The Armour Archive

The first step was to lay out the flutes on the other vambrace. I used a ruler to set out some important points....



...and then sketched the flutes in. Note the ever-present acetone and Q-tips. I think that I probably spent more time planning the flutes than actually laying them in.



I used the small face of the larger hammer and the large face of the smaller hammer.



And this stake.



The curvature is just about ideal.



The blur in the middle of the pic is the hammer.



Note how I keep my left hand in contact with the stake. This helps a lot.



The space between the pairs of flutes has a sort of a bulge.



Since I want the overall shape of the ventral plate to be concave, I will drive that down a bit with a small hammer.




This will help the overall flow of the plate. There are still some places that will need to be touched up here, but that will happen later.


I like to flute one plate at a time. Here you can see how much the plate has spread in the process.



It's surprising how much stiffer the plate is after fluting, but a bit of coaxing with a mallet brings things back to where they should be. This is practically the only thing I ever use a leather mallet for.



The dorsal plates spread even more because they have more fluting and only one hem.



A couple of minutes with the mallet, and they match up again.



Like I said above, there are some dents and dings that need to be picked out individually. This may take another hour or so.

Mac

Very nice! I need to make a stake and start practicing!

Sevastian wrote:Very nice!

Thank you, Sevastian!

Sevastian wrote:I need to make a stake and start practicing!

There's nothing to it, but to do it. Old jackhammer bits make nice stakes. They can be found cheap at flea markets, and the shoulder makes them good for chucking in a vise. You don't even have to heat treat them. Just forge 'em, grind 'em, and use 'em. They're hard enough like that for all normal purposes.

Mac

Wow. So you don't even set the flutes with a chisel you just start going to town on it right away on the stake?

Also, after the "spread" of the vambrace occurs after the fluting you used the term "coaxing with a mallet" what specifically are you doing to the piece back to normal?

I think that I probably spent more time planning the flutes than actually laying them in.

Which is why they usually didn't. But do I just wing it? Oh, no. After all, my mighty mentor Lorenz Helmschmid planned all of his. Actually I just don't have the guts to just let fly.

ManOnFire68 wrote:Wow. So you don't even set the flutes with a chisel you just start going to town on it right away on the stake?

That's correct. Everything happens from the outside. It's fast and convenient. You don't have to transfer your guide lines to the inside. You don't have to deal with the constantly changing surface of a lead block. Best of all, my flutes look like antique flutes and my tool marks look like theirs as well. Those two last things tell me that I am doing it the right way.

Mac

ManOnFire68 wrote:Also, after the "spread" of the vambrace occurs after the fluting you used the term "coaxing with a mallet" what specifically are you doing to the piece back to normal?

There's no trick at all here. A lot of the correction happens by hand. I just lay it over the horn of a bicorn and press the sides down. The edges put up too much of a fight to coerce them back into shape manually, so I knock them down with a leather mallet. It's a lot like the sort of shaping one might give a plate in the first place, except that it's more inclined to behave its self than a fresh piece of steel.

Next time I do it I'll try to remember to get pics.

Mac

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:

I think that I probably spent more time planning the flutes than actually laying them in.

Which is why they usually didn't. But do I just wing it? Oh, no. After all, my mighty mentor Lorenz Helmschmid planned all of his. Actually I just don't have the guts to just let fly.

Kaiserburg, _c25bd1c42d_b.crp.jpg

I think the tail plate has a bit of a twist in it which is making the spray look worse than it used to. But, yea..... Some of those old boys did not worry about their fluting as much as we do. If it's all the same, I will not try to emulate that.

Mac

It's surprising how much stiffer the plate is after fluting, but a bit of coaxing with a mallet brings things back to where they should be. This is practically the only thing I ever use a leather mallet for.

If memory serves, the other time Mac uses a leather mallet is when he's making brass trim lay down around the edge of a helm, because if one uses a metal hammer, you thin the brass, making it longer, which makes it stand up worse.

Did I remember correctly, Mac? Do you have a third use for the ole leather mallet?

Dave

Dave,

When I wrote that I was not really thinking so much about how I do use a leather mallet as how I don't use one. I never use it for dishing. Note, the use of the absolute. That's pretty rare for me. Now, strictly speaking, I can't think of any reason that one should not use one that way. I just think that there are better ways to dish and I use those instead.

Yes. I use leather mallets for setting down brass trim. Any soft hammer will work for this. You could use plastic, rubber, or lead. I would not go with brass, or even copper, though. They are probably too hard. It's one of those operations that one would like to do with his thumbs alone, but they are not strong enough, so you have to use a mallet. It's almost like the rule is to bring out the mallet when you fingers are not strong enough to do the job.

If there is a "third use" for the mallet, I can't think of it right now.

Mac

The left hand on the stake helps in a lot of cases. A long time ago someone mentioned using a laser pointer hung from the ceiling to mark the stake location. I'd forgotten about that idea till now and may actually remember to try it out.

I have a word document into which I paste valuable tidbits from the archive. How should greaves fit around the ankle? What amount of droop is appropriate in the bottom of a breastplate through the ages and places? It all goes into that document.

I had to start a new, separate one. One to put all the good stuff in this thread. I just filled up page #798. Just shy of 42,000 words.

I reckon that by the end, this beast may be 2,000 pages long. Every bit of it is gold.

Mac, I was at least a little bit jesting about the mallet thing. I wasn't trying to prod.

I've started my collection of Mac's sketches. Every time this man draws something and posts it on the archive I learn something. Full credit to the illustrator of course.

I am not an armorer.
I do not wear armor. (I have, however, been known to politely leer at those who do...)

Even with that, I have been avidly following this thread, because it shows masters of the craft at work, and their creative and troubleshooting processes, which I find fascinating.

There's nothing quite like a polite leer, ma'am. I once worked on a 'Maximilian' backplate that had lines for steps chiseled very shallowly into them. The reason they were not obliterated is that, apparently, there was a design change that made the steps around the armholes to produce the usual recessed channel effect undesirable, so the steps were never forged. That shows that at least one cuirass maker had someone do that so that the stake would find the correct spot most easily and he could proceed with the greatest speed -another of those things that one can do if you have several people in the shop, not just one man. If you are by yourself, well, sometimes if I'm out of practice I will chisel a couple of lines long enough that the stake can find them so I start out in the right place without having to diddle around getting started, but doing the whole line wouldn't work anyway because one needs to know what it will look like on the outside, not the inside. The thing that drives me mad is that I took all sorts of photos of that cuirass, but not one of the interior surface to show those lines, which may be a unique survival.

Mac wrote:

ManOnFire68 wrote:Wow. So you don't even set the flutes with a chisel you just start going to town on it right away on the stake?

That's correct. Everything happens from the outside. It's fast and convenient. You don't have to transfer your guide lines to the inside. You don't have to deal with the constantly changing surface of a lead block. Best of all, my flutes look like antique flutes and my tool marks look like theirs as well. Those two last things tell me that I am doing it the right way.

Mac

What Mac may have glossed over is I think the fingers of his left hand are extended and his finger-tips are on the stake. That lets him feel the plate position relative to the stake. He doesn't need to mark the back and work on the side he can see because he has tactile feedback on position instead.

...at least that's what I remember him doing. and I shouldn't put words in his mouth.

Sean

Hmm. I'll have to try it that way next time I pick up a hammer. I've always drawn on the inside, started them on the inside with a round chisel and then switched to the outside and re-drew the lines on the outside where the chisel marked and then I would just work them by eye. It was always very hard to correct myself if I got off track.

I'm back from visiting the In-laws in Brevard NC. The next thing on the agenda will be the gauntlet fingers.

Mac

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:There's nothing quite like a polite leer, ma'am. I once worked on a 'Maximilian' backplate that had lines for steps chiseled very shallowly into them. The reason they were not obliterated is that, apparently, there was a design change that made the steps around the armholes to produce the usual recessed channel effect undesirable, so the steps were never forged. That shows that at least one cuirass maker had someone do that so that the stake would find the correct spot most easily and he could proceed with the greatest speed -another of those things that one can do if you have several people in the shop, not just one man. If you are by yourself, well, sometimes if I'm out of practice I will chisel a couple of lines long enough that the stake can find them so I start out in the right place without having to diddle around getting started, but doing the whole line wouldn't work anyway because one needs to know what it will look like on the outside, not the inside. The thing that drives me mad is that I took all sorts of photos of that cuirass, but not one of the interior surface to show those lines, which may be a unique survival.

James,

Can you be sure that he did not just knock the steps down flat again to make the recessed border? That would leave the tool marks on the underside, even though the flutes were gone.

Mac

I have several items which have lines on the inside from (I have assumed) people banging details they didn't like out. I have a Max breastplate that was "updated" in various ways including mashing the flutes in, and a burgonet that has lost its recessed bands on the side and a burgonet that has lost its (likely) raised bands around the creases. It does seem to have been a "thing" to "update" armour by getting rid of decorative details that didn't fit with the current fashion.

Wade

The backplate looked a little unusual (but by no means unique) in that it just went straight into the rolled edges around the arm openings without the recessed border which one usually sees in most 16th c. armour. It was obvious that there had never been a step. The flutes went very close to the rolled edge. There was an inscription and I think it was decided the recessed border would crowd the inscription and the flutes.

There are going to be a total of 18 knuckles; two on each finger and one on each thumb. It will be worth while to spend some time coming up with a process that will produce them easily and with all the points looking the same.

Here is my first guess for the starting piece for the proximal knuckle of the first finger.



I start with the largest depression in my dapping block.



My dapping set does not have a large enough punch, so I am using one I made years ago for another project. I did not have a lathe at the time, so this punch is ground by hand. It's not really round, but it's close enough.



Moving to the second depression lets me use one of the punches that came with the set.



This is actually my second attempt. I stopped at the second depression for the first one, but decided that I really needed the knuckles to be deeper. Depression number three seems about right.



Having gotten it all nice and round, I will now hammer it into a sort of cone, beginning on the anvil horn.



The hammer in the background has a slightly rounded face, and I will use it for the rest of the shaping work on the points. The black dot marks where the center should be.



Here, I am doing the same thing over a pointier horn.



When the point is done, I shape the sides back down like a miniature elbow cop.



The one on the left is my second attempt. It's a bit taller than the one on the right, and that's better.



For attempt number three, I made a tool to let me make a more acute point. This is probably what I will settle with.





Mac

Is it only the fingers that need finishing?

If you've time, could you give us a tour of the rest of the gauntlets?

The rest of gauntlets are well along. I will try to fit them into the thread... perhaps later today.

Mac

I have cropped out all the best views of the gauntlets from my pics.

A couple of things become apparent. The first is that the fingers are really dominated visually by the knuckle plates. Not only are there two knuckles per finger, but they are quite large. In addition, the sculptor has shown the knuckles and finger plates as being rather deep. This is at odds with what we see in the surviving gothic gauntlets, where the emphasis is on slender looking fingers. If I make the fingers as deep as they are on the statue, they would be pretty suitable for use in one of the modern armored combat forms, but at the cost of flexibility and comfort. Over all, I am going to try to split the difference between these two ideas, but lean more toward our sculpture.






For comparison, see Goll's numbers 1049, 1071, 1323, 1325, 1326, and 4904. I will come back and link in some pics of those later.

Mac

Does this mean you're going to gild the gadlings?

Also, strange thing I noticed: the hinge linking the thumb to the metacarpal has four rivets, which is quite unusual, eh? How did you treat the ones you made?

I have taken the finger end of one of the gauntlets into pieces to show something of its construction. The finger leathers here are temporary ones. They are serving two functions. The first is a way to mark the knuckle locations. The second is for temporary assembly. The cardboard template is my standard finger-taper gauge.



The important thing about knuckle plates is that they are not all the same proportion. Their widths (from side to side) depend on the width of the finger, and their lengths (from proximal to distal) depend on the overall length of the finger. I have made a sketch of where each knuckle should be and how much space it should occupy over a tracing of my Patron's hand. Next to each knuckle I have a note about the size of the starting piece. The "length" is taken from the sketch. The "width" is measured from the finger leather. In this case, it is the width of the leather at the knuckle plus 1/16".



I am making the knuckles one pair at a time so they will be more or less identical within the pair. The steel is .035", and I am using my big shear to cut the pieces out.



The first dapping.



These knuckles are "longer" than my test knuckles yesterday, (7/8" vs. 3/4") so I have stopped at the second depression of the dapping block.



The back raising of the point begins with the knocking down of the cardinal points....



...and then, everything in between.



The one on the right has been sharpened up on the "swoop stake".



Here we see what they look like before and after knocking the sides down.



The proportion and shape look OK. The edges will be ground a bit to true them up, but not till later.



This is where I was when I packed it in last night. Each pair was made as a pair, and then evaluated for proportion and fit. So far, everything worked OK. If I found that I did not like the proportion of a pair, they would either be moved to a different location, or just scrapped. The smaller knuckles used the third depression on the dapping block. The thumbs were trouble, and I will describe that later....



Mac

Aussie Yeoman wrote:Does this mean you're going to gild the gadlings?

We are still discussing the gilding scheme. My Patron thinks the statue has too much gold for his portrayal, so we will be toning it down some.

Aussie Yeoman wrote:Also, strange thing I noticed: the hinge linking the thumb to the metacarpal has four rivets, which is quite unusual, eh? How did you treat the ones you made?

That's a trouble spot. Our sculptor has very clearly shown a "four point" hinge, but I know of none like that in the extant material. The mechanical beauty of the "two point" hinge is that it allows greater range of motion to the thumb. I spent some time sketching different hinge interpretations before deciding to go with what is normal.



Mac

Strange. How about a five rivet hinge with faux rivets?

The one I drew on the big sketches has six rivets, three of which are faux. In the end, I thought it best to presume that the sculptor was mistaken, and just do the normal thing. The benefits of doing the tried and true hinge outweigh those of artistic fidelity.

Mac

Ah, yes, my suggestion is five rivets on each side of the hinge, four like on the statue, faux, and one in the middle that does all the job. Perhaps the four corner ones should be smaller then the middle. This might be too "artsy" for you perhaps. I would do it as a compromize between the common way and the statue.

Edit: I now see that you have just that sketched between the two gauntlet drawings and already been down that thought trail.

How much overlap between the gauntlet cuff and the lower cannon is planned?
I would be curious to see the lower cannon's location in your gauntlet sketches, the ones over the tracing of your patrons arm.

This piece in Berlin has a very similar hinge. The Max finger lames tend to cast a shadow on it, but the St. Florian statue backs up the hinge. The apparent hole between the rivets appears to be part of the decorative design, best I can make out from my large photos. I haven't looked in Goll yet.

Quite right, James.


As it's currently assembled, there are two rivets in the upper leaf and one in the lower. The hinge seems to be mounted a bit far back, though: the line of the crotch of the thumb is not as smooth as one would expect. This poor gauntlet has has a tough life.



Mac