attn: curvaphobes-Anticlastic curves are EASY

[Aussie Yeoman]

There are some situations in armouring where it's necessary to create an anticlastic curve.

On reading this, some of you may think I am wrong, and others will think I should be seeing a doctor if I can an anticlastic anything. Others may think I need to check my spellchecker.

Fear not. An anticlastic curve is a shape which has opposite curves in two different planes. Still don't follow me? Ok, an anticlastic curve looks like this:

http://www.fergusonsculpture.com/photos ... ch.500.jpg

Now, you may not be able to immediately picture where in armour you might need this, so think of the wraparound part of a Gothic floating elbow.

The other day I decided to practise my anticlasticability on a bit of scrap. I got a strip of steel about 7" long and 2" wide. With my vice, I bent it longitudinally 90 degrees, so that from either end it looked like an open 'V'.

Then I grabbed a cross pein, an anvil, and went to work. I put the open V on the anvil so that one of the sides was flat on the anvil and the other was hanging down beside. Then, with my cross pein, I whacked it, each hammer blow nearly overlapping the last, working from one end of the strip to the other. I tried to focus my attention a little bit more on the outer half of the half-strip (if that makes sense) to increase the stretch there rather than have lump thin metal near the medial line that had nowehere to stretch to.

I had the face of the hammer at right angles to the long axis of the strip. I didn't whack it hard, and I did two or three passes. After just a couple of minutes, the strip looked like this:





When I was satisfied(ish) with the curve, I turned it over, and started whacking the other half of the strip, in exactly the same way. I looked often to check for symmetry and evenness.

no more than 15 minutes work from start to finish got me this shape:





By hitting the part from the back onto the anvil, you get less marking on the part that will be visible. This means less cleanup work (yeah! )

You can't really tell from the angle that I took the photos from, but the curve is pretty close to that on extant Gothic floating elbows.

So there you are. I didn't even bleed on this part, it's so easy.

Dave

[Halberds]

Thanks.. a nice how to.

I see you like to hammer metal also.
May we see the hammer you used?

Hal

[verminaard]

Hal, last pic on the anvil in the background. It's red.

[Dierick]

I tend to work the opposite direction. Rather than pushing the metal along the curve, I will push it from the crease upwards. It seems to give me much more control with exactly where I need the metal to go, and allows me to get various shapes without an excessive amount of hammering.

[Andrew Young]

Pringles called, they're hiring.

The fun part begins working in very tight spaces for period size couters and polyens!

But at that curvature you can make the intersectional piece between the upper and lower parts of a early brigadine or corrizina.