The Armour Archive

You can also remove galvanization with aforementioned heat.

Destichado wrote:You can also remove galvanization with aforementioned heat.

if you dont need your lungs any more that is

Holy Highjack, Batman!!


So how about that original question?
Painting, colouring armour, regardless of why you might be prodded into doing it, does anyone have historical examples? Advice?

Been watching this thread for awhile, looking for these answers.

conrad the mad and suzerain both posted about painted armour here

The Iron Dwarf wrote:

Destichado wrote:You can also remove galvanization with aforementioned heat.

if you dont need your lungs any more that is

+1

...And I'd rather see painted metal armour than galvanised metal armour any day.

i have a sheet of nice mild steel 16 gauge now woop woop so back to the matter at hand. anyone know of good examples i have seen lots of one off bits helmets parade armour etc what about full battle field suits?

shortie-n wrote:Anyone know of good examples I have seen lots of one off bits helmets parade armour etc what about full battle field suits?

Time to dig into your TOMAR, even if it is before your period of especial interest -- there's all that patterning and metalworking how-to. Perhaps you'd also like to get and use the Talbot's Fine Accessories paper patterns, which I think get into fifteenth century. They are cheap, around 5 Euro apiece. Your experience with building a spangenhelm will contribute to your helmet making skills as you attempt one-piece or welded-up tries at things like infantry roundel-sallets (closefitting skull, roundel pieces at each ear) and other late-fifteenth sorts of archer/infantry headgear.

Fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the era of the half-armored infantryman, and there was an increasing development of open-faced helmets of fairly simple form just for infantrymen's use, fairly deep skulled and with small turned-down brims that look like they would shed both blows and rain equally well. They tended to look like cloche hats done in steel. They did not resemble the Carolingian-era "dickhead" helmet.

Cap-à-pie plate harness is the province of the horseman, so strictly speaking from a reenactor/Living History point of view you may end up taking your time over some years for that stuff. If you're doing a brigandined, buckler-toting spear carrier, your armor is going to be of a different type, mainly lacking such things as visors and legharness.

Building on what's in TOMAR, 15th-c. legharness is mostly a bit fancier edition of the designs of the strictly late-fourteenth: busier design in the knee fans, five-piece knees growing typical with the lames more acutely chevronned and cusped or even multiply cusped, cased greaves well in, point-toed sollerets that look more medieval than the modernish boot-toe shapes abounding in the latest sixteenth. They spent most of the century trying to figure out pauldron design -- tried all sorts of agglomerations of mostly large plates laid over arrays of lames running from gorget to practically the elbow. The classic pauldron eventually emerged -- I dunno, circa 1490? And not necessarily in combination with the low-cut German 16th-c. breastplate that went with the munion/Almain collar, a sort of wide super gorget that extends articulated lames down the shoulder.

thanks konstantin some useful info there. well i got busy and started making a spanghelm for myself as i do mainly viking stuff and having such an odd head its really needed. cut out the bands for it although joining them at the top is awkward. and patterning the plates even more so. as for what harness to go for with my 15th century stuff i have a good idea what i will go for. im mainly looking at a fancy infantry kit first. the irish were about 100 years behind in fashion and armour design so i have good room for scope.
i would like to start learning to raise helms etc and have one or two in mind i would love to do.
im thinking i may make my vik stuff then move forward. at the moment its getting this spang together. even if its not great i just need something for now i will do easier projects next im thinking spaulders. but im still waiting on my arming jack.
any advice on the spang would be great. and i need a better method of cutting steel my angle grinder is grand but just a bit messy. i am thinking of getting blades for my jigsaw any ideas?

Simplest way to join those awkward bands at the top -- short of a weldment ground and polished smooth -- is with a little cap up there, round and dished a bit, or a shallow cone. If you want to get cutely Christian, even a +-shaped cap, of which I don't think there were historical examples, but would be just one of many ways to lay out a cap. A few holes for riveting through, and there you are, one spangenhat frame -- the cap is what joins the frame intersection. There's a nice opportunity for some decorative filework there too. I like decorated helmets. It's more fun to wear a piece with some style to it, instead of just OMG-gotta-have-one utilitarian.

A sheet of modeling clay rolled out like piecrust or a sheet or two of heavy tinfoil make pretty fair test patterns for your panels. They will all be asymmetrical, bulged triangle shapes. As you can imagine, a good bit of overlap is useful in getting rivet holes to be rivet holes, and not notches! Number both your spangen-frame's quadrants and the panels that correspond to them -- they will not interchange one to another!

Yes, the metal cutting blades for your jigsaw/saber saw will do. They will be slow, prone to a great deal of vibration, and noisy as hell because of it. Use every clamp in the shop to hold the metal down, and get a sandbag full of dirt to plop onto the metal and damp its vibrations. This cuts the awful racket and saves you blades, which are prone to snapping, so keep several on hand, lube them with oil or beeswax or transmission fluid. An orbital-stroke jigsaw is also good for prolonging blade life; it backs the blade away from the cut on the up stroke and only presents the blade into the cut on the downstroke that actually cuts. Helps keep the blade cool, along with the lube, which takes away the friction heat by vaporizing. Nice feature to have. With the blade temp under control, the teeth don't get heated up as fast and lose their temper and go dull on you. A cup of water around to dip a warm blade into doesn't go amiss either.

A good vibration absorber is to clamp a piece of scrap wood under the metal where you cut, sacrificing the scrap wood as you make cuts in the metal.

There are European sources for bench shears that won't kill your budget. There are expensive bench shears too -- ask Iron Dwarf, I think he knows all about them. In between come things like a Bosch power shear, a sort of electrically driven throatless shear with replaceable blades.

You never did happen to mention how your skull was shaped -- you keep saying it's strange but what kind of strange? I know I've asked -- I'm trying to understand what you're actually dealing with, as extremely long front to back is different from Easter Island head is different from round hobbit head is different from bullet-glancing flat rat forehead...

JohannM wrote:

The Iron Dwarf wrote:

Destichado wrote:You can also remove galvanization with aforementioned heat.

if you dont need your lungs any more that is

+1

...And I'd rather see painted metal armour than galvanised metal armour any day.

Surely I'm not the only one around here who's not scared of galvanization. 0_o

Seriously guys, people around here make zinc "poisoning" out to be a lot more dangerous than it really is. You get the aches. They suck, but you're just achey for a day. And you have to be breathing it in for like an hour to get enough in you to do anything. And after the first day, you're immune until everything leaves your system!

So what's the big deal?

yes my spangen is coming along i warn you it will look fairly crummy i opted more for the get it done asap route as i need it asap. i will make a nice one another time. one thing i realised after it was all cut out was one how much grinders dont tend to go straight and the importance of marking out and predrilling pieces and always wear my goggles. things i will remember next time.
as for my head its about 64cm around with no padding. its also large front to back much more than most. so makes helmets so very hard to get and one of the reasons im trying to make armour.
im thinking a shears is the way forward grinder is fine for bendy bits just cut extra and grind down but the shears can cut dead straight used to have a wonderful one in my school.
then i want to learn more about raising maybe start my first project on it but i may start that in a new thread. raising is both strange and scary but is the one skill above all else i want to master.

Destichado wrote:

JohannM wrote:

The Iron Dwarf wrote:

Destichado wrote:You can also remove galvanization with aforementioned heat.

if you dont need your lungs any more that is

+1

...And I'd rather see painted metal armour than galvanised metal armour any day.

Surely I'm not the only one around here who's not scared of galvanization. 0_o

Seriously guys, people around here make zinc "poisoning" out to be a lot more dangerous than it really is. You get the aches. They suck, but you're just achey for a day. And you have to be breathing it in for like an hour to get enough in you to do anything. And after the first day, you're immune until everything leaves your system!

So what's the big deal?

Well, it can and has killed folks before...so I feel its best to warn new folks off this stuff.

for sure i had no idea how bad that stuff could be so im leaving it alone for now.

shortie-n wrote:Yes my spangen is coming along . . . as for my head, it's about 64cm around with no padding. It's also large front to back much more than most. So makes helmets so very hard to get and one of the reasons I'm trying to make armour.

Aha, finally. Definitely XL hat, then... my own dome is around metric size 59-60 iirc from my Navy days and visiting European ports, buying a bit of stuff here and there. Sailed past Wicklow one day I'm sure, aboard the USS Iowa (BB-61) back in the Reagan (and Thatcher) era. We went down the Minch north to south enroute Brest, I think it was.

Everybody stops and looks when a battleship goes by; quite apart from their rarity, they look like absolutely nothing else afloat. They have the same kind of purposeful massiveness a Smith & Wesson Model 29 has... or a double elephant gun in .470 Nitro Express. Huge. Solid. Yet lean looking too. And like a double rifle, they have a great and fearsome beauty. Not quite the same as a fighter jet's, which is a dreadful beauty like a drawn sword's. It's really a gun beauty, like that .470.

Yeah, your helmet is going to come out more strongly oval in plan than some.

Suzerain wrote:...and calling an irishman english is pretty much lower than ...

He should take it as a compliment

Red crosses throughout as national badges -- yeah, sure, Pat, Georgie, all about the same, right?

Under the heading of "dreadful beauty like a drawn sword," saw the USAF Thunderbirds flight demonstration team at an airshow today. Was positioned in the crowd right at show center, which was great for optimal effect, as the crowd-crossing maneuvers from behind the crowd came right overhead.

Thunderbirds