Tutorials on gothic plate gauntlets?

[Zetheros]

Hey folks, I was wondering if there were any detailed tutorials on making gothic gauntlets, such as these: http://www.darksword-armory.com/images/gauthicgauntlets3.jpg

[Aussie Yeoman]

Uh, I would consider those gauntlets to be 'fantasy-with-a-gothic-inspiration', rather than being 'Gothic gauntlets'.

But to answer your question, no, I don't think there is a single tutorial on the web, or in any book, which presents a detailed hot-to for making Gothic gauntlets.

There are several threads here on the archive by various talented Jiris where they show the process, and several others who have shown their progress as well. I think your best bet, other than having a pet master-armourer to guide you, is to ask lots of questions here.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Dave

[Theo]

Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight has an interior/exterior view of a Gothic gauntlet (minus fingers) from around 1480. The pictures are fairly dark but you can work out where the rivets go.

Here's about four pages of pictures of the things: http://sigmund.io.ua/album174540

[Konstantin the Red]

Welcome and well come, Zetheros. May your stay with us be long and profit you much.

Short answer: the road to ornate gothic gauntlets is walked by experience, not as yet by tutorials. The steps of the road are to become fancier by stages, as you learn how to move metal where you want it to be, cope with workhardening from hammerwork, and a dozen other things.

Longer answer: you're going to want something of a shop to get this one done: stump, stakes, several hammers, a means of cutting your metal, files, drill or punch, metal finishing gear. Do you have all that?

Have you pics of historical gothic gaunts to refer to? On your Darksword Armoury pic, the fingers frankly look more than a bit funny. From the knuckle-rider back to the cuff, things look more plausible -- and show much use of creasing stakes and careful layout of crease lines which the stake is to follow.

Having these monster-claws in your possession, what is your intended use or threat environment? Around here, they build stuff to be walloped on, and to endure such treatment for considerable time. No armor is immortal, but we run to at least making it... mature. Threat determines much of design. There are people around here who hit their buddies with rebated steel swords. More typical force level is the SCA rattan hardstick, usually called SCA Heavy these days.

Have you a copy of TOMAR? Search on the term onsite, and you will have some idea of what this book contains. Early times, what you need even more than hammers is knowledge. A lot of it is to be found there.

Plate gauntlets are among the most demanding of pieces to really get right, owing to the subtleties of motion of the human hand, like what fingers really do when clenching around a hilt. To essay a finger gauntlet calls for a modicum of armoring experience at the very least. Ever built an articulated joint? You'll need that too.

We can help you through all of this. The road, however, is not one traveled in a single step. We recommend starting with either SCA demigauntlets, assuming you fight in the SCA (and if you don't, we encourage you to start; it's good fun and exercise, and it teaches you what armor really should do), or else mitten gaunts -- which also may be done à la gothic. Ideally, one pair of each, to build your mastery surely. Who knows? You might grow into being a steel gauntlet specialist, as there were of old. Making a full plate harness was seldom solely the purview of a single shop -- they'd farm out any mail components to a mailmaker, and specialists in helmets and gauntlets were if not legion at least numerous in towns with Plattners among their industries.

[Zetheros]

@Aussie Yeoman: Oh well, it didn't hurt asking, haha.

@Theo: Thanks!

@ Konstantin the Red: I'm actually building a suit of armor as part of my portfolio as a costume designer, I want to make the costume similar enough to period armor so that I could move around efficiently while wearing it, but I want to add some creativity into the mix as well.

Here are some pictures of my previous bit of fantasy armor (Don't laugh, it was never meant to go into battle, there's all sorts of weak spots and no padding either, and I was in a rush to get it done by Halloween): http://imgur.com/a/ZarOY

And here are the pictures of the costume (helmet) I am working on now: http://imgur.com/a/0xlNi

I like working with rusted steel (I find that rust is actually a nice barrier against slight scratches and such from the hammer and anvil, and leaves a nice aging effect) then polishing most of it off after planishing with sandpaper, which explains the black oxidization on my helmet.

[Aussie Yeoman]

The mask in that second link is amazing! Good work!

Dave

[Zetheros]

Thanks!

[Konstantin the Red]

You had plenty of fun there making something theatrical. How well one might move in it the pictures do not demonstrate. Believe me, there is a plenty of creativity in building real harness. There is also an undeniable aura of authenticity, which carries a real gravitas to the finished suit. It is like the difference between an actual sword and the Sword-Like Objects that hang upon the wall. Or worse yet, the kind of thing so often drawn in comic books and other fantasias. (A broadsword really is not just an enlarged knife; it has features to it a knife simply doesn't, having to do with making the sword balanced, nimble and lively, and still hitting hard. The grim dignity of this killing tool is one reason it has such a hold on our imagination.)

You might care to scour YouTube SCA Fighting for a look at what armor is supposed to let you do. There's quite a lot of it under that heading.

Sanding comes after planishing, a smoothing-out process done with light hammers to get rid of lumps, related to but not the same as the perhaps-coarser process of bouging -- bringing up depressed areas that are yet below the desired curve of the surface.

Anyway, to assess your capabilities properly, we still need some idea of your shop.

[Zetheros]

Well, I have a few bits of random steel that serves as anvils; a section of rail, and some other piece that I have no idea as to what it is, and a round wheel of steel about 6" in diameter, and an enormous, beat up anvil that I tried resurfacing, but I spent about 2 hours using my angle grinder and only attained a shiny surface. I think I might take it to a professional resurfacing anvil shop, if they have anything like that in China.

I also have two log pieces about 3' each in diameter, and 2.5' tall, two hammers (one that I use for pretty much everything, and the second has a blunt chisel end that I use for fluting) a wooden table, an angle grinder, a compass, several pliers, a dremel, a drill, a file, sandpaper, solid rivets, a bucket of water, and that's about it. I take my armor to be welded in a shop next to my apartment, and other than that, I improvise. I'll probably also be getting a sledgehammer to straighten out a few leaf springs.

My next costume is pretty much based off of 16th century maximillian plate. It will have bronze runes all over the edges, several layers of blue and black cloth cloaks trimmed with golden tassels, and yeah. Bling bling bling. And a claymore strapped to my back along with duel-wield scimitars.

I was just wondering how large the plates are for the gauntlets. I have a feeling they're only a few inches per piece, but I wanted to be sure.

[schreiber]

You're in China? I do believe you're the first person to post from China. Cool!
But now I'm confused - where do your inexpensive tools come from? (har har)

Yeah, for anvil resurfacing... definitely let us know how that goes. If you have a western anvil you might be in trouble. Here we have people actually working as blacksmiths still - mostly as artists, but it wasn't that long ago (my grandfather's generation) when you'd see working smiths. Is there such a thing as a farrier in China? If so, you might want to look in that direction.

The upside is that lots of armorers work without really using an anvil. I think most of us have one and only use it for setting rivets, or maybe curling over the horn. Unless you're hot forging then what we call an "Anvil Shaped Object" (ASO) would probably work fine, and you can probably get them because the ones we get come from China.

Regarding gauntlets, I've always found the ThorZ pattern on this site to be attractive, but I've never made them because they're not historical. If you're looking to do costuming they're probably a good starting point.
Truthfully, you're bringing a lot of talent into this and I have no doubt that you'd be able to modify a pattern to do what you want.

[Dierick]

That mask is impressive. Do you have any other pictures of work you have done? Its awesome to see someone so far removed from out little community of artists doing something like this.

[Zetheros]

"But now I'm confused - where do your inexpensive tools come from? (har har)" Libya. It just keeps going down the chain...

"Yeah, for anvil resurfacing... definitely let us know how that goes. If you have a western anvil you might be in trouble. Here we have people actually working as blacksmiths still - mostly as artists, but it wasn't that long ago (my grandfather's generation) when you'd see working smiths. Is there such a thing as a farrier in China? If so, you might want to look in that direction."

Yeah, I'll probably do that sometime this week. The thing is, this anvil is really weird, as in extremely tough. When I go at it with an angle grinder, hardly any sparks fly off. I'm sure there's a shop somewhere here that polishes pieces of metal, and maybe I'll see if the anvil was tempered or otherwise treated.

"Regarding gauntlets, I've always found the ThorZ pattern on this site to be attractive, but I've never made them because they're not historical. If you're looking to do costuming they're probably a good starting point."

I actually made a gauntlet using ThorZ's pattern, it was a good practice, however I must have did something wrong, since whenever I tried to hold a sword, the fingertips would become too tight. Maybe I should have used sliding rivets somewhere.

"That mask is impressive. Do you have any other pictures of work you have done? Its awesome to see someone so far removed from out little community of artists doing something like this."

Thanks! However I don't really have any more (armoring) work that I have done, besides a half-finished sword and a stack of drawings that I've been accumulating since 8th grade.

[Konstantin the Red]

I cleaned up the hard face of my farriers' anvil (a rather lightweight London-pattern anvil, horn, heel, table, and all that, 72 lb (32.7kg)) by hand, using the coarse face of a two-sided Carborundum(tm) stone. Smoothed it up a lot, removing many cold-chisel marks. It also nearly used up the stone completely, though the stone I used was old and very saddled from wear -- made it almost useless for its original job of sharpening knives. That anvil face is hard indeed; uses up a lot of abrasive. When I was done, both faces of the stone were worn to their proper flatness again, though they were no longer parallel, and the anvil face was a lot smoother too. Not perfect, but the shallow chisel marks were finally gone and the deeper ones much smaller. Easier to work around. The one spherical dimple in the middle of the face -- I only could make that one smaller. Some of it is still there. I think some bozo decided to whack it one with a ball-pein. Shameful abuse of a decent tool.

An anvil should have a hard face to stand up to what an anvil does. Sometimes you can see where the hard face joins the body of the anvil, two pieces of metal cast into one at the foundry. My anvil is made like that. You can see the join a bit less than a cm down from the face of the anvil.

I did nothing fancy with the stone -- used it dry all the way through, polished the anvil face with elliptical strokes along it. Coarse grit from the stone got all over the place; I had to brush or blow it off frequently. With the finer grit it was the same thing, just smaller grit and mostly blowing not brushing. Do this manual face-dressing somewhere where you can make a mess.

Mushroomed edges to the anvil face aren't as big a problem as trying to dress the entire face; the angle grinder can trim these away. An anvil face may also have some parts of its edge quite exactly ninety degrees, but other parts of the edge radiused, rounded, in varied amounts -- such as a part of the anvil edge being rounded as a bit of a narrow cone, from a very tiny radius for something very small to about a radius of 1/8" (3mm) for a larger inside-radiused corner, for strength there in the piece one is forging. Almost like putting a weld fillet in there. That feature is there for a reason, so don't grind that part away. That kind of rounding off can be almost anywhere along the edges, so look it over carefully to see if you can find it. And if you want it and don't have it, you can grind it in.

I did not bother trying to dress the anvil's table, which is useful for several things you don't want the hard anvil face for, and don't need a really flat surface either, such as cold-chisel cutting of bar stock. Doing that there means you don't beat up any part of your anvil horn, which among other things is the tool for making large radius curves.

[Zetheros]

I first tried resurfacing the face of my anvil with a file, but it couldn't get a hold on the surface, and simply slipped every time I tried. I'll take your advice and see if a sharpening stone will work better, thanks!

[Konstantin the Red]

Armourers use a lot of clamps too, particularly when cutting, and a Vise-Grip pliers is very good for bending metal quietly. Clamps on and makes a lever. Makes a good bending team with a bench vise: one edge of the metal in the vise, one clamped in the Vise-Grip, grab and pull on it. Or shove downwards on it, whatever is needed.

Gauntlets can be made of thin metal mostly, with thicker metal in knuckle riders and such.

It does sound like reading TOMAR through will give you a lot of knowledge to get started with. You can form metal remarkably well already -- what you now want is a good idea of what shapes of armor pieces are actually ergonomic. There is a reason plate harness looks the way it does: those shapes are the ergonomic ones, providing both coverage and mobility.

Yes, a file there is a no-go; when a file slips like that it is a sign the metal is very hard. It's a good crude test of the hardness of a knife. A differentially hardened blade will make the file skid across it in the region of its edge, but the file can bite, or at least bite a little better, on the back of the blade. A two-sided stone should work for you for the anvil face. As I said, you will likely mostly wear a 20cm stone right out doing this.

And a claymore strapped to my back along with dual-wield scimitars.

Of this, all I can do is titter and murmur, "Oh dear!" Strictly from gamersville, that, and we find not very practical for combat when TShHTF. It becomes a philosophy of "do one thing, but do it well." There are even books in English about that very thing: Ringeck, Lichtenauer, others.

Scimitars cut flesh, as does the claidhmh da laimh twa-handed claymore. For armor-cracking can openers in swordsville, one steps up to the German Zweihänder: heavier built through the blade, half the blade length being leather-covered ricasso for grabbing onto, and with a somewhat more obtuse edge also. Harder to control with its greater length and a pound more of weight.

[Zetheros]

I searched for TOMAR, and I've already learned a bit about knee joints from the small diagrams in the preview here at anvilfire: http://www.anvilfire.com/bookrev/tomar/review.php thanks for the recommendation!

"Yes, a file there is a no-go; when a file slips like that it is a sign the metal is very hard." I figured as much. If tool steel couldn't bite into the anvil, it had to be pretty darn hard.

"Of this, all I can do is titter and murmur, "Oh dear!" Strictly from gamersville..."

Yes, I admit I was a WoW nerd, along with the rest of the games from the medieval-fantasy genre. xD
But games such as those are what inspired me to make armor (well, costumes incorporating steel)! Drawings and cardboard costumes just didn't feel real enough.

"Scimitars cut flesh, as does the claidhmh da laimh twa-handed claymore. For armor-cracking can openers in swordsville, one steps up to the German Zweihänder: heavier built through the blade, half the blade length being leather-covered ricasso for grabbing onto, and with a somewhat more obtuse edge also. Harder to control with its greater length and a pound more of weight."

Yeah, hehe. I still have a far ways to go in terms of researching, and I'm surprised you saw why I was choosing to make a larger sword along with two shorter ones. I'm looking at wikipedia for German Zweihänders now.

I should also probably say that I'm going to be putting pistol grips on my scimitars. I'm not sure how they'll work, but we'll see how it goes.

[Konstantin the Red]

We can point you to a metric ton of stuff when you ask about it. So forge on.

I never did cardboard, though I started noodling about with butted-link mail in the SCA context. You can do that one in any apartment -- you can do it even at sea. Now I'm figuring out riveted mail. Definitely understand that about not-real-enough, though.

Take a look at the late-15th-century gothic breast & back with fauld and tassets being built in this thread a little farther down the page. Not gauntlets, but neat-o metal forming stuff. Also includes the bowling ball/bungee cord pile driver for large-radius curves with easy thumping. Pics!! dozens of 'em.

[Zetheros]

Yeah... I saw that awhile ago; is that bowling ball used for shaping the metal? That's some amazing improvisation, I bet it saves loads of time! I wish I knew of that technique when I was trying to form a 4' diameter round shield. I was at it for days, whacking away at it with a 1lb hammer in spirals on a mat of layered cardboard, and when I was finally done with it, it turned into an oval. And it was stainless, too. I felt so sorry for my neighbors.

I ended up cutting the piece into smaller sections to build the pauldron that I'm wearing in my first "suit" of armor.

[Konstantin the Red]

It is. Position your metal upon your dishing stump as in the pic, grab hold of the bowling ball with both hands like a gorilla, wham, wham, wham, on the metal. It's a 12-pound hammer. The bungee has just enough pull on it to help the ball come back up easily so you can accelerate it back down.

It's a good re-use of an old bowling ball that has gotten chewed up or too badly gouged. A bandsaw can also cut ruined bowling balls to make engraver's tables out of halved bowling balls set round side down in a dog dish and with a machinist's vise bolted onto the flat surface, or cutting the bowling ball into very tough, thoroughly modern handle scales for knives.

[Konstantin the Red]

That gauntlet has some design features you would want to know about. This is a simply shaped gothic gaunt of the style of about 1480, the maker says.

The wristbone plate has a large bump to the distal side of the gaunt. This is to make room for that bony bump (end of the ulna bone, I think) on the outside of your wrist joint, preventing chafing as well as strengthening the piece a bit with more 3-D forming.

The little notch in the edge of the cuff actually helps the piece move well, by eliminating a little drag that often shows up right in the middle of a lame's edge. You'll see this feature in articulated lames from this century onward, and late in the fourteenth century too.

The wrist articulations may be done with sliding rivets, though I can't say for sure. Allows your hand to wiggle from side to side. You don't need a lot, but it's convenient to have a bit. For rotating your hand, the gaunt just moves with your hand. Note that the rivets are fairly tight, so the metal pieces stay close together. A removable metal shim with a deep notch cut into one end of it of thin metal is great for getting the articulation rivet just loose enough. The rivet goes through two holes, one in each piece of metal, before being peined over a washer. The hole in the underneath piece of metal should be 1/32" larger diameter than the one in the outer piece of metal, which should be the same size as the rivet. Slip the shim into the joint at the rivet, its notched end going around the rivet shaft. Put the washer on and pein the rivet down tightly. Now pull the shim out -- now the articulating rivet is just loose enough to let the articulation swivel easily.

The knuckle rider has been quite deeply formed, into the spiky shapes called "gadlings." Not to be confused with Gatlings, as some guys who are hard of hearing do. They might have been medieval brass knuckles, they might have been just that bit more of protection by putting a deep doming over lumpy knucklebones, or they might just helped gothic-school gauntlets look mean; I'm not really sure. The rider may have been hot-raised, with torch, stake, and hammer. Which sounds like you're killing vampires.

I can't see much of the finger plates in that picture, but I think these are mitten gauntlets.

[coreythompsonhm]

Konstantin-

I would assume the bump on the wrist plate would have to be raised, right?

[Aussie Yeoman]

Take a look at the late-15th-century gothic breast & back with fauld and tassets being built in this thread a little farther down the page. Not gauntlets, but neat-o metal forming stuff. Also includes the bowling ball/bungee cord pile driver for large-radius curves with easy thumping. Pics!! dozens of 'em.

Hey, that's MY ball-hammer and harness!

A few notes on that bowling ball:

The bungee is a strip of inner tube about an inch to an inch and a half wide, tied to a roof rafter.
The ball has a woode handle epoxied into the thumb hole. This is for one handed use, not two handed, gorilla like use. You will still need to hold the piece of armour with the other hand.
When positioning the ball's height, I adjusted it so the ball hovered at rest about 4 inches above the metal surface.

The full breastplate took about three hours, with no planishing at all whatsoever. With a deeper dish, or a large steel ball instead, helm halves should be pretty quick too.

I don't know about cutting one on a bandsaw, but I cut a couple of chunks off of it for fly press dies:




But back to gauntlets. The gauntlets I made for the harness in the thread Konstantine linked to can be seen here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=110205&hilit=gauntlet

I had no idea what I was doing when I made those.

The bump on the ulna is 'sort of' raised. I, and others, use a steel rod rounded on one end and drive it into the plate from behind over a hole in a stump. Then you need another rod, pointy, that you put the plate over then work from the outside with a crosspein (what I used anyway).

Dave

[coreythompsonhm]

The bump on the ulna is 'sort of' raised. I, and others, use a steel rod rounded on one end and drive it into the plate from behind over a hole in a stump. Then you need another rod, pointy, that you put the plate over then work from the outside with a crosspein (what I used anyway).

Dave

Im assuming the knuckle gadlings are done the same way?

[Aussie Yeoman]

In my case, pretty much, except instead of raising it back over a point I just pushed the bulge quite deep then set a crease across the knuckles and one in between each. If you want pointy knuckles, then yes, exactly.

[Zetheros]

Wow! So much free information! It's like I stumbled across the largest information goldmine since reddit. Anyways, I just spent the entire day de-infesting my workshop of mosquitoes (China is absolutely swarming with them right now), and snapped a few pictures of what I have done for my cuirass.

Pics: http://imgur.com/a/BsfZI

The cuirass is a new innovation of mine (at least, I think so, originality is my life!), I'm building muscle armor and segmenting it into something like a gothic cuirass(?), with maximillian fluting that will run down into a 'skirt' to form a shape of a trenchcoat. Currently, the piece is suffering gapitis, since I haven't calibrated the pieces yet. Anyways I still need to make quite a few more plates.

I wanted to add some more texture to the middle part, as you can see by the anvil marks, however in the end it didn't look quite as good as I thought it would appear, so I flattened it again. At least I did something beneficial, the marks now look like I've gotten thwacked in the stomach with an axe.

[Tom B.]

(China is absolutely swarming with them right now)

Where in China are you located?

Tom

[Tom B.]

Check out this thread

Tom

[Zetheros]

Southern China, Nanning, Guangxi Province. It's pretty tropical and wet here.

And thanks for the thread link Enrico, the comments and pictures are really helpful!

[Darius von Tannenberg]

Check out ageofarmour.com It has a tutorial on guantlets for jousting.
Lots of cool pics and links too!

[Radoslaus]

Greetings,
I made a replica of those gauntlets recently , maby it may help -http://www.radoslaus.pl/2011/01/in-progress.html

They are quite easy to make,
Here how they look like when i finished them: http://www.radoslaus.pl/2011/05/philadelphia-florence-parts-of-gothic.html


Cheers, Radek.

That gauntlet has some design features you would want to know about. This is a simply shaped gothic gaunt of the style of about 1480, the maker says.

[...]

I can't see much of the finger plates in that picture, but I think these are mitten gauntlets.