The Armour Archive

Signo

I think that one of the greatest help new armourers could receive is to stop looking at armourmaking as an artisan job from start to finish, reinventing each time the wheel, making stuff from scratch always the same, but always different. This thing of "custom armour made on measure" has gone out of...

Signo

The fact is that hand weapons are not bullets, and the condition at which the blow is thrown are probably as important as the materials involved (or more). Those people moved, defended, and attempted whatever they could to mitigate a blow, this can be enough to let a piece of equipment that alone is...

Signo

Hi all, long time no see. I chime in just to say that is quite normal for lighter projectile to retain more energy.. because they have more when leaving the bow. Lighter arrow, propelled by the same bow, accelerate more, leaving the bow at higher speed. Kinetic energy is 1/2m*Vsquared, this mean tha...

Signo

Depending what kind of welding you intend to use, just remember that open air welding is harder on equipment da rely on shield gas (MIG,MAG,TIG) as even a gentle breeze will flush away your protective gas. The quick solution is to increase gas pressure, but this has an impact on cost in the long run...

Signo

On the contrary, often there kind of helms have a lot of space, especially on the sides. Having handled one, many years ago I was impressed how springy and thin it was built, so probably a different paradigm in term of protection than thick and fit.

Signo

valdred, to ignite the Zync coating on a sheetmetal so thin you have to drop your orange metal and forget it here. Differently from smoke, zync burning make a soot, that appear as a kind of snowflakes, it's heavy, fumes are whites but the quantity is much much less, and you should keep a heavy hot o...

Signo

I dunno, the idea of fire retardant mats does'nt make me crazy. They probably give out nasty smokes while trying to not ignite when 1000C° hit them. Have you considered to apply a sacrificial ultracheap panel of some sort and cover it with a thin and cheap galvanized sheetmetal? Like 0,6 mm ?

Signo

Welcome onboard! That's a plan! And it seems very good. I'm not the kind of person able to give you advices on how to do things, as I've never been able to raise a bowl. But, as I see you have a degree in art, I wish to give you a hint... that probably many people here doesn't agree with, but anyway...

Signo

They look very nice and promising, I think you could deepen them more than 2". Have you solved your burner problems? Would you like to share some pictures of your powerhammer? Is a design you developed right? I've seen some picture of it on your FB page or in the early pages of this thread, but not ...

Signo

Damn, I remember a thread from 2003... I think I've spent a bit too much time on the AA.

Signo

Oh yes, several years ago one members from Malta detailed the process extensively.
Compression articulation can be tedious to do, but not rocketscience.

Signo

At 7 inch deep, don't you miss 2 inches to be able to make pointy bascinet with it? How do you plan to obtain them?
Your actual dimensions mimic quite well mines, yes you have much more meat in the thickness, but I had no guts to try to deepen more .

Signo

Yes don't get tempted to think that cranking up the pressure will automatically mean more heat.. yes it mean it if everything is ok, but once the forge is hot, you realize that running a lower pressure will just mean that initial heat took a bit longer, but once all is hot, you can heat your work ju...

Signo

If the tank get covered with ice after some time, then the gas is getting too cold. It happen to me if the tank is almost empty

Signo

Go forced, the important thing is to have control on flow, or with a mechanical valve or with a RPM regulator. If your forge start to work bad after many hours maybe is because air in your shop get warmer? Another problem is if the Venturi on top start to ingest exhaust gases, I see you put a shield...

Signo

I don't have the means to upload a drawing, but I think the square blank should be worked like that to obtain a lenticular circle... if you understand what I mean
https://www.stiavelli.com/wp-content/up ... 30x834.jpg

Signo

Fortunately I wrote "it SEEMS " :D so I can fail without a problems :) , but in any case, I will give it a go. It may be a good exercise. On the same topic, I'm nowhere skilled as the less skilled of you, but thank to this quarantine I have much more weekend time to stay at the forge. And I have to ...

Signo

Actually, if you look at the videos you see how they do it, and it seems pretty straightforward, but it should not be forgotten that their hammerhead is 10 fold your's. There is a chance that is not doable or profitable with your setup. But I think the important lesson is not how to round a square, ...

Signo

Tableau, I think you could save some headache cutting square blanks, you can then push and pull the material where you need it. if you think about it, cutting circles from a plate produce wastes that can't be used. With squares at least you have the metal, if it is in excess you can cut it away at t...

Signo

Another benefit of 3D modeling: once you have a working model, that generate a good pattern, in a few minutes with 3 neurons you can adapt your pattern to different measurements and body types. And it will still work as intended.

Signo

The benefit of pepakura is that it work :D . If you have seen those Iron Man suits at cosplay con , many of them have been made with the help of pepakura. Not only with foam but even made with resins over the paper cutout glued together, this is the precision it give to unwrapping. https://www.youtu...

Signo

Autocad is an insufficient tool for can method pattern development. The combo Blender-Pepakura is probably your best bet. With the first you can model your can to match as good as it is possible the desired output, with the latter you unwrap the can to make your pattern for printing. These programs ...

Signo

Yes, all the blanks shape must have resembled rectangles or squares, there is no purpose is wasting precious new plates to cut fancy shapes of of it. Then those plates would have been shaped ,stretched accordingly to their purpose. Thick, large plates were obviously dedicated to the most important p...

Signo

I think that making the backplate out of multiple parts allow the use of tinner steel, and at the same time provide a more sturdy construction and more versatility than what you can achieve in a single piece.

Signo

Last Year I've met with my friend Giovanni Sartori, one of the gold guys involved in the Bienno Maglio museum. He gifted me a prototype bucket to test and play with. Everyone of you know that I'm more a lurker than a maker as in all those years in the AA very few pieces by me have seen the light. So...

Signo

Having the starting bucket wide just as the intended finished product could be a source of problems, at least until the process is well refined and the working from the inside phase could be considered over. A footprint a bit larger is not so hard to push in position when the upper half of the bowl ...

Signo

I think the construction should have been a little arched toward the pinky, maybe it's the picture ( the first look ok but the second on the left not so much) but it seems that pivot axis are square to the axis of the arm, while the hand in reality has a slight bend toward the pinky, and the fingers...

Signo

It's a long time since I started to say that stacking is your friend. Nice to see that people are starting enjoying this. I would have tack welded the parts together, I did it and it just work. About working the part individually at some point because they have different dimensions, well .. ithere i...

Signo

This should not surprise us. This research field evolved quite a lot in the last 20 years, go figure how obsolete could have been knowledge when those parts have been assembled together.

Signo

Armourmaking was a profitable industry, plenty of people to rely on into the shop.
I would not call them unskilled, differently from today trained people were considered valuable.

Signo

Very very good shaping

Signo

You have to take care of your body parts, it's never too late, because everything counts, off course you can't rewind time, but there is no need to run down a slope when you can just walk.

Signo

It makes me realize that raising ones sword arm in combat may not be needed or desirable. Excellent experiment! In a game that is mainly based on stabs I don't see many reasons to raise your hands above your shoulders. While downward blows are pretty strong, you see from the pictures how there are ...

Signo

If I remember correctly the maximum rate of fire of a longbow is estimated in 10 arrows/minute. Depleting 60 arrows mean 6 minutes of continuos shooting. The front line of an army can walk quite a lot in 6 minutes, I guess they started shooting at maximum volley range, especially if you consider tha...

Signo

I'm not ready to call it a fake. Average interpupillary distance is just 62 mm, and it range from 54 to 74 mm, so, the width of the face opening is not automatically too little to me. The helm seem to be at least 18 cm wide, and the opening seems to be around 60 mm , it seem strange but it's enough ...

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