The Armour Archive

Im wanting to start to make armor and I just got some money for my B( http://www.artisanideas.com/product.jhtm?id=490&cid= ) or should I buy a few tools to start with and learn from internet sources? I was looking at a mushroom stake on http://www.ironmongerarmory.com/index.php but thats all i would be able to get with the 50 i got, any advice or places i can get the tools i cant make it would be much aprritiated.

For that price I think your money would be better spent on this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Mediev ... 1581600984

Welcome Dragonhelm,

Perhaps you can visit your local welding shop.
They will have some scrap metal that tools can be made from.
Pipes to hammer over, thick metal to hammer on.
Maybe an old trailer hitch ball welded to a piece of pipe or something.

Check out junk stores or flea markets for used ball peen hammers.
Best of luck on your quest.

Hal

Welcome and well come to the Archive, Dragonhelm. May your stay with us be long and profit you greatly -- and I think it will.

Peter Fuller is darn good and highly respected, but I think you'll get more initial bang for your armor-buildin' buck, and at about the same price too, getting yourself a copy of Brian Price's Techniques Of Medieval Armour Reproduction: the Fourteenth Century. (ISBN 1-58160-098-4) (As Thomas said.) It's not a biology text and cannot be mistaken for the Kama Sutra. That reads more like stereo instructions than pornography anyway. Try Amazon, AbeBooks, Half Price Books, and eBay. It's not just about making helmets, but about everything, head to foot, with chapters on method, design, equipping a metalworking shop, even mail and designs for fourteenth-century arming coats, which were an essential component of these early-mid suits of armor.

Get the Fuller later.

Meantime, have a look at the how-to articles on this site and take notes for questions. Search the site on terms and many of your questions will surely be answered.

One thing we should ask is how much of a shop do you presently have access to? One kid recently answered that question with, "A Dremel." Well, only direction he can go is up, so it's not all bad. Armourers tend to collect hammers. Starting off with one big hammer and one small one is good. The small one should be a ball pein, 16 to 24 ounces. The big one is for dishing and serious metal moving.

Other things to get: every shape and size of file, at least the smallish and middle sizes. Big ones, if and when. Some means of cutting sheet metal; cheapest one is a good saber saw and a fistful of blades and a few wood blades too for making wooden stuff with -- handles, shields, and a few clever gizmos. Some means of making holes; an electric drill or a sheet-metal punch, which is more expensive but makes finished holes in seconds, not a minute per hole. Something to dish into, which could be anything from a bare patch in the ground to a tight-packed sandbag to a hefty wooden stump. Clamps: assorted C clamps and every size and type of Vise-Grip locking pliers. You'll have use for every one of 'em. You can buy or make stakes to form things over.

You don't really need an anvil. But if there's one already around... Your profile says your occupation is blacksmith, so there should be very darn few tools you CAN'T make. You're better fixed for toolmaking and hotwork than 95% of the posters here.

Armourers collect even more assorted stakes to stick in a heavy stump or whatever (many ingenious whatevers, too) than they do hammers. An anvil's hardie hole is a pretty good holder for armoring stakes.

Eventually, the serious armourer finds himself learning to weld. Community colleges have courses on the valuable skill of how to weld without blowing your shop up, getting thoroughly electrocuted, or setting things on fire that aren't supposed to be on fire. Dealing with hot stuff is like that...

"I'm wanting to start to make armor and . . ." is quite the FAQ -- and it's also like saying "How do I make an airplane?" without further specifying whether you want a Piper Cub, a Sopwith Camel, or an SR-71. Armor went through many periods and lengthy evolution, and even nowadays, one must look at what one is using it for: LARP gaming? Society for Creative Anachronism? Living History reenactments? All these have their particular demands and their specific threat environments, and we get EVERYBODY here, so we always have to sort out just which we're talking to in order to give good advice and suggestions. Don't be afraid to pester us with questions; we're here to be bothered and we like to talk, or we wouldn't post here at all. Personally, I have to ask the dumb questions before I know enough to try the smart ones, but with reading, particularly on this site, YMMV.

There are Society for Creative Anachronists who homemake armor, and if there's one handy, he may be able to mentor you. Not absolutely necessary, but it sure speeds the learning along. You're in Iowa -- somewhere. As long as it's not Scott County, which is in the Kingdom of the Middle, you're in the Kingdom of Calontir.

Find whoever's nearest you on Calontir's Map. Last Midrealm boy we had who was looking to start was tucked well down into Kansas' southwestern corner, and could have played with Kingdom of Ansteorra every bit as easily as with the Calontiri.

get yourself a 'TOMAR' if you can as reccomended above, then look for tools you can make like a dishing stump, lookout for second hand hammers at garage sales after finding out what each type is for, if you look for tools without hurrying you can find some real bargains.
read the book, get some scrap bits of metal and see what you can learn with a hammer or two and the stump.

edited to add:
took too long typing this and stopped in the middle for food, all of the above is good advice from people who know a lot more than me

I also recommend T.O.M.A.R. as a self taught armorer it answered a lot of those head scratching questions.

Hammers and anvils and stakes are all good, but you also need to have a way of cutting metal.

Cheapest to most expensive, in terms of cutting equipment:
You can do this with a hammer and a chisel, old-school. You can also get super hardy snips from the hardware store, they work in a pinch. Jigsaws work as well; the pro's tend to use a Beverly Shear.

-D

Thank you for such a lavish welcome. I curently have axcess to a small balcksmiths shop, bout 10 hammers is all i have, but most are ball peens. I have a coal forge, that would of coarse be my heat sourse, as for cuting i have many difrent sheres and snips(would like a bansaw but i aint that rich) I can also get a stump for dishing. that is really all i got that would help in armour making. And thank you for all the help. im planing on geting that book, it seems like it would help alot.

sounds like you are better kitted out than most on here.
read all the bits on here you can whilst you get the book, then practice with what you have and by that time you will know more about what you need

Also download "Basic Armouring" from www.brighthelm.org
Its free. It almost does the "take hammer in right hand, hold metal with left hand" basic level. It assumes you want safe armour fast and don't have anyone at hand to ask questions.

and watch these videos by Eric Dube. currently 13 of them, and willl answer questions that would be difficult to explain in writing.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SgtViktor

There also a couple of other videos running around, but I don't have the link handy.


Kindyr

Dragonhelm wrote:Thank you for such a lavish welcome. I curently have axcess to a small balcksmiths shop, bout 10 hammers is all i have, but most are ball peens. I have a coal forge, that would of coarse be my heat sourse, as for cuting i have many difrent sheres and snips(would like a bansaw but i aint that rich) I can also get a stump for dishing. that is really all i got that would help in armour making. And thank you for all the help. im planing on geting that book, it seems like it would help alot.

Hello,

Glad to see you cam back for post #2. Lavish welcomes we can do but beware the political board and some-times the off-topic section. That's where we chain the manics who like to chew on newbies.

IMHO, Jig saws are better then band-saws for most applications but not all. So are power nibblers although they are more specialized. (can't exactly cut bar-stock with a nibbler)

But the biggest question is the one you are skirting around asking. "How do I build X?" where X is not typicly a beginner project. There is a different selection of tools needed for making say gauntlets with scale fingers then there is for making a breastplate or helm. There is a different set of tools and techniques for making a spangen of great-helm then for a welded bascinet or for raising a norman conical from a single piece.

The best way for us to keep giving you good advice is for you to ask specific questions. If you don't have a specific project in mind then I would recomend starting with a 14th C style spaulder follower by either a spangen helm or a great helm. If you do have a specific project in mind, get some good pictures of extant pieces from as many directions as possible. Examine them closely. Trace that portion of your body and then draw the armor at full scale (so you can take measurements from the picture) examine the picture to see if you have gotten the shape just right. THEN experiment in cardboard patern pieces (there are some good patterns in the archive but they should be used as juidelines only). Cutting and beating on steel is actually one of the last steps...

unless you just want to have fun by banging on metal and making stuff. A lot of my prijects start that way.

Sean

I can also recommend any of the DVD's or books on this site

http://talbotsfineaccessories.com/books/metalwork.html

Plus Talbot is a member here on the AA so if you have questions about any he can answer them

. . .then I would recommend starting with a 14th C style spaulder followed by either a spangen helm or a great helm.

I concur with Sean, though for accuracy's sake someone should remark that spaudlers/spaulders per se are fifteenth-century. Fourteenth century would be making an entire fourteenth century arm, with spaudleroid articulations attached permanently at its shoulder end. But these parts are made the same way in any century and present the same problems and solutions.

The spaudler(oid)s are an excellent training project that teaches all the basics of forming from sheet and finishing metal, along with two or more kinds of articulation upon rivets, particularly in the fifteenth century mode. By the sixteenth, spauds showed all three kinds of articulation: swiveling on rivets like a hinge or series of hinges, riveted to vertical leathers running down the middle of a series of lames, and sliding rivets, which in spauds usually get used on the rear margin of the plates to give slack and freedom to the shoulder's and arm's forward motion.

The fourteenth-century spaudleroids atop an arm armor's rerebrace were fundamentally simple and businesslike in appearance, horizontal or gently chevronned lames and quite a plain shoulder-cop. The fifteenth-century separate spaudler went pointier in the lames, or even multiply cusped along their lower edges, and either more or deeper lames, or both, reaching well down the upper arm at any rate for complete coverage no matter what. Plain & simple = 14th-c.; mildy fanciful & fancy edges w/cusps + general air of "because we can" = 15th.