Gauntlet Design Notes / Discussion

[Scott Martin]

Hello

I was posting a very long response to Wade here:
posting.php?mode=quote&f=1&p=2302739

and thought that I should create a new thread to discuss observations on gauntlet design and also highlight the difference between "sport" gauntlets and period gauntlets. Hopefully other folks can chime in with their observations on gauntlet evolution and design, and correct me where I'm making poor assumptions or obvious errors.

Scott Martin
___________________

Generally the hinge is probably the same material as the gauntlet. From looking at several, I think it is not uncommon to hammer it a little thinner to make the hing less "beefy".

I haven't seen any signs that they even attempted to forge weld the layers together. Sometimes they fit really closely together, sometimes not so much.

Most museum pieces I have seen have either been too far away to see, or tightly bound / welded so that they looked like a single piece (like they could have been cast, except that it's steel...). It looks like I am on the right track in terms of hinge thickness - I'm currently "overbuilding" hinges (0.040" to 0.050") but they are brass instead of steel (nice contrast) so I expect the rivet to fail before the hinge does. I'll have to consider 20 or 22 ga stainless, but it's unholy hard to file and fit, so this may need to wait until I'm using heat treatable materials.

On the single gothic gauntlet (it is closer to the computer) - this one -
http://www.allenantiques.com/A-213.html

center of cuff to the very point, 5 3/4 in.
center of wrist plate 2 1/2 in.
small hand plate at the center - 1 3/8 in
main hand plate at the center - 2 1/2 in
knuckle at the narrowest spots - ~ 1 1/4 in.
ulnar bump about 1 1/8 in down from the front, so not in the center.

That help?

Wade

Yes, that's extremely helpful. I'll post the current dimensions from the gauntlet that I am refining right now if they differ from my recollection - IIRC the cuff plate is now ~5" long on centerline (with ~3/4" overlap visible on the wrist plate) so this is almost an exact match. The wrist plate is 3" along centerline (a hair big, but so am I) so this may need to get compressed further. My small hand plates are now down to 1" from 1.5" so I may bulk them back to 1 1/4" or leave them "skinny" and see how it works, and the centerline of the hand plate is dead on 2 1/2" on centerline, so working from different sources (the A254 specs along with a few others in the wallace catalogue) I'm remarkably close to your gothic gauntlet and plan to make adjustments to get closer.

The location of the ulnar "bump" is interesting, since it suggests that the first (forward) transitional plate gets shaved more than the cuff plate to alloow room for that "cutout". Given the thicknesses (typically the cuff is thinner than the rest of the gauntlet) and the overlap with the vambrace this probably makes sense.

I was recently discussing the "splitting" of the vambrace in the 15th century and sticking the forward part of it onto the gauntlet: 14th century arm harnesses are "tulip" shaped and extend almost to the ulnar bump and (hourglass) gauntlets have a short cuff and almost a 90 degree "flare", 15th century vambraces are often "conic" in section and stop 1/2 to 2/3ds of the way down the forearm with the rest covered by the longer gauntlets, which generally have very little flare (maybe 10-20 degrees?). An interesting side effect of this is that the vambrace and gauntlet can "lock" together, particularly when bending the wrist "down". I thouth that this wasntil I noticed that this will prevent a wrist joint lock (used in some martial arts) since the "lock" will bind on the harness, not on the joint / pressure point - elegant engineering! 16th century gauntlets go further and flare the cuff, which allows very tight articulation tolerances onto the "wrist" plate since this allows the wrist and cuff plates to be parallel at that point.

My challenge is now to get my tolerances tight enough that I can have full mobility on the wrist joint, and still get this effect on "overextension" which probably pulls my tolerances for this part of the harness to the 1/4" - 1/8" tolerance range, and I probably don't have enough experience to pull it off on the first attempt, so I'm expecting a lot of prototyping...

...followed by doing it again as my arms change shape as a result of hammering on metal again!

My goal is to have "simple" gauntlets prototyped and working for the hammer-in so that I can compare with the period ones, which I suspect is MUCH easier to do if you have a period one sitting on your bench as you work (your photos are a pretty decent approximation - wish I'd had them a decade or two ago!) my "armour hiatus" has been very helpful since it has helped me see with "beginners" eyes and notice some of the things I was doing that were "SCA-centric" (like exceedingly wide cuffs and flare angles to accomodate bulky vambraces and padding)

Scott Martin
<EDIT - screwed up a tag, fixed it so that quote displays properly>

[Len Parker]

I remember this thread on making gothic gauntlets viewtopic.php?f=1&t=66396 There's a link to a tutorial, and about 3/4 way down Sasuke posted a pattern.

[Gruber]

For what it's worth, When I began building armour I had no interest in historical accuracy or what time period such and such style was used. I needed better fitting armour to joust in and did not have the cash to buy good armour. I began building to produce an exoskeleton that protected my body and hands from impact and hyper extension. After my first few pieces were ready to wear I was told how good my 15th century German armour looked.
A few years later I built a nice right hand finger gaunt for bastard sword fighting. To protect my left hand, I built up a three fingered gaunt. (I hate mittens and clamshells. If I wanted that I'd shove my hand up an armadillo's ass and call it a gauntlet.) Guess what- found out that was a period solution two years later.
My point is this- Build your armour to efficiently to move WITH it's intended body part and immediate surrounding armour; and chances are you're going to come up real close to an actual piece from somewhere. Form follows function, we add the style and flare.
This probably doesn't help you, but maybe it will spark something

[Scott Martin]

Thanks for that Gruber

I followed a similar path, but have found that instead of spending a lot of time "refining" it's generally easier to steal the period design, and then figure out why things were done in a certain way. Sometimes it's because specific tools generate specific atrifacts (chisels work metal differently than metal saws) but I found that most of the time I could identify a specific problem with a piece of "fighting kit" it was trivial to look at the originals and see the solution.

One of my big "Aha!" moments was getting the "bump" on my wrist sore wearing gauntlets. When looking at a number of period gothic gauntlets later that month I realizing that the "pyramid" on the outside of the middle plate on many of them was built specifically to allow fitting of that ulnar bump on your wrist. This also adjusted my impression of where the gauntlet plates fitted, since previously I thought that this "bridge" plate sat forward of the wrist, and the "point" of the gauntlet came to mid-forearm...

It's hard to beat several centuries of refinement based on life or death design decisions, so I now try to design as closely as possible to the originals (and always miss something) and then modify for "sport" (generally changing thicknesses or coverage slightly) instead of trying to "medievalify" a sport design.

Obviously YMMV. I find that the older I get the less I know, and the more willing I am to incorporate other peoples good ideas. The other half of this is that I need to admit that mine were less than brilliant

Len, thanks for the sasuke link: it's interesting to see the similarities (and differences) between our approaches.

Scott Martin

[Vermillion]

Scott,

Go to Wade's website and find the video of the movment of the historical gauntlet. He showed it to me when I was down at his yearly armour-in.

It should inspire you.

[wcallen]

Vermillion is talking about these:

http://www.allenantiques.com/movies/Gau ... vement.mp4
http://www.allenantiques.com/movies/GothicMovement.mp4
http://www.allenantiques.com/movies/Rus ... vement.mp4

They are buried on the bottom of this page:

http://www.allenantiques.com/Details.html

Which isn't a bad page for other reasons.

Back to the design methods, I tend to work from "what they did" not "what appears it will work" and I like the results I get that way. To be fair, I started with an interest in armour, not a desire to fight, so my motivation is probably the opposite of many peoples'.

Wade

[Mykaru]

Not to derail but:

It's hard to beat several centuries of refinement based on life or death design decisions, so I now try to design as closely as possible to the originals (and always miss something) and then modify for "sport" (generally changing thicknesses or coverage slightly) instead of trying to "medievalify" a sport design.

Obviously YMMV. I find that the older I get the less I know, and the more willing I am to incorporate other peoples good ideas. The other half of this is that I need to admit that mine were less than brilliant

Back to the design methods, I tend to work from "what they did" not "what appears it will work" and I like the results I get that way. To be fair, I started with an interest in armour, not a desire to fight, so my motivation is probably the opposite of many peoples'.

Wade

In large part because of this attitude many of these kids just beginning will far surpass us, simply because they have fewer bad habits to break. In addition to the need to be primarily self taught.

[Armourkris]

Just randomly off topic, I realised several months back that I may have a problem when i was watching those videos of Wades at 2am with the sound down low trying not to get caught on my room mates computer. I suspect that most people would have been watching the range of motion of an entirely different subject under those circumstances.

[Scott Martin]

Not to derail but:
<SNIP>
In large part because of this attitude many of these kids just beginning will far surpass us, simply because they have fewer bad habits to break. In addition to the need to be primarily self taught.

That means that they need to put hammer to metal more than me - they may be younger, but I can still learn (and steal from their bag of tricks too!) so they'll have to work for it!

Besides, us older folks can afford plane tickets to conspire with other older folks who love armour - consider this a shameless plug for the NTBA hammer-in!

Scott Martin

[Scott Martin]

Here is a pic comparing a couple of gauntlet designs (without thumbs since I need to make more hinges) Which do you find more esthetically pleasing / functional and why? (Wade should wait a bit before commenting to avoid sample bias)

Demi_Comparison.jpg

(47.43 KiB) Not downloaded yet

Both demi-gauntlets have identical articulation (well... they will have identical articulation - one of them is still being prototyped) For a bit more info, Both of these designs:

• Have a greater range of (backward) movement than my hand does at the moment
• (correctly) lock before the joint on the "touch your elbow" wrist breaking movement so that a joint lock cannot be applied (Thanks Fiore!)
• Have roughly an inch of compression across the joint laterally due to slotted rivets
• Are suited to convert into full gauntlets

One of these has been on the (SCA) field for over a decade, the other is a new prototype, so bonus points for correctly guessing the "tested" pattern.

Scot Martin