Shoulder armor recommendations?

[Tancred of Messina]

Esteemed comrades,

Would love to hear your recommendations. I'm putting together a lamellar vest/torso armor and am wondering what the best approach to shoulder cover would be. It will be worn over a gambeson or McDavid hexpad shirt. I'm wondering, however, if I want to leave the upper part of my sword arm largely unarmored.
Options are:

1) Lighten the rig and use a single Wisby style shoulder piece like those sold by White Mountain or Winter Tree

2) Go for a more coverage and opt for a multi-lame full spaulder

many thanks for input,

Tancred of Messina
Kingdom of Atlantia

[ThriftyKnight]

The following suggestions are not 100% historically accurate but look kick-ass and are easy to put together with little effort.

First of all i'll be lazy and quote myself, from another thread:

Just a plain shoulder cop with some reinforced leather arms and no lames can look very nice on their own. Have a look at this video...plenty of inspiration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0Ou8A7OR4&feature=related

And then there's the two shoulder variants in the bottom right corner of this picture here: http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee11/fryeguy_2007/byzantinelegarmour.jpg

Also works very nicely with scale:

http://www.stahlgilde.info/Bilder/Plattenrustungen/Plattenschultern/P0322/P0322/P0322p1.jpg

[Niall Mor]

Make a shoulder strap of narrow leather to hold up the suit. Then make a row of lamellar plates and attach it to the strap. The row o plates should meet up with the plates on the cheat and the back.

[Tancred of Messina]

Niall,

That was my plan all along. I bought extra plates with the intention of covering the shoulder straps. I'm mostly trying to figure out the best coverage for the shoulder point and upper arm. So many choices...

Tancred

[Niall Mor]

I covered mine up to the shoulder point with nothing on the upper arm. But I personally dislike armor on my biceps. Anotheroptionive seen is small shoulder copsxonnwctes to the lamellar shoulders to cover the shoulder point and top of the upper arm.