The Armour Archive

Am I the only guy freehanding bargrills aka placing each bar in place and welding or has everyone not come up with a quicker, more precise method ?

I was thinking of building a barstock holder or some such to the general shape of a typical grill and one for basket hilts. my thought was something I could bolt the bars down in place, weld the entire thing together and unbolt the finished chunk.

anyone got anything remotly like this or are we all stumbling around with rulers and 1/4 barstock?

i freehand all mine, i dont use a ruler either. I have made forms i bend mine around.

Freehand also.
I have a gauge ( 13/16ths) attached to the bench to test all openings.

Alail

I rivet my bargrills. The bars pass through a central spacer bar with those holes measured out, which keeps the whole thing uniform. I've always had good luck that way.

(I also test the spacing afterward to make sure it's OK... and it always is)

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Otto's Armoury
(home of one HIGHLY overworked armourer!) http://www.members.tripod.com/SBvast

Freehand.

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Some friends and I who recently started an armouring guild for our local sca group (aneala, western australia, currently kingdom of the west, soon to be kingdom of lochac). Anyways we were equally frustrated with the spacing of barwork and produced a bar spacing tool made from 3 pieces of dowel wood in a triangle formation. The point goes into the centre of your helm and provided your barwork is mostly straight you get correct spacing at the base and in the centre.

note that this does not work if you want to fancy up your barwork with irregular bars, i made a bevor for the sallet i am working on out of barwork (it is welded to the bottom of the flip top visor) and this contraption did not work well here, as my bars were bent in 3 ways.

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is my arm supposed to bend like this?

Hi Samual,
Did you ever see the grill mandril that I made? It is basically a plate grill, with guides welded on. You prebend the bars, bolt them on and weld. Only takes about 1-1/2hours to do a grill that way.
-Cad