A new look at an old friend.

[Mad Matt]

They do seem to have a bit more of a reveal in this portrait although they still look like they terminate just slightly below the armpit. Of course a portrait is likely to pay much less attention to scale than a sculpted effigy.

[PartsAndTechnical]

Great thread. Ive thought a lot about this over the years.

I think we are generally discussing ideal quality armour.....and lesser armours. Ive always held that the finer armours did indeed fit a idealized form that the best armourers "understood" and could execute.

I was also very much of the idea that a subtle u-shape cut of the underside of the spaulder, careful shaping, gentle arch of the lames, and a gentle flair of the upper cannon greatly exaggerated a mans deltoids fitting an idealized rather bulbous form atop his arm. Bit by bit each plate adds up to a nice swelling muscular form and likely added more movement.

The lesser armours tended to have more of a flattish, and I hate saying typical shallow/hdroopy spaulder look we might see today.

[Igor Zeler]

Mac
Tell me, please. What do you think about compare shoulders Edward's and Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick:

http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w51 ... b2f030.jpg

[Mac]

Igor,

Edward's and Thomas' shoulders seem pretty similar to me. The main difference, if any, will be in the shape of the uppermost plate. On Thomas' shoulders we can see that the the plate has corners at the front (and presumably the back as well). Edward's aventail covers that area, and we can not tell if his have corners or if they are rounded. Both types are common.

Mac

[Eltz-Kempenich]

In conjunction with this, the used of padding under aventails becomes clearer. The entire top of one's shoulders are seemingly left exposed with appropriately sized spaulders, seemingly necessitating better protection there, beyond the obvious advantage for neck protection as well. I can see potential interplay in the development in both designs. Just something that comes to mind...

[Ceawlin]

Mac,

Can you describe how the (presumed fake) arms in the Wallace Collection (Goll's Thesis ref_5093) which got you thinking about this, were articulated on slots and sliding rivets? The one photo isn't clear enough to make out more than the lames look like a crescent shape.

I'm envisioning several styles of manufacture, from the more traditional vertical rivets slots in the front and articulating rivets along the back of the shoulder, to all the rivet slots sliding 45 degrees up toward the front (which would also collapse some when the wearer reaches forwards and/or up).

[Mac]

Ceawlin,

The lames basically parallel sided, and probably very slightly curved. There are rivet slots in front as well as in back. The slots are lined up parallel to the long axis of the arm.

I would guess from what I can see in the pics I have access to, that if one were to ignore the slots, the articulation would be a bit like the sabaton from Chartres. That is to say, fundamentally rectangular lames set with just enough overlap and just enough slop to allow a bit of motion in either direction.

I will see if Dr Toby will let me share those pics, but that will probably have to wait till the holidays are over.

Mac

[Mark Griffin]

finally had some time to sit down and read this lot in an in depth way, my only clear day in the holidays spent with my head buried in this thread. Great stuff, thanks all!

Hoping that when my new 1410 arms arrive I'm not going to be banging my head on a table but pretty sure they are looking very good.

[Mark Griffin]

finally had some time to sit down and read this lot in an in depth way, my only clear day in the holidays spent with my head buried in this thread. Great stuff, thanks all!

Hoping that when my new 1410 arms arrive I'm not going to be banging my head on a table but pretty sure they are looking very good.

[Ceawlin]

Mac,

I have initially assembled my version of an arm harness like the Black Princes. I'd be willing to make changes, and/or take photos or video per your request to test out your theories here.

Arms08.jpg (56.41 KiB) Viewed 19 times

At present, while held together with bolts, I have virtually no rotational movement in my arm harness - it all moves around the tie-tab point.

[Mac]

Ceawlin,

The cop is always going to rotate forward and backward with glenohumeral rotation. If you attach the arming point several inches closer to your neck than the edge of the cop, it will have enough free play to let the cop move while still holding everything up. This seems like a sloppy solution, but it works OK.

Mac

[Tom B.]

Here is the effigy of Reginald, First Lord of Cobham (1361)

(Full album available here)

[Tom B.]

I was reading through this thread again this morning and accidentally bumped it.
After thinking on it a bit I realized that it probably does deserve the bump.
I think that there have been several attempts at good recreation s of these types of arms since this thread was created.

[Mac]

I had more or less forgotten about this.

There is still room (and perhaps need) to rethink what we believe we know about this sort of shoulder. I've never really been satisfied with the amount of movement that I get from putting the shoulders on leather. Perhaps the truth of it is fundamentally different.

A few years ago, I did an experiment with the late Will McLean. We attached a leather strap to one of the articulating rivets inside the upper cannon of one of his armharnys. The pic below shows how the strap was pointed to the mail. My thought was that this would take the load off the attachment at the top of the shoulder. It would also give more purpose to the whole idea that the upper cannon needed to open at all.



Supporting the weight of the armor on this hidden point let us leave the one on the shoulder much looser. The result was a slightly freer range of motion, with less tension of the shoulder point. The experiment arrangement is the one on the left.



In the end, Will opted to keep the old system, rather than retrofitting the experimental system it both arms. The experimental system worked fine, but it just seemed like too big a paradigm shift. Of course, it is a big shift. There is no evidence for it at all. But, then again, we don't have any evidence that English arms are supposed to be tied at the shoulders either.... that just seems like what Ockem's razor dictates.

On the other hand, if we presume that the upper lames are riveted to one another without internal leather, the whole idea of supporting the armor inside the upper cannon starts to make more sense.

Mac

[Johann ColdIron]

Interesting. Works from this side of the internet!

I recently did something similar with a 1560s German floating elbow arm harness to try and resolve how the separate spaulder (Wades A-117) arrangement would articulate without a rerebrace in the mix. There does not seem to be a provision to connect an elbow directly to the spaulder and my assumption is that there needs to be some play there to allow for extension and compression of the upper arm area as the arm is raised and lowered.

I ended up pointed a leather strap that carried from the vambrace, through the center pivot on the elbow to a location on the midupper arm very close to that. Looks to work in theory in my case but will need to complete the spaulders to put it to practice.

I also need to update my cuirass thread to catch up to that point in my progress!

[Tom B.]

Check out Ian's video about some of the issues and solutions with his arm harness of this type.

Knyght Errant video: Fixing Problems When Things Don't Work Quite Right