Splinted vambrace, butted splints in a parallel expanding parallel pattern. Paper pattern so far, but seems to fit well and allow full range of motion while still offering good coverage.
Picture kinda sucks, but you can still see it.
I must have been at an angle when I snapped it. It looks rectangularish, when in fact it goes from 11.5" at the top edge to 17" at the line marking it's widest point.
I don't believe there is a historic example of using the two splint styles on a single vambrace., But I've seen both the parallel ones and expanding ones. So a combination of the two is fully within the realm of possibility.
The whole point of splinted armour in period was conservation of material. Just like with maille it could be done in a small one person set up with a minimum of tools. I'm sure many a blacksmith was asked to hot cut strips of metal to length. If it was not too thick, a stump and chisel would have sufficed. When designing armour ask who would have used it and what kind of tooling might they have had. I suspect many cottage smiths made creative use of very little tooling. That said, anyone who could afford complicated patterns might also have paid for steel vambraces. There is a reason why boiled leather pieces were made long after the transition period into plate. Money, always comes back to that. Wisby and Churburg are pretty but for SCA types boiled leather is cheap easy and can be done in our own cottage. It can also be painted, embossed and sealed w/wax and is very light weight. Went on longer than I meant to. Your pattern will work. It will work better the simpler you keep it. My four pence (adjusted for inflation)
Character, is what you do, when no one is looking.
The overall shape of the pattern looks good to me, but there is one thing that makes me wonder a bit.
Are just the narrow bands going to be splints, just the large bands or both?
Doing just the large or small should work just fine, but I suspect that if you do all them as splints your vambrace is going to want to curve along the butted edges and i could be wrong, but I think the curvature you'll get from that wont match up with the curvature you'll be getting from the shape of the backing material.
That said, I guess that if you had the splints alternating between internal and external it would partly negate that effect, and adding a bit of a twist to the splints where needed would probably solve the rest.
Going back over your post I think the perspective in the pic may have thrown me off a bit, are the narrow strips in the pic the same size at the top as at the bottom? If that the case I retract the top half of this post and everything looks pretty good to me. I do still think alternating the splints inside and out is a cool idea though. If on the other hand my eye isn't being fooled and the tops are wider than the bottoms then what I said above still applies.
The backing (leather?) material will match the full pattern we see, but the splints won't extend into that eye shaped bit at the bottom right? I'd expect that part to go into the couter, but if the splints do they'll be pretty bulky and redundant.
I'd give some thought to weight. What are your splints going to be made of? Mild or stainless steel splints of this width will have to be thicker (i.e. 14 gauge) to keep from bending in a stiff wind, and with no gap between them the vambrace is going to be quite heavy. This design as it is will probably work best in 1/8 inch aluminum or spring steel.
Lets see…
The thin plates are the same width at the top, bottom , and along their length.
Each section on the pattern is a steel plate. Most likely 16 gauge (will be looking at 18 gauge stainless). I plan on creasing each one down the center to add rigidity. Backing will be two leather straps, not a full material backing.
I think that answers questions and addresses concerns.
I appreciate the critique! Some questions can only be answered after it is made. But I want to avoid any obvious mistakes or stupid decisions if I can.
Get an old shirt. Wrap it in duct tape on your forearm. Draw the armor on the duct tape. then cut it off. You'll get an aysemetrical pattern that fits much better and you don't have to mess with trying to figure it out on a flat sheet of paper.
You'll have to alter the duct tape version a bit to transfer it onto paper so your vambrace has an overlap and stuff.
Mad Matt wrote:Since you're making a pattern. Start over.
Get an old shirt. Wrap it in duct tape on your forearm. Draw the armor on the duct tape. then cut it off. You'll get an aysemetrical pattern that fits much better and you don't have to mess with trying to figure it out on a flat sheet of paper.
You'll have to alter the duct tape version a bit to transfer it onto paper so your vambrace has an overlap and stuff.
