gst126055 wrote:The armor is made of the traditional larger Hon Kozane, and is formed with the shiki into a C shaped form around the body. The Kozane themselves are the larger variety using larger laces. The C box is 3 sided with Kusazuri on each panel. The 4th panel side is the Waidate and it depends on the shape of the wearer as to the final shape of the actual plate. There is an additional hanging plate on the back which holds the Agemaki bow that the sode lace to.
So far, so good.
The traditional Hon Kozane is a larger scale than the latter periods, but approximately HOW large was it and what was the approximate dehaba? Did the scale size depend from armorer to armorer? At this time were they doing a mixture of leather and metal scale to make the boards?
Did you see this PDF in the armour manual?
http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/gra ... ozaneS.PDFThat's essentially the Readers' Digest answer. I have seen one ô-yoroi (well, parts) with *larger* kozane, but #8 is the largest kozane of a surviving armour.
The dehaba is a smidge under half that width, and thus the lacing tends to be REALLY wide.
The width didn't vary so much by armourer as it did over time. Early = wide, later = narrow. And, yes, they were mixing scales for extra strength "where it counted".
The Kusazuri is it still made of the 5 panels and just the 5th panel is split or is it the 4th and 5th? I think I have seen both variations. With the kusazuri, the sides seem to be suspended by leather, is there not a suspensory lacing like in latter armors? Is the leather supposed to be a patterned Egawa
It's only the bottom lame. Actually, many of the earlier ô-yoroi were four lame kusazuri front and back, so you have a choice as to how you do it.
The side kusazuri are both supported by printed leather panels (the komoretsuke) -- not lacing.
The Egawa, sometimes I see it in a patterned state, or sometimes I see a depiction of a scene on some of these. Are they both considered the norm?
Fashions changed over time. You might want to see the thread on egawa on the Tosando board.
And the sendan-no-ita and the Kyubi-no-ita do they eventually get phased out due to the gyoyo? And at what point in history do you see a phase out of one to the other?
Not for yoroi. Gyoyo started as shoulder armour on haramaki, and when sode started being attached, they dropped forward. Gyoyo are irrelevant in discussions on ô-yoroi.
The o-yoroi length...does it stop at the natural waist? or does it go all the way down to basically the butt area since it's meant for horse back. And is the lacing on the O-yoroi all the same colour or was there multi-colored lacing like in a lot of the latter examples? Is the colour palate still the same with white,red,yellow,orange,black,blue,green? What about the patterns on the sode? Do they originate around this time, or is that an anachronism?
This should answer a few of those questions:
The oldest extant ô-yoroi (which is only bits at this stage) is actually an omodaka-odoshi yoroi, so funky lacing patterns are really ancient.
Have you seen
this page? These are all ô-yoroi lacing patterns.
Effingham
