The Armour Archive

A friend of mine needs a gorget. He is 6'-2" 400 lbs. His shoulders come midway up his jaw. Designing a gorget for him is proving to be a challenge as traditional styles don't work very well. I was thinking of building a great bascinet with the gorget as part of the helmet.. kind of like this.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/Nephtys/Medieval%20European%20Armour/Great_bascinet_02.jpg

I am sure this is not a new problem so I am curious how people have approached it in the past. If I can make a gorget without having to build a helm that would be cool.

Add a mail drape/aventail/camail to his helm and stitch harden leather inside it to cover the throat/vertebrae as needed.

I don't have a neck as well, and I HATE the style of gorget that I use with my helm(it's a loaner till I finish mine) and when I got my armour done the gorget that I had been using for years and I love I couldn't wear without modifying the helm so I had to make a simple one that everyone in my shire uses...Hate it...It is nasty and VERY uncomfortable...

So anyways...I use a brigandine type one similar to this...Very simple and easy to make, but I bought mine from Eric Slyter at Vistar armouries...

Heres of picture of one..

http://revival.us/brigandinegorget.aspx

For those with no neck, I have found this very commfy and can open it out so that it's not up against the neck and forgcing my chin up..Most the time I'm fighting, the point of my chin is actually in the upright portion of the gorget...I really have no neck..

I don't like gorgets either... so I don't wear one. I wear a closed helm with neck lames that come down to my body armor. The lames provide me with neck motion that allows me to occasionally tilt or lean to turn a good shot into a glance.

I'm looking at getting a great bascinet for my new suit and the neck mobility question concerns me. A mid 15th cent great bascinet secures to the body and the head can move within it, space-suit style. That's much less effective for SCA combat.

The late 14th cent style of great bascinet is essentially a hundskull bascinet with a front forget plate. That seems like a reasonable compromise if you decide to go that way.

Another option is to pattern a very minimalist dog-collar gorget directly on his neck. I by this I mean a 3/4" wide strip of leather that S curves under the chin, back up over the shoulder, is slightly wider over the spine and back up to a small buckle on the right side. It's essentially a marshal pacifier... but if his neck is really that small then it's not a very large target to hit is it?

A word of caution: people with short necks or high shoulders sometimes experience issues with their helmet edge contacting their shoulders, sometimes painfully from over-head polearm shots. Try to insure that the shoulder protection is thin enough to not cause interference and avoid cutting the helm back too far to aleviate this as it will star exposing the base of the skull above the gorget.

A camail/aventail if period appropriate is probably the best solution or part of the best solution.

Wish your friend luck for us.
Sean

for a leather gorget....

First go get some kraft paper, cut it @ four inches across.
lay it around the neck, mark the areas where the paper is crumpling at the sholders. put it back in place, mark and cut away the paper around the jaw line, pu tit in place, and cut away the paper at the back of the neck.
just keep going until you have a pattern that follows the neckline, it should look like a sine wave when you're done.

Make him a 40K inspired gorget!

Helmet can fit in it... nuke him from orbit -only way to be sure....

Sorry, forgot to include the with helm pic...

(Guys in germany made it)

Ilia_Caid wrote:Add a mail drape/aventail/camail to his helm and stitch harden leather inside it to cover the throat/vertebrae as needed.

Works for me. For 10 years I have fought in a helm with a cloth aventail covered in a SS mail aventail. At the front I have a sole leather shield and at the back the same. Heraldry painted on both. The leather is not required by SCA rules but it is extra cool looking protection. I have taken war spear thrusts the throat and I have been fine.

A side benefit is extra cooling provided by not having a gorget over the neck and one less piece of armour to break or forget.

Ugo's suggestion is even a period solution, circa 1410.

Yeah, I kind of like it myself!