rotated the bulk of the elbow a bit more to the "back" than it had been. The result moves well and is pretty comfortable.



Today I will do the other sleeve to match.

Mac

[Mac]

The right sleeve went more smoothly than the left. This is the one I made up to be an exemplar, and the left is the one that the Indian mail makers sent back. I am pleased to see that when I remover my elbow gusset, it was nice ans symmetrical, with no weave errors. This is in sharp contrast to yesterday's experience. I was able to proceed without having to make a new gusset.



Here is a detail of how I use that awl to get the holes lined up so that the rivets go in better. It's made of some 1/8" W-1 drill rod, a scrap of ash from Galeron's tent frame and a bit of brass tube.



Everything all closed up and tidy again.



Mac

[Mac]

The vambraces have posed problems right from the beginning. Our statue is strangely unhelpful. The sculptor has shown us smooth, featureless forearms.



It is possible that the armor had no vambraces at all, and that between the big elbows and the long gauntlet cuffs there was thought to be enough protection. We didn't much like that idea, though. It's much more typical for Gothic armor to have some sort of vambraces.

If we look to a painting of St Vincent by Pacher, where the same artist has shown a very similar armor, we see vambraces.




Our decision was to give the armor vambraces even if our sculptor did not.

Gothic vambraces tend to be a breed apart. They have to work with the peculiarly tight wristed Gothic gauntlets. If they are to cover only the outside of the arm, they can be pretty normal in length, but this won't really do for closed vambraces. If a closed vambrace came as close to the wrist as one would expect, it would be too bulky for the gauntlet. The way to deal with this is to make the vambraces very short. This portrait of Maximilian I is a good example. There are surviving vambraces of this form in Vienna as well.



The other decision we had made which impinges on the vambraces is to have mail at the elbows. Again, our sculptor has not shown this, but it seems typical enough that we needed to have it. So... The vambraces have to be bid enough at the elbow to accomodate the mail, and short enough at the wrist to not foul the gauntlets. The result is pretty stubby little cones, but that's what we see on the Sigismund armor in Vienna, so we are on firm ground.

That brings us to the recent fitting. This was the first time we tried to get the vambraces to work with the mail sleeves, and there was trouble. The vambraces would not close enough. I had the idea to extend the elbow leather on one arm as a test, and that moved the vambrace down enough that it almost closed sufficiently, as well as freeing up a bit more elbow motion. The down side was that the wrist of the vambrace was too far down the arm. So I made up a new vambrace as a test.

I found the old templates and added a bit to all four edges. The amount tapered from 1/4" at the elbow end to 1/8" at the wrist end. I also shortened the length by a bit more than the amount I has lengthened the elbow leather. The resulting vambrace was significantly bigger than we needed, and that was good. By taping it together and marking the overlaps I saw how much could be trimmed back off. I removed the same amount from the new templates as well, to serve as a record. Since this all happened during the fitting, I did not have time to take nice pics of all the steps in the procedure.

Here is what the new vambrace looks like next to one of the old ones.



I seemed pretty good, but the curve of the inside of the elbow looked a bit low. I added a bit to a new template and cut out a new "door" for the test elbow while I cut out the parts for its mate.



The dorsal surfaces of the vambraces are slightly convex.



The ventral surfaces are slightly concave.



And, the medial and lateral surfaces are pretty much straight.



Here is where I have sketched in the hems, so that I can place the hinges.



I typically cut in with a jigsaw....



....notch across carefully with a Dremmel wheel....



....and then break out the chit with a pliers.



I reused the hinges from the old vambraces, and after a bit of fussing with files to clean up the notches, this is what they look like.



Reusing the old hinges is a mixed bag. On one hand, I did not have to make hinges. On the other, I had to make the holes in the plates match the holes that were already in the hinges. That's the hard way to make things line up. If I had made up fresh hinges, I would have made the holes in the plates first and marked through to the hinge.

This is my proposed decorative scheeme.



Note the little point I left on the elbow edge of the plate. This matches the one on the upper cannon, which our sculptor has shown us.



Mac

[Mac]

For comparison, here are some "Gothic shorty" vambraces from Goll's thesis pics.


This one in Munich hinges down the middle of the ventral surface. ref_arm_103


I can't tell if this one in the Met is closed or not. ref_arm_244



This one in St Petersburg has it's hinges midway between lateral and ventral. ref_arm_581



This one in Nuremberg has a narrow "door" with medial hinges and ventral buckles. ref_arm_686



Mac

[Mac]

So far as I can tell, the vambraces of the "Sigismund" armor are divided into a dorsal and ventral plate, of more or less equal size. I cold not find any better pics than this. To make matters worse, they seem most recently to be displayed back-to-front.



Mac

[Kristoffer]

Mac, check out Roel Renmans Flickr.

https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/roelipilami/2043873870/

There are a few different angles there if you browse around.

[Mac]

Mac, check out Roel Renmans Flickr.

https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/roelipilami/2043873870/

There are a few different angles there if you browse around.

Thanks!

Like I said... the vambraces are currently on dead backward.... and also the elbows are sort of.... sideways-ish... and probably swapped left for right as well. I wish the good folks in Vienna would mount this armor so that the parts all fit together.



This pic shows the cool movable gusset for the inside of the elbow. It's not doing a lot of good there in the back, but it is a nice view. I would guess that the vambraces are currently on the wrong arms. They close with spring pins, and those are usually on the lateral side.



Mac

[Tom B.]

Mac, check out Roel Renmans Flickr.


There are a few different angles there if you browse around.

Thanks!

Like I said... the vambraces are currently on dead backward.... and also the elbows are sort of.... sideways-ish... and probably swapped left for right as well. I wish the good folks in Vienna would mount this armor so that the parts all fit together.


This pic shows the cool movable gusset for the inside of the elbow. It's not doing a lot of good there in the back, but it is a nice view. I would guess that the vambraces are currently on the wrong arms. They close with spring pins, and those are usually on the lateral side.


Mac

Digging through all of the photos of A60 & A62 that I have collected it is easy to see that both of theses have been disassembled and reassembled over the last 15 years or so.
In different configurations each time. The upper cannons, lower cannons, and the couters all are currently or have been incorrectly displayed.


Here is a shot via Goll

[Mac]

Thanks, Tom! That's a nice one. I looked through all the Goll pics today and did not see that one. I swear there is stuff in there that's like Brigadoon.


Mac

[Mac]

Here are the lines that I will turn the hems on. Note the mark where the hem will end a bit shy on the open edge to allow a bit of adjustment.



While it's apart for hemming, will trim the overlap on the hinge side. There's no need for a half and inch of overlap. Trimming it not only saves weight, but it minimizes how much sticks inward when the vambrace is open and catches on the mail.



This is how much will get cut away so that the underlap ends flush with the hem.



I like to snip these carefully with a shear and then break out the chit. A few licks with a small round file will make a nice clean radius in the corner. It's important that there be no traces of overcuts at all. Overcuts can turn into cracks when you turn the hem, or perhaps later when you do the heat treating.



I made the hems at the wrists a good deal flatter than the ones at the elbows. The gauntlets have to go over them, and there is nothing to be gained by making them big.



The underlaps on the hinge side are nice and small, and their corners are all rounded so the mail does not catch.



The underlaps on the opening sides are still about 1/2" and the hem is cut back just a bit more than that.





Here are two possible decorative schemes. The black one has the same spacing as the flutes on the upper cannon lames. The red has a tighter spacing to allow for a third set.





Mac

[Kristoffer]

Is it possible the lower cannons would have been smooth, without fluting just like the lower legs often are?

[Mac]

It is certainly possible to have unfluted vambraces, but I think that is not the more common thing on an otherwise highly fluted armor.

To reiterate. The statue's forearms are smooth. There are no hems or plate overlap lines to indicate vambraces at all. The only forearm detail we have is about the gauntlet. The sculptor has shown us the edge of the leather gloves and the wrist straps of the gauntlets, but nothing of the vambraces.

If we are going to have vambraces, we have two choices. The first is to make them as featureless as we can so as to pay homage to the smoothness of the forearms on the statue. The second is to go "whole hog" and flute them up to match the rest of the armor.

Mac

[Signo]

Are you not worried that fluting will cause the diameter of the vambrace to increase in relation to gauntlet's cuffs?

[Mac]

The only place were I am worried about increasing the vambrace diameter is right at the wrist. That's where it makes the greatest difference. I made the wrist hems as small so as not to take up any more room than they have to .

The other thing about diameter and fluting is that only about half of the height of a flute is above the surface. It gets much of its visual "punch" from the adjacent metal having been pushed down.

Mac

[Kristoffer]

Since the gauntlets I've seen of the gothic style seem to only have a one part cuff and the vambraces are short to allow the gauntlet to sit close to the arm, is the inside of the wrist left exposed or was it covered by maille? If maille, wouldn't that require that cuff and vambraces is made larger to allow the maille to underlap?

[Mac]

My current best understanding is that they frequently (typically?) just accepted the idea of having an unarmored spot there. It they did have mail all the way to the wrists, it was finer mail than we can get our hand on these days, and it would have presented much less of a fitting problem.

We have to keep in mind that there were different ways to arm ones self. The statue shows mail in the armpits, but then nothing but big elbow shells and long gauntlet cuffs to guard the lower arms. That appears to be an authentic, if not typical, decision about protection.

Mac

[Kristoffer]

Interesting. When the gothic style dies out and the 16th century takes over, the gauntlets get a wrapping cuff but still leaves a big gap at the wrist. This gap then gets smaller and smaller as we go deeper into the 16th century until the gauntlets pretty much cover the whole hand with lames over the wrist all the way up to the palm and the metacarpal plates wrapping around the thumb. Something did happen that made them reconsider the exposed wrists during the first half of the 16th century. On the other hand, this is when they started covering every inch of the body in steel with fully enclosed arms, butt armour etc.

[Tom B.]

Many late 15th century German gauntlets also have the enclosed cuff, but leave the wrist open.

[Old Armourer]

If you look closely at this image by Durer, you can see that the knight is not wearing any lower canons with his vambraces. The sleeve of his puff-and-slash shirt can be seen sticking out from between the gauntlet cuff and the elbow cop (look also at the inside of the gauntlet on the right arm). Sorry I couldn't make this image any bigger; perhaps someone else can provide a larger image.

[Ernst]

Here you go:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _Devil.jpg

Durer couter.jpg (89.33 KiB) Viewed 460 times

Durer r-arm.jpg (99.35 KiB) Viewed 458 times

[Mac]

I've gotten the "go ahead" on the new fluting scheme, so that's what I'll be doing today. Pics to follow.

Mac