What should I do next with these spaulders?

[vw1262]

This is my first time making spaulders. I did some dishing and the pictures are what I have so far. I know I need to punch holes (should of done earlier) and rivet, but that comes last as I understand. My guess is I need to do some planishing? Also, my curves are exactly symmetrical. I'm kinda stuck on how to proceed, and feel like I need something like a ball stake to proceed. All I have right now is a dishing form carved into a wood stump, but it isn't very smooth.

[wcallen]

As usual, a lot will depend on what you are trying to achieve. Personally, for most styles of spaulder (there are exceptions) I would want more depth in the cop.
Look here for a later style -
https://www.european-armour.com/A-56.html
or even later:
https://www.european-armour.com/A-324.html

Yours will be different, but you can see that they are rounder in profile.
Once you have the depth you want, you need to even the pieces up. This can be done from the inside onto a flat or somewhat dished surface, or from the outside over a ball/dome/mushroom surface. A lot of people will end up collecting lots of different ball stakes, but if you get used to working from the inside you can do almost everything onto the face of an anvil - or even the surface of a stump. To do this you will likely want a hammer with a very broadly domed face. I re-grind the faces of cheap or used ball piens for that.
You can see some of my most basic hammers here. I mostly use the "flat" faces on the left two for inside work:
https://www.european-armour.com/Constru ... ammers.jpg

Wade

[wcallen]

And, a really silly question - where are you located? There might be someone near you who would be willing to give you a little bit of basic quality time. That can help a lot. I remember getting pieces to the stage you show and not understanding that it is just time to whack it some more.

Wade

[vw1262]

Hey Wade, I'm not completely sure how to curve the top of the spaulders to increase the depth(as you can see in the second photo). In what you described above, is that for getting the depth, or evening the pieces up?

I'm located in St. Louis. I tried doing a basic search for armorers, but I think they are a bit hard to find haha. Thanks for all the help!

[wcallen]

The primary difference between what I posted and what you have is the depth of the shape.
To keep it simple - you need to bash yours into the dish more.
I am assuming that you are not trying to make a very particular style of early 16th c. munition shoulder that could have a pretty flat shoulder cop.
When I am doing this I start from the outside and work my way in. The results look totally stupid and ruined when you are 1/2 way through, but you just have to keep going.
Once you have enough depth, you keep hitting until the shape is more even - working it on the flat surface of something pretty hard can help a lot with that.
Then you curl it up/twist/bend it do the right final shape.

St. Louis. Hmm. I know that there is a casual armorer not massively far from there, I think he is near Kansas City. No idea if he is doing much at the moment.
People are trying to get another big get-together going for later this year. I think it will be in California, but you would have access to lots of people who know things in one place.

Wade

[Sean M]

There is a deed-of-arms type event in the KC area (Tournament of the Swan / Cigne?) which should have plenty of armour wearers and probably one or two makers.

[wcallen]

If all goes well, I will be talking in St. Louis as part of this:
https://www.smrs-slu.org/
I will have some armor there too.
I am not specifically talking about how to make armor, but I am talking about armor and letting attendees play with pieces.

Wade

[Kindyr]

Wade, thank you for sharing. I only live an hour and a half north of there and wasn't aware of it. I may have to rearrange my schedule to see if I could attend.

I have a wide assortment of tools, but unfortunately haven't been getting down to St. Louis as regularly as I did a few years back. What is the final use case for these spaulders? what you can do to get more shape may be driven by if you can use more doming(and thin the piece) or need to work it more in a raising style to keep thickness.

[RWWT]

My two cents, for what it's worth (me being pretty inexperienced).

1. What Wade said.

2. Elaborating on one of Wade's suggestions: Definitely play with working on the inside. Once I learned what was possible with this, I rarely to never dish anything anymore. I feel I have a lot more control and get great results with various roundnesses of hammers and a nice clean, flat surface. Any reasonably thick slab of metal will do, so long as it has a smooth surface. When I didn't have an anvil and needed something relatively cheap, I used a jeweler's block.

3. To that end, I might suggest applying a small amount of inside hammering to the lames also. Not much. Just enough nudge it from the flat bend around a pipe look and give it a little life. This very subtle shape does a whole lot beyond just looking better.

Here's a video of Jeff Wasson demonstrating how he forms lames. It's a good illustration of what I'm thinking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgzQiO9liNw&t=22s