The Armour Archive

Just a quick question about construction... I'm working on another leather armor, this a buff coat (or for the anglosolipsistic crowd out there, a soft leather coat performing all the functions of a buff coat, but clearly inferior and continental ). Just like the previous coat, the felt body armor, and the Cuman-style layered leather breastplate...

it's nothing I'd put on the armor of the month thread, let me put it that way.

Which I'm not sweating a whole lot, because I'm making it in a correct fashion. But I have contemplated getting other bits of leather with fewer range scars, slightly better color-matching across the same hide piece, etcetera, and I'm wondering how many folks take that into account when putting together their stuff from the get-go.

Damn Continentials...

I do try to work around range scars and those now prevalent digital embossed tracking numbers (or what ever they are) found on large hides. Barbed wire isn't period so scars attributable to it should be avoided. The numbers sure aren't right either.

Once I work my patterns around that I try for best aesthetic match of pieces, that I have on hand. This includes tone, thickness and location on the hide. For a "Buff" coat I would assume that the shoulder area of a hide would be used in the strike zones of the coat like persons shoulders and such. Belly and leg areas of a hide for areas needing flexibility like armpits. A tailor of the period would have considered all these things, dependent of course, on the level of detail he is getting paid to pay attention too. He would have many hides to choose from straight from the tanner. Best paying client gets the best. Everyone else gets what is left.

Question is... Is your interpretation of the best paying client or not.

No, I go straight for the middle, for what the typical guys would have had. The barbed-wire range-scars issue hadn't occurred to me, though. Probably need to suede the leather I'm not tanning/hot-stuffing myself, given that. Thanks.

Cultivating a period eye is perhaps one of the more challenging things to do. I know that my eye is still more modern than I would like, I particularly notice it in my desire for the modern sensibility of symmetry.

Most of the extent examples of leatherwork are of the highest quality, which may give us a skewwed perspective on "how things were done" in period. However, based on what we know, it does seem that period leatherworkers did their best to avoid any flaws. The example I take most to heart are the fragmentary finds of shoes; while flaws were generally avoided, and I'm certain that they strove for color matching, cobblers were not shy about peiceing together, patching where needed and used several different kinds of hide in the same shoe.

One of the most interesting things about going the Wade Allen's house and looking a real armour from the period was how imperfect they were. Some things had rolls were wavy and not flush with the body, symmetry was iffy on some. Things I would reject if I was building them for sale. It made me realize that the reenactors eye is much more critical that the Period one.

Johann ColdIron wrote:One of the most interesting things about going the Wade Allen's house and looking a real armour from the period was how imperfect they were. Some things had rolls were wavy and not flush with the body, symmetry was iffy on some. Things I would reject if I was building them for sale. It made me realize that the reenactors eye is much more critical that the Period one.

I think there was probably a lot of "screw it, it's not mine" going into it, too.
I just got siding on my house. I was looking at the caulking yesterday and noticing that from 15' away it looks great, but when you get close there are some obvious spots where they weren't even trying to make it smooth.
But the bottom line is that water isn't getting in there.
Frankly, I could have done it, but I was paying someone so that a week later it would be done. If I was obsessing about caulk beads, it wouldn't be done right now.

Human behavior doesn't change. Armorers would have done the same thing - get the project completed, add in a little bit of bling to create a good initial impression and get it signed off, make sure it's going to do the intended job adequately to prevent future negative rep, and everything else - everything - eats into profit, eats into reputation, and stops the job getting done.

I'm sure one or two of us here can relate to the economic value of having a piece of armor in our hands, as opposed to being told how nice it's going to be at a future date.

I think it's due to the fact that the medievals had never seen machine produced goods. We're used to things looking flawless, even cheap junk looks perfect. If you have no concept of that, then you're less likely to get hung up on fixing a tiny flaw.

I think the modern asthetic is jarring when applied to reenactor goods. Duke Ullr of the Midrealm is a professional cabinet maker/finisher and is capable of astounding woodwork. However, when he makes Norse furniture and boxes and such, he uses a story stick instead of a tape, hand planes, etc. His pieces are of an unbeliveabl quality but there is no doubt that they are hand made and do not have the modern asthetic. I used to stress out and grind out rivets, weld up holes, etc until I saw a real helm and realized that our ancestors were not competing in fashion shows, rather they were trying to stay alive and craft things that would contribute to that end without worrying too much if they were gonna be on the cover of Templar Beat Magazine.

Many years ago I went to an event in a new set of landsknecht gear. I had just finished the Wams earlier in the week and was justly proud of it. There was a good friend of mine at the event, also a long time landsknect, who I'd been looking forward to getting his reaction to my new garb. His opinion meant a lot to me.

He looked me over, paused and said, "Nice. Too clean though."

My modern brain's immediate reaction was, "Of course it's clean! It's Brand NEW!" On further consideration though, my medieval aesthetic chimed in, "I'm supposed to be a damn landsknecht. How would they have been able to keep their clothes spotless and neat?"

That's the difference between the modern sensibility and the medieval aesthetic.

AwP wrote:I think it's due to the fact that the medievals had never seen machine produced goods. We're used to things looking flawless, even cheap junk looks perfect. If you have no concept of that, then you're less likely to get hung up on fixing a tiny flaw.

No, they didn't have machine produced goods. But they were capable of building mechanical astronomical clocks that predicted lunar eclipses.
We all have a concept of flawlessness. It's just a matter of whether you're willing to pay for it.
The miracle of modern living is how many complicated or flawless objects we have access to. Medieval folk could have constructed a wooden deck using galvanized joist hangers - they had every technology that goes into it. They didn't, because every step used to produce them was prohibitively expensive back then. We don't use them because they're better than mortise and tenon. We use them because they're dirt cheap.

If anything, I think we have too little comprehension of the cost of flawlessness. I got introduced to it when I had to replace a gear in my industrial sewing machine long ago. WTF, it's a gear, why does it cost $200? Well, 13 years later I understand that they're not being crapped out of a Taiwanese factory - they're being custom cut, and that costs money.
That one-off custom flawlessness is the only version they knew, and that's why they didn't do it. I don't think it was an inability to see it - it was an access issue.

(This is why we students of history should all laugh in ridicule at experts who tell us that we need to keep the price of goods high. Low cost goods is what increases standard of living across the general population. High cost goods keep standards of living constant.)