My First Try...

[Darth Vader]

Hello. Long time lurker, first time poster here. First Id just like to say how great of a resource this website is. Everyone seems so helpful and answers seem to be everywhere. Thank you for all the information Iv gotten from you all.

Now... Onto my first real attempt at armouring... Iv played around with some real thin aluminum and a bit of mild in the past... but never anything really ambitious. Ill admit I just kinda went out to the store and bought some sheet and started hammering away on a whim... I didnt really do any research... I just knew i liked all the flutes and points on high gothic stuff (in retrospect i probably coulda tried someless less... complex) so I sketched out a pattern of a sort of "gothic-ish-demi-gauntlet-like-bracer-y-thing" on some bristolboard... I know it isnt period... but im scared of fingers :p

I guess long story short, I spent a good chunk of yesterday hammering out the bracer portion of my demi-gauntlet. I know the flutes aren't very good, and the shape/fit of the "lames" still needs a great deal of adjustment... However... Im happy enough for my first try

(Its hammered from 16 guage "welding steel" [I dunno what welding steel is but it was the only thing Canadian Tire had in a guage heavy enough for armouring purposes... the next thickest thing was some 26 guage stainless])

[img]http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae213/Pablo_Picaso/100_1915.jpg[/img]


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[img]http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae213/Pablo_Picaso/100_1912.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae213/Pablo_Picaso/100_1920.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae213/Pablo_Picaso/100_1919.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae213/Pablo_Picaso/100_1921.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae213/Pablo_Picaso/100_1922.jpg[/img]

[Konstantin the Red]

Welcome and well come to visibility at last on the Archive, Darth Vader. May your stay with us be long and profit you much, and as the Episcopalian Jedis say, "May the Force be with you." "And also with you."

Aha, the Mean-ass Morgul Gothickal school of plate armour design. A great favorite with sci-fi conventiongoers.

"Welding Steel" is mild steel, and is exactly the right material for you to start off in. It cuts and forms easily, welds easier, and finishes well (though nice smooth finishing capability is true of any metal that isn't super hard) and is inexpensive if you get it not from Canadian Tire but from shops around town with "Steel" somewhere in their names. These concerns supply steel in sheet, plate, or varied bar and rod form to people who weld stuff together out of it. Their typical material is hotrolled, not coldrolled, which is silvery colored, a bit more expensive, and easier to clean up and finish. You get what you pay for.

Stainless in about 20 gauge (try the "Steel" shop for this) is a very good armouring weight, but take your time learning on 16ga mild first; thin metal is easier to mess up through inexperienced hammering. You have to watch for metal fatigue, cracking, and tearing. It can't absorb as many mistakes or as much ignorance. But starting conservatively on such material with shallow dishing or simple curves (not the compound curvatures of dishing, with the bending being on two or more axes) will be successful.

"Scared of fingers" -- howzat exactly??

[Darth Vader]

Thanks for the welcome! Good to know I'm using the right material... I figgured it would be cheaper at an actual metal shop... but again i just kinda did this on a whim.

And the scared of fingers thing was about my fear/ignorance of how a person could possibly armour articulated fingers lol. I decided to stick to a "demi-gauntlet-ish" type dealie due to these fears...

[img]http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae213/Pablo_Picaso/100_1926.jpg[/img]


Oh... and lmao @ "the Mean-ass Morgul Gothickal school of plate armour design"
... Iv never been to a sci-fi convention.... but Lord of the Rings WAS a pretty freakin' epic movie

[The Iron Dwarf]

welcome to the nut house.
it is now too late for you to escape, you will be bashing metal for all eternity here.

nice work for a first piece, there are many tutorials in the archive covering just about everything, there are people here to make a wide range of items from all sorts of materials.
whatever you need to know someone here will be willing and able to help.

I dont do the sort of metal bashing that you and others here seem to like but mainly deal with thicker stuff which can also be formed into usefull shapes ( like 12mm or 1/2" thick plate or even thicker bar, yes I use the force of hydraulics in my press to make a few tools for those who wish to bash metal.
unfortunatly I am the other side of a little pond and there are many better toolmakers on your side.
if you are resourcefull you can make your own tools like a dishing stump, shotbag and a range of hammers and stake tools.

there are a lot of great armourers here from all over the world and from them you can learn a lot.

[Darth Vader]

welcome to the nut house.
it is now too late for you to escape, you will be bashing metal for all eternity here.

nice work for a first piece, there are many tutorials in the archive covering just about everything, there are people here to make a wide range of items from all sorts of materials.
whatever you need to know someone here will be willing and able to help.

I dont do the sort of metal bashing that you and others here seem to like but mainly deal with thicker stuff which can also be formed into usefull shapes ( like 12mm or 1/2" thick plate or even thicker bar, yes I use the force of hydraulics in my press to make a few tools for those who wish to bash metal.
unfortunatly I am the other side of a little pond and there are many better toolmakers on your side.
if you are resourcefull you can make your own tools like a dishing stump, shotbag and a range of hammers and stake tools.

there are a lot of great armourers here from all over the world and from them you can learn a lot.

'Preciate it man. I know theres a crapload of experience packed into this place so I feel good knowing I have a safety net of sorts.


And yes. The Force of hydraulics is not something to be trifled with! [Insert maniacal laughter interspersed with breathing from a scuba mask]

[Konstantin the Red]

And the scared of fingers thing was about my fear/ignorance of how a person could possibly armour articulated fingers lol. I decided to stick to a "demi-gauntlet-ish" type dealie due to these fears...

Thought that might be it, and it's also something we can fix.

[mental knucklecrack]

The basic principle for making a fingered steel gaunt is it's a combo of plates fixed to underlying leather straps running the length of your fingers, all secured by semipermanent stitching to a leather glove that fits your hand well -- that has enough length for your fingers, for instance.

Looking at Sauron's gaunts, you see independent plates (knuckleriders) covering each knuckle joint, with simple curved plates between them covering the fingerbones. Alternating knucklecops and plates run out to the end of each finger. The knuckles at the base of the fingers are under a single knuckle-rider. That's some pretty fancy metalworking in the original, pushing it out to peaks over each knuckle, making gadlings (not Gatlings -- entirely different scale and different movie altogether, not to mention the trouble of feeding the ammo!) to brass-knuckle the livin' bejazus out of an opponent.

The first knuckle rider may be articulation-riveted to the metacarpal plate. After that, the leather strapping takes over. Use either independent straps down each finger or cut out a sort of hand silhouette in flat leather, including the thumb out to one side if you want, though most do not, as the thumb is usually attached by a hinge that also swivels some, and the thumb bits are held together with articulation rivets. 1/8" diameter rivets are good for that.

Independent fingers' plates get riveted onto the leather straps all the way down. Knuckleriders get laid over these, to overlap both up and down. Cut the leather straps or fingers a bit long, to sew their ends onto the fingertips of the glove. Some like to sew leather "fingernails" on the glove fingers and attach things that way. You can see what to stitch to what pretty easily when you have all the parts there. A few stitches connecting the finger straps to the glove fingers keeps everything else in place. Locate any such stitches with the glove curled up gripping a weapon haft, so as to be compatible with what you do wearing steel gaunts.

Strategic stitching elsewhere on the glove marries steel gaunt to leather drover's glove beneath, but will not be too much trouble replacing the leather glove should it rot out, as it is likely to do after some years.

That's pretty much how fingers go on steel gauntlets in various kinds of ways. This is also why a lot of medieval gauntlets in museums are missing some or all of their fingers; mitten gaunts hold up a lot better that way, as metal is fastened to metal, no leather in between.

[Aussie Yeoman]

Well your fluting looks about a bajillion times better than my first efforts.

I have to say though, you're better off calling these Lord of the Rings rather than High Gothic, as, to my knowledge, there were no High Gothic Demi Gauntlets, though I'd be happy to stand corrected.

I'll second what Konstantine said about the fingers. They aint hard, unless you bite down on them.

My first bit of advice: try to advance the progress of your gauntlets equally. Don't make one, then the other. That's what I did, and now I am sorry.

More tips:



Here you can see my first set of gauntlets. You can see that each finger has two plates and one gadling. Why? It's historical, you still get plenty of coverage that way, and I was lazy.



Here you can kinda see that the finger plates are riveted to a strip of leather, which is then sewn onto the glove. Always cut your leather tabs bigger than you think. Always. When your fingers are straight, the finger plates should almost touch. This ensures that when they're bent, the gadling distributes the force of a hit onto them, and not your knuckle.



Here, on the plate that goes over the knuckles, you see three rivets. The one on the far left attached the knuckle plate to the metacarpal, the middle one attaches that skintone leather strap which goes across the palm, and the one on the far right secures one end of the knuckle rider plate, which is a narrow (1/4") wide strip of 18/20g mild steel which was convinced to take the same shape as the inside of the knuckle plate. The finger tabs are riveted to this.

[Pitbull Armory]

Hi Darth, NICE WORK ON THE DEMIS! Hard to believe those were your first flutes. Post more pics when you get time and keep up the good work.

Nice Gaunts there Aussie, Those are tuff ones to make.

Take care

Pitbull

[Alex Baird]

...as the Episcopalian Jedis say, "May the Force be with you." "And also with you."