Egfroth scale armour staples?

Russ Mitchell · Post by **Russ Mitchell** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 5:49 pm

Besides their bare existence, have you determined how common this was, and/or what the type of wire in the staple was? I'm trying to determine whether to try wire-staple making, or whether to use some sort of small arming nail qua rivet, and I have about 1700 scales to bang on and make curvy...

Egfroth · Post by **Egfroth** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:07 am

I really don't know how common staples were, but I've seen them definitely in two bits of scale, possibly three, as shown on my site, to which I assume you're referring.

You might try the question on the Roman Army Talk forum; http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk

If you get a satisfactory answer, i wouldn't mind knowing myself as well.

------------------
Egfroth

"I hope all your chooks turn to Emus and kick your dunny down."

see my webpage at www.geocities.com/egfrothos

Cet · Post by **Cet** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:32 am

I can't speak to the commonality of staples vs nails but I did make a scale armour using hand cut staples. They were easy to make and have worked very well during 3yrs of use.

Russ Mitchell · Post by **Russ Mitchell** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:46 am

Cet: from what did you make the staples? I've contemplated using your el basic cheap iron brads, since at least one end would already be formed... this is a side project that I want to set up for down the road.. but since I"m doing massive learning curve on my other projects, I'd like to minimize it on this one...

Egfroth: What I'm curious about in particular, is whether you think it's a practice that survived into the early middle ages, rather than a purely ~"Roman" practice...

Cet · Post by **Cet** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 4:04 pm

I used mild steel wire for some test pieces and brass wire for the finished piece. I made the staples by cutting short lengths of 18ga wire, around 2" if I recall, held the pieces with a duck billed plier with jaws around 7/16' wide and bent up the excess on either side of the jaws by hand.

When I started some trial pieces I thought that I would want to use a very stiff strong wire for the staples but in practice softer wire worked better- ir was easier to do the initial assembly and field repairs can be done with minimal tools. It takes some serious abuse to get the soft staples to open up in use.

Egfroth · Post by **Egfroth** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 2:04 am

Russ, as far as I'm aware, the third sample of scale armour at http://www.geocities.com/egfroth1/ScaleArmour.html - the one from Zeugma, is from a Byzantine, not a classical Roman, context. Those connectors look very like staples to me.

------------------
Egfroth

"I hope all your chooks turn to Emus and kick your dunny down."

see my webpage at www.geocities.com/egfrothos

[This message has been edited by Egfroth (edited 01-15-2004).]

Russ Mitchell · Post by **Russ Mitchell** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 2:03 pm

Thanks, both of you.
Egfroth: any clue why those suckers are so incredibly thin? That looks like "cover your mistakes" armour, rather than "take it on the armor and hit back" armor...

Egfroth · Post by **Egfroth** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 3:10 am

Well, the only thing I cans say is that you actually have three layers of protection there - the backing (which looks like leather to me), and two layers of steel - the overlap is basically half the length of the scale, such that at any point there are two layers of metal to resist a blow.

My own lamellar is scarcely thicker than that, but I've found it surprisingly effective (again, two layers of metal at any point, but in this case there are TWO layers of leather, as well).

------------------
Egfroth

"I hope all your chooks turn to Emus and kick your dunny down."

see my webpage at www.geocities.com/egfrothos