The Armour Archive

Hello everyone!

Finally getting off my duff after a 14 year hiatus (wife, kids, full-time job side-tracked me). I trolled on here in the late 90's while in college and used the Thor guantlet pattern to make my first piece of armour. My father had access to get me any sheet metal I needed, so of course I made the first gauntlet out of 16ga Stainless (God knows what type), Stainless steel rivets, and strapped it with some deer leather that was lying around. Needless to say, it looked decent, but ended up in the junk pile. To top it off, the stainless was cut with the only thing I had available, a vice and a Milwaukee Sawzall... *SHUDDER* I got a little better and ended up making some aluminum cops, two mild steel franken-spangens, and at least help outfit three fighters.

So, I want to get back into armouring and do it right. The only limitation I have is space and noise (money isn't unlimited, but available). I have the corner of an attached garage with a nice bench and vise, and plenty of pegboard to hang stuff. My real limit is noise. I can drill, and do fairly loud stuff, but heavy metal to metal hammering just can't happen at night (when I have free time). I can get hammering time during the day, but it's limited to half-days every Friday (or every other sometimes). With that said, I think that I'm going to limit myself to making gauntlets. I'll also help outfit/rivet existing armour, but I want to limit myself (or specialize) making gauntlets. I have access to an electronic kiln, so I think I can get away with smaller tools if I'm sticking with 18 and higher gauges of metal.

My question is....

1) What would be the best shear? for cutting 18+ gauge metal? I can make space for a Beaverly or HF shear, but could I get away with something smaller? I can make room if the answer is a definitive yes for the shear, but it would be nice if there is a smaller alternative. This includes stainless up to 18 ga...

2) What would be the best option for doing hot work on small pieces? Is there some sort of small propane torch I can use to locally heat small pieces, or would I have to go with a mini-forge?

The rest of the armouring tools are not a problem. I can get custom hammers and stakes (Thank to my dad still working at the same machine shop), and I have most of the rest of the tools required.


I also want to thank everyone here at the Armour Archive. The topics, patterns, and advice is incredible! I'm probably the oldest and longest troll to ever reside on the AA, but no more!

Jason

Hey, welcome back to it!

You could probably get away with some Weiss snips for light gauge metal, but I'd want a throatless shear for cutting anything out of stainless. Benefit of the shear, besides it's all-out usefulness, is that it's the quietest way to cut metal. If you don't want to sacrifice a corner of your work table for the shear, you can either give it it's own dedicated stand, or just clamp it to the table when you need it, and stash it on a shelf when you don't.

Hot work on small pieces in the gauges you're talking about could be done with something as small and inexpensive as a Mapp gas torch, doubly so if you grab a firebrick or two to corral the heat loss.

The shear really does not take up much space if you mount it to a base and can remove it form the vice/table when not in use.
Then handle comes off and the shear takes up less then a 10" cube under the bench or on a shelf.

Depending on your dads shop and the scrap bin there is a market for stakes and other tools.

For the money, and considering you're only doing gauntlets to start, the Harbor Freight B1 ripoff is the way to go for cutting metal. It'll do up to 14g in a pinch, so you could even get into spangenhelms or weld-ups that have a lifespan.

If you can get stakes and hammers made up, skip straight to hot work. Hot work is a lot less noisy than cold work. I can usually raise without the mouse ears on (though I don't, as a rule).

Get or make yourself a proper stake plate. Then weld yourself up a rack for in back of your work area (forget the pegboard, it's flammable and can't handle the weight). Connect the throatless shear, the large punches, basically anything that needs to be secured, to a stake bottom, and hang them up on that rack when not in use.
If you have 7-8' of headroom, there's quite a lot you can do with a corner. Use all your space wisely.

Make sure the things you use 80% of the time are all within easy reach without having to bend over or get stools.

If you use something more than once every session consider dedicating its own space as opposed to having it swap out. Tool changes can take up a lot of time. If you have 30 minutes to make noise, make sure you're not spending 5 of them changing a whitney punch.

Don't buy any crazy crap until you know it's what you need. If you see 5 other people here using it, it's probably a good bet. If you don't, then it might not be a good bet, and if you're limited on either space or money, you can't afford to bet like that.

Make constant war on the crap that collects in your workspace. If you haven't used it in the last six months, part with it.

Materials stowage elsewhere -- even unto building a little lean-to on the back of the garage if you can. Do you have visible joists in the ceiling? Lots of kinds of stock can stow up high. Visible studs in the garage wall? Same story, with more of equipment in there.

Your throatless shear could also live on a stand of its own, and you make the stand mobile, primarily by having the wheels arranged so you lean it to move it, and it stand solidly on the floor in using position. You might be able to stow the stand in under one end of your bench.

Specializing in gaunts is a fine idea; there are too few really good gauntlet makers out there and they command high prices consequently. But a man who does gauntlets for the SCA market and the ACL market will always find customers. There's more and wider competition in helms and helmets.

Soft-hammer/hard anvil cold metalwork isn't frightfully noisy -- no anvil ring, and a rawhide-face split-head hammer such as Garland Mfg.'s is by nature muffling. The sound is more twack twack twack than BING BING BING.

Other forming tools, for making larger-radius curves, are beefed-up sheet metal slappers to take 16 and 14 gauge steel, and you can cut these tools' curves with a saber saw and use a carpenters' rasp to sculpt the handle. These have a working face of leather, and may be used into something absorbent like a shotbag or stiffly filled sandbag.

Or you unload a couple hundred bucks on a Chinese-made 20t or 50t hydraulic press, rasp and anglegrind your own hardwood forms to put in it, and do by pressing what hammers do by hitting. Not so much tool and die as ball-ended cylindrical shapes to push dents into metal with, pressing into a dishing doughnut or such. You don't even have to plug these things in: all the power is in a lever arm and a hydraulic bottle jack. Small drill presses tend to be surprisingly quiet, running. Less noise and generally lower pitched noise than a 3/8" ordinary type power drill.

I want to get back into armouring and do it right.

Got your copy of Price's Techniques Of Medieval Armour Reproduction yet? Fourteenth century-centric, worth whatever you pay for it if you want to get serious.

Thanks for the tips guys!

I've sold myself on the shear. I'll take a look at the bolting patterns on them and see if it's something I can mount/unmount on the corner of my bench.

schreiber, I have pegboard on both walls of my corner, but I have room on the one side to wall mount stuff to about eye height. I'll use this space for the stakes and hammers. It's a perfect reach too. My dad and grandfather were pack-rats, so I went and married a good German woman and she's kept me organized and punctual ever since

Konstantin the Red, that's what I was thinking about with gauntlets too. Plus, for some reason, I enjoyed the smaller intricate pieces better.

Jason

Konstantin the Red wrote:Or you unload a couple hundred bucks on a Chinese-made 20t or 50t hydraulic press, rasp and anglegrind your own hardwood forms to put in it, and do by pressing what hammers do by hitting.

Well...... This is entirely valid and I don't want to sound like I'm discarding it, 'cause I'm not, because a lot - a LOT of armor has been made with presses... but this is kind of what I was talking about. My own early experience is that I got convinced that I needed a helve hammer. So I went and built one, and got it working, and used it precisely zero times in a productive manner. There was always something slightly off with it that made hand work superior. I eventually realized I was spending all my shop time screwing around tweaking that helve, when I COULD be picking up hammers and making armor.

Based on my experience, I do think that you need to get a lot of experience moving the metal in traditional ways, and learning what shapes you need to end up with, before moving on to nontraditional ways. I'm not saying you can't make it work... just saying what my experience was.

If you're really, really into it, eventually you're going to have to consider trying not to destroy your body, but if you're under 40 you should have plenty of productive years in your arm to decide how best to get into tooling.

Giles Rykeworth wrote:I have pegboard on both walls of my corner, but I have room on the one side to wall mount stuff to about eye height. I'll use this space for the stakes and hammers. It's a perfect reach too.

Oh, it'll get used. I have plenty of pegboard in my space.
I think my main problem is that I'm not in a sealed space - if you're in a garage, you aren't either. Depending on where you are in Meridies you could have humidity problems through the year.
If you get some of those nifty bins that attach to pegboard, and load them down with your rivets, then you're about three humid days from your pegboard getting destroyed.

I've often wondered if an English wheel might be used for making some of the compound curves we see in some pieces.
It'd be an interesting experiment to try.

I really think a few multipurpose tools are enough to get you started.
Its fairly easy to convince yourself you need X before doing a project.

Start swinging the hammer today and acquire tools as needed.
If you spend all your time and budget looking and modifying tools to perfection your going to lack skill development to actually get things worked on.

A notebook and pencil will let you track what you want, what you need, and what actually gets used.
A digital file for web content, pictures, and resources is also good insurance against hard drive crash or a web source loosing its content.
USB and SD cards are fairly cheap.
If your in a humid environment it may be worth wiping down your stakes and hammers with a protective oil or something. A few shops wipe down sheet metal to reduce rust on stock as well.
Covering tools with canvas is also a good idea if your grinding/sanding or filing.

As for mounting the throatless shear: I saw on line that person mounted it on a trailer hitch piece and put a receiver in his bench, took it out when it wasn't needed. This person also mounted other tools on removable pieces so his bench was free. I will be darned if I can find it now though!

Iain mac Gillean wrote:I've often wondered if an English wheel might be used for making some of the compound curves we see in some pieces.
It'd be an interesting experiment to try.

Apparently, this armourer makes extensive use of it, see the results for yourself.

schreiber wrote:

Konstantin the Red wrote:Or you unload a couple hundred bucks on a Chinese-made 20t or 50t hydraulic press, rasp and anglegrind your own hardwood forms to put in it, and do by pressing what hammers do by hitting.

Well...... This is entirely valid and I don't want to sound like I'm discarding it . . .

Based on my experience, I do think that you need to get a lot of experience moving the metal in traditional ways, and learning what shapes you need to end up with, before moving on to nontraditional ways. I'm not saying you can't make it work... just saying what my experience was.

Wisdom there to be sure, Schreiber! Sounded like the OP already had a piece of that experience, too. His major concern was he didn't want to make a lot of noise, so silent techniques would catch his interest.

As Lostie says, keep a notebook, the Shop Dreams and Schemes Notebook -- taking notes like he said, noodling and sketching up stuff you'd like to do... refining the design of a movable bascinet bargrill visor you're just sure you can make into something artistic instead of utilitarian, or just one more Kendo mask. And still have it work and be legal.

No offense to our Kendo-American readers.

Iain mac Gillean wrote:I've often wondered if an English wheel might be used for making some of the compound curves we see in some pieces.
It'd be an interesting experiment to try.

We've mulled this over: consensus is an English wheel that bends, say, 16ga stainless needs to be several times as strongly built as most wheels' frames are. A beyond-beefy frame with a quite small throat measurement. You might abandon the frame altogether and set up a column on the floor to take your die and a stantion above fixed to the structure of the entire house for the wheel. No constraint on the size of your blank then, and quite a bit of latitude on its thickness.

The regular run of wheels is for use on auto-body sheet, about 20 gauge and lighter, and corresponding aluminum pieces too.

There was even talk of trying to make power-driven wheels to take heavy armoring steel. Resorting to this doesn't appear necessary.