The Armour Archive

A while back I had a set of bazubands modified by Klang. I had him put in a metal elbow cop inside them for better protection of the outside elbow joint and I must say I quit please with the results. I've taken several hard hits along my lower sword arm and suffered no ill effects. The bazubands are still light and allow for a fast arm and at the same time they better protect the elbow. Here is a picture of mine at Pennsic 2005. I’m the one sitting down in the center…thats Dreadlord Nissain standing to my left for all you guys who are woundering what he looks like, seeing how he's declared war on all the known kingdoms.



While this was a quick fix job deal Klang and I made, I’m eventually going to get a set made where the leather covers the entire cop and I’m going to make the cop area round so I can have our dreaded household symbol (the eight arrows of chaos) tooled into that area. I think that will be a bad assed set of bazubands…(For me anyways)

Anyways my question to you armourers is have you ever considered modifying the bazubands to better cover the outside elbow like mine? Has anybody seem any historic examples that cover the elbow more than most currently made bazubands? And lastly do you think SCA fighters would go for a bazubands that is modified a bit to better protect the elbow?

This would be a kind of safety adaptation of an already great idea.

I would like your thoughts, along with you fighters on this.

Thanks in advance.

Good day,RoaK. I personally havent had any experience with bazubands, but I am very impressed with the solution you came up with in your picture. Not having dealt with these, but I would say you really dont want too much more material than is needed in that area. Would increasing the coverage be more cumbersome? i.e.- would it slow or get in the way of your freedom of movement? Just my thoughts. One more question- is that the Pennsylvania faire in Lancaster?

The mod does not effect freedom of movement or speed of your arm. As a matter of fact I think bazubands are the best type of arm armor if you ask me.

And yes that is in PA. However it is an SCA event and not a Ren-fair...