Interesting that you either planned, or lucked into, the way to avoid the 4 Corners 4 Layers situation, so you didn't have to improvise a rivet long enough to get through a full four layers of steel stacking up right there.
You can stagger the vertical side seam a good bit, and completely, well, not altogether duck, but much lessen, the four-layer problem, knocking it down to no worse than three layers -- yeah, sure, in two places on each side. Enough metal in either three layers or four to make flush riveting a real option. Flush rivets like some depth. Same for semi-flush: a flush rivet that rounds up above the surface rather than be completely flush with it.
Width of sights, good; breadth of sights, good. Worked down a solid riveting flange, I see -- took some time, didn't it? -- and that can go smoother with final hammerings upon an anvil (&/or substitute) face to take out the little ripples.* I bet you can get the bend-line where the flange angles over from the top cap straighter with a light pre-dishing of the top cap, and Sharpie-ing in your bend-line so it doesn't wander; you'll have a mark to work to.
*When you hit the ripples, strike at a slight sideways angle, not necessarily straight up and down, and rebound at a slight angle the same direction too. You are trying to make the hammer impact slide an invisible bit and noodge the metal slightly sideways around the circumference of the flange, both flattening the metal and shortening the periphery.
Shortening the piece's total periphery is what makes raising work. The metal must perforce bow and bulge to still be within the new, tightened periphery. Theoretically it thickens the metal slightly at the edges. But it does very little to the metal in the middle of the piece, so you're not in danger of thinning it so much it fatigues and cracks or even has the hammer rip through it. After all that work, that's a real
doublebarrelled pisser.
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Next Up: Raising Cops
Sooner or later you're going to be applying this to making cops for knee (easy), shoulder (even easier bcs not as deep) or elbow (tougher, bcs very deep and pointier). Soft-hammer-hard-anvil for the cup parts is really pretty easy. The fan and the corners where fan meets cup is where most of the trouble lies -- the corners will concentrate stress during forming the cup and crack your metal. The secret is
no corners, period --
even if corners appear in the finished product. You file them into their final desired shape after you've done with all the hammering. Simple, no? So if you're doing cop & fan in one piece, where the fan springs out should be a radius, a curve.
Another main way to avoid fan corner problems is to rivet the fan on after you've formed the cup -- and formed the lobes of the fan. Which helps fans resist getting bent in on you from low hits, which aren't supposed to count anyway, making the knee fan entirely a piece of safety gear. Doing some sculpting there adorns it handsomely. Creases, domes, conical curvatures, all that.
Shoulder cops are the top pieces of spaudlers, and cup round the point of the shoulder. Method's pretty much self explanatory; you can dish them, they just wrap around your flesh and bone a bit up there, and they hang from your arming-coat with some tied thong. You
could strap and buckle a spaud as part of some shoulder harness, but compared to lacing it to the shoulder of an arming coat or gambeson, straps are clumsy. A fitted coat also really keeps your shoulder-muscle armor from flopping back and forth and getting misplaced. A 15th-c. type independent spaudler gets a strap and buckle down at its other end. In the 14th, they permanently attached the spaudler-like articulations to the top end of the rerebrace, in one with the rest of the arm. The 15th loosened that up.
Knees are bigger and deeper and may have fans -- laterally, on the outside. They'll snag on the inside of your knee, so avoid putting 'em there. The have a rather large radius to their cup and are getting on to hemispherical in shape, like about 2/3 of a hemisphere. Same goes for your knee itself, it's like a lumpy hemisphere when flexed tight. They could be made entirely by dishing; raising, while more demanding, is also more flexible and doesn't thin and stretch the metal in the middle of the cop.
Elbow cops really require a raising method unless you make two halves and weld these together, like most (reasonably sensible) people. Flex your elbow all the way and look at it: much pointier than your knee doing the same thing. The point of your elbow is pretty much a lumpy cone shape, and elbow cops have to be pretty conical too. Even with all that, you also notice your elbow joint does not close completely like a nutcracker's levers -- there is an acute angle between upper arm and forearm. Advanced-model elbow cops' fans are formed to that angle, and to wrap around the forearm and upper arm somewhat, making very tight protection of each arm against a lance thrust. Cool, huh?
