The Armour Archive

How does one make an arming coat for what I beleive is late 14th cent. armor ( 1370 -1400)

how does one make an arming coat that fits?

what is the difference between an arming coat and a pourpoint?

For this armor ( except the silly helmet)








What exactly is "pointing"

How do you attach all of the armour to the arming coat so that it fits and works correctly?

Has anybody written a full on essay on this subject?

I have gathered that generally "pourpoint" is used for the garment that holds up the leg harness (C-belts were not used in period), while arming cote is the padded garment that everything else is attached to. But this is a modern distinction. Pourpoints could be civilian garments as well, pointing the hosen. Some people use seperate garments for leg harness and everything else (pourpoint and arming cote) or just one garment that everything attaches to.

"Pointing" means that you attach an item of armour to the arming garment by means of a "point", i.e. a piece of heavy duty string or twine. I believe in period, waxed hemp cord was common. The point laces through either two or 4 holes in the arming garment and usually two holes in the armour, and then is tied on the outside. If the garment fits snugly and the point is in the proper location, that should hold the armour in its correct place.

Making it all fit right is indeed the trick. They were tailored to fit the body VERY snugly, so the weight would be well distributed. If you're tailoring is not extremely accurate (or if your body is changing a lot - losing/gaining weight, etc.) it is better to lace the arming cote/poitpoint rather than button it. Both methods were used in period.

I know of no real essays on the subject, but if you get a good pattern (e.g. the Reconstructing History Grand Assiette pourpoint), it should tell you just about everything you need to know.

See here for some examples.

How does one make an arming coat for what I beleive is late 14th cent. armor ( 1370 -1400)

Carefully, with patience, and good fitting. Both Reconstructing History, and Tailoress (Tasha) on the Archive have excellent patterns and instructions for this exact garment.
http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/pr ... ourpoint-1
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/t ... s/15326605

how does one make an arming coat that fits?

By following the steps in one of the two above mentioned guides. I could write an essay explaining how, but they've already done so, and better than I could.

what is the difference between an arming coat and a pourpoint?

An arming coat, sometimes called an aketon, usually has a bit longer hem, and sleeves. A pourpoint is a sleeveless vest, usually with a hem just below your hip bones.
You can point your arms and legs to an aketon. You can only point your legs to a pourpoint. There are pros and cons to both methods.

What exactly is "pointing"

Pointing is tying a piece of armor to your arming cote with a lace (a point).

How do you attach all of the armour to the arming coat so that it fits and works correctly?

With properly positioned points, and straps on the armor. For instance, for a set of arms you might have a point high up on the back of your tricep, where you attach the rerebrace. The arm harness itself will likely have a buckled strap across the inside of your elbow, to hold the plate close to your arm, and another strap to hold your vambrace closed.

Has anybody written a full on essay on this subject?

Absolutely. Tasha and R.H. both have excellent step-by-steps on the whole process.
Also see:
http://www.revivalclothing.com/article- ... uence.aspx
http://www.cottesimple.com/blois_and_sl ... _hinge.htm
http://www.cottesimple.com/blois_and_sl ... erview.htm

Points hold armor up, straps and buckles hold armor close.

The parlance we have that uses "pourpoint" in the sense of a long, fitted vest of a few layers of fabric to hang legs off of is almost unique to here. A Charles de Blois cotehardie equipped with points for holding hosen up may also be called a pourpoint because it's doing that job as well as being a cotehardie à grands-assiètes.

Cotehardie got its name from the scandalized old fuds of the previous generation, who held that the cote was cut so daringly short and fitted so closely to one's form that it revealed almost all, and foolhardily. The whippersnappers might as well be wearing coats of paint...

RichC, I find your OP rather shocking: those are questions for posters of nine posts, not almost ninety-six hundred. What have you been doing all this time?

I was going off the assumption that he had amnesia...

Mmm. At best, making seriously sure of the fundamentals.

Konstantin the Red said

RichC, I find your OP rather shocking: those are questions for posters of nine posts, not almost ninety-six hundred. What have you been doing all this time?

Whole new ballgame Konstantin.

if you check my Pile of Junk thread on Dear Dread lord,
i state up until now My eras have been Roman, Late roman, Viking, and a little dabbeling in First crusade.

Armor= Wind, Cut, Close rings, attach rings, Finish lorica hamata
Repeat, finish late roman maille shirt
Repeat, Finish Viking maille
Repeat, add long sleeves, Finish 1st crusade Hauberk.

Heres an analogy

I could drive and gun the Shit out of an M-1 Abrahms Tank and then later, an M1117 ASV.
Now I have to go to a 4 week school to learn how to drive the shit out of a PLS, A Hemmet, a Hett and a tractor trailer.


It's still one army, but differentgroups/subsets/ and skills.

i never messed with Plate before, just collected it.

Aha. Now it is clear. You did cause some concern in more than one heart.

C'Mon dude really

This is where I learned how to make maille
this is where i found out about the Ringlord and bought a few things from him.
This is where I found the website where I bought most of the components for "Bob" ( first pic in OP)
This is where I learned how to make a shield form
and how to dish a shield boss
And how to do the whole Glue linen to a shield and
so on and so on.

i've picked up a few things.

Keegan Ingrassia wrote:

what is the difference between an arming coat and a pourpoint?

An arming coat, sometimes called an aketon, usually has a bit longer hem, and sleeves. A pourpoint is a sleeveless vest, usually with a hem just below your hip bones

http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/fash ... point.html

As knights came to wear increasingly heavy metal armor in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they needed some form of comfortable undergarment to provide padding for their body. The pourpoint was that garment. Heavily quilted and padded in key places where sharp parts of the armor contacted the skin, the pour-point was a close-fitting, long-sleeved shirt that buttoned down the front. It had carefully tailored arm sockets to allow complete range of movement for the arms which was key in battle.

Alright, fine.
The terms pourpoint, cotehardie, and aketon, as they have been described in this thread, are largely (if not solely) definitions understood and followed specifically on this forum, for the expressly modern purpose of being able to easily differentiate between articles of clothing with similar function, yet dissimilar design, for ease of conversation and discussion.

Satisfied?

Do I have to be?

I don't think we should invent new definitions for words just for here.

Though it's less that, than attempting a consensus on usage for terminology that in its time was used, uh, variably and loosely, and evolving over the decades one term into another, and then there is language-to-language differentiation.

And now, we have the remains of then, all heaped together undifferentiated.

While our living experience, very extensively documented compared with the above, is of an entirely different description of military terminology.

It keeps things from getting routine or prosaic, I must say.

Well it is a lot like defining the terms coat and jacket today. There are a wide range of items called coats and a wide range called jackets, and some people use the terms interchangably. While some almost identical items go by different names depending on usage such as a sport coat and a suit jacket which are almost identical garments.

The pourpoint very likely evolved from a military garment for holding up leg armor to a civilian garment for holding up hose. To support a legharness you need something stronger than tying them off to your braes like hose were attached when leg armour became common. Very likely the solution that worked for armor was borrowed to attach hose to it as fashions got shorter and having them tied up neatly became more important.

There is at least one reference to a pourpoint for vambraces. IIRC it is in one of the inventories in the appendixes to Ffoulkes. Ffoulkes also has an illustration of a knight arming wearing a garment that looks like the pourpoint vest that has scant documentation, but the illustration is a line drawing interpretting a painting so it may be the later artist's interpretation, not the original work that looks like a vest pourpoint.

So in effect, an please correct me if Im wrong,

An arming coat is basically a subarmalis with cords attached to it that you tie the pieces to.

Less purely a subarmalis per se, I'd think, than a field-sturdy iteration of fashionable menswear of its time, accessorized with points to hold armor up with.

The fourteenth century used something like a cotehardie, the fifteenth and sixteenth doublets in the fashions of their times. Note that late-sixteenth under-armor wear so influenced the outlines of the torso and hip defenses that the taces and tassets bloomed out to accommodate their punkin-pants. Some reckon such poofy-hose to be a weird pseudo-feminization of the male form, but this may be a stretch -- what with codpieces prevalent until the last decade or so of the trunkhose fashion.