The Armour Archive

So I was wondering, are there any armor supplier/decent armours out there that show well made construction and articulation that would be cheap and affordable?

It wouldn't have to be durable as it would be something to look at and learn from, something tangible that I can just look at, guide my learning experience persay?

In a word? No. You can get well made with historical articulation OR cheap and affordable, but not the two together. Well made armor by its very nature is going to be expensive as it will be custom made for a specific person as opposed to off-the-rack meant for a range of sizes; those tend to be cheaper, but of course, not as well made. It also depends on the piece.

A well made full harness is going to run in the thousands; even the cheaper, less historical guys can't or won't make a harness for much less. I guess you should ask yourself- how historically accurate are you interested in? The more accurate, the more costly- but it is also the only way to see how such articulation is supposed to work.

Learning by copying copies will always introduce a second set of errors. Whatever the first copier got wrong, you then get to start from there.

Mac is a big proponent of not copying modern work... he includes his pieces in there. I say the same. I have some "reasonable" copies of things, but there are always things aren't quite right...

One big issue is you can't tell what the copier knew he/she got wrong and didn't care, what he/she got right and what he/she didn't know that they got wrong when they made the copy.

And the people you might reasonably be able to copy from without a lot of built-in error aren't cheap.

There is real armour in Chicago. Maybe it would be possible to arrange a trip to play with a few things in the back room. Looking at stuff in the cases is also better than looking at (most) copies. If you were closer, I would let you look at my (antique) stuff.

Wade

The Detroit Institute of Art also has some nice pieces...

Scott

I have two fiberglass helms made off originals, I bought to study,
you might be interested in.

J. Hillard wrote:. . .show well made construction and articulation . . . affordable?

To get any sort of armor any how, you either spend quite a bit of money or you spend quite a bit of time. Buying or making. You know well which you can the better afford, and spending that large measure of time is the thing that will teach you things even the most careful look-see doesn't.

There is no royal road to learning articulation and getting it where you want it to be -- trying to do it is your best study method. No shortcuts either; just pace yourself and your enthusiasm so you don't do that young-kid thing and burn yourself out. That happens in your demographic, you know. It's just the matured sorts have become patient -- and counsel that difficult virtue.

The brief in-print explanation of putting articulation (or 'shell articulation,' as TOMAR puts it) is in the SCA's Known World Handbook: "Articulation Articulated." TOMAR goes into more detail and length, and may be some better about getting the rivet holes located well.

It seems that contrary to the usual SCA practice of articulating with 3/16" diameter rivets, that 1/8" rivets will do excellently and over the years, the rivets will be the sacrificial wear-point that breaks first, rather than have the heftier rivet beat up that whole corner of the articulated lame and pull the hole out of spec -- so, leave the rivets as the subassembly of limited (yet nonetheless lengthy) service life and preserve the larger components.

A good general plan for cops-and-lames articulation is to always dish not just the central cop but all the lames also. The lames don't need an awful lot of dishing (c. 1/4 to 3/8 inch at deepest part and 3/8" only for quite broad ones), but fit better to you with some. This tucks the edges of the lames down in closer to you so they don't stick out and snag anything so much, while allowing your joint to flex. They also more closely imitate the convex curvatures of your bone and muscle -- humans are convex curves of various depths all over; we are not as cylindrical as the Tin Woodsman of Oz.

Funny story time: Back in the 1970s, my friend (now Sir Bartholomew of Wolfetwain, Atenveldt) was making steel armour for sale. Some guys (6 or so) chipped in together and bought a pair of his full legs - which they took back to their area, pounded flat, and used to make paper patterns - which they then used to make their own copies of - in SUEDE!!

They were mightily pissed when the Aten marshalls wouldn't let them fight in purely decorative armour at the next event they showed up at!

Bart said that he was looking at these new guys walking around the list field, and their leather 'armor' looked REALLY familiar - and then he recognized the shape as being one of his patterns. He asked one of the fellows about it, and he spilled the beans.

Sasha_Khan wrote:Funny story time: Back in the 1970s, my friend (now Sir Bartholomew of Wolfetwain, Atenveldt) was making steel armour for sale. Some guys (6 or so) chipped in together and bought a pair of his full legs - which they took back to their area, pounded flat, and used to make paper patterns - which they then used to make their own copies of - in SUEDE!!

A furore plattnerorum liberá eos. (Free them from the fury of the plate-armourers).

If your looking to make SCA armour it can help to get your marshal card and talk with people at larger events.

Inspection at pennsic, estrella, or GWW is the easiest way to get a close up look at lots of armour really quick.
You can learn both what's out there, who made it, and how things hold up over time.
Often people are more than happy to talk about their equipment as long as your doing the job efficiently. being overly critical and slowing down the process when someone is sweating their ass off with a line or only a few minutes before a tourney or Battle is to be avoided.

There are a lot of budget equipment that's worth looking at simply to learn what to avoid.
Other pieces have good design points and should be looked at closer, particularly changes made to accommodate things like medical devices, glasses, or different body types.

Historical pieces are the best to study.

Unfortunately, for most people, looking at a lot of SCA armour (like at the war) really doesn't help you learn a lot about actual armour. You have a have a good background in real armour before you can easily pick out something that is showing you something "useful" and something that is just some odd idea from some lost armourer. There are a lot of odd ideas floating around out there.

Now, if you could sit back behind a sound proofed window with someone who knows what they are looking at... and had a nice bowl of popcorn, the show could be both entertaining and enlightening. But you wouldn't want to do that so that the owner of the armour could hear. That wouldn't do anything good for anyone's reputation.

Wade

Why do I say that?

Good example.

Here is a piece Aaron, Cad and I made with Paul's help back in the mid 80's.

It was pretty good.

http://www.allenantiques.com/R-14.html

I dragged it out at my study session last year and let people pick on it. I have grown over the years, and I know that there are many, many things wrong with it. Once I got them going, they really went to town. There wasn't much going for the thing, spent 30 minutes picking on it and complaining about all of the things that are wrong with it and we only stopped when the pizza showed up, I think we had gotten through most of the upper half, we hadn't gotten to the legs yet.

Wade

Sasha_Khan wrote:Funny story time: Back in the 1970s . . . Some guys (6 or so) chipped in together and bought a pair of his full legs - which they took back to their area, pounded flat, and used to make paper patterns - which they then used to make their own copies of - in SUEDE!!

Wonder what on Earth those guys thought they were accomplishing or getting that was better?

Even if you can't make it to a museum, there's a ton of high quality photos to look at now between what's in museum online catalogs and stuff like Goll's thesis. A lot of people have taken the time to upload those photos and organize them in places like Pinterest.

Relevant to your interests, J. Hillard: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=109938

And that Bondo 103: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=107185

Konstantin the Red wrote:

Sasha_Khan wrote:Funny story time: Back in the 1970s . . . Some guys (6 or so) chipped in together and bought a pair of his full legs - which they took back to their area, pounded flat, and used to make paper patterns - which they then used to make their own copies of - in SUEDE!!

Wonder what on Earth those guys thought they were accomplishing or getting that was better?

At the time, the guys from Outlands were all brand-spankin'-new, and they didn't know about the rules of the list and/or armour rules, yet - while the Atens were already well-established. IIRC, Bart said that the new guys showed up after a demo at a SF con.