The Armour Archive

I dont know what I dont do correctly but I tried all trick in all tutorial I read and nothing works. The tutorial shows a beautiful flute with a regular width, sharpness, height and hammermarkless. making them on a V shaped log is crap, it make a too large base and irregular height. What are the tools needed and a GOOD stake shape in order to make these. I need to know this because I must do some on pauldrons for a customer.

Please help.

PS check out my fluting lines on my website

Tons of practice!
Have you tried cleaning the flutes up over a stake/chisel after making them? Sort of looks in the pics that you pound them in from the back and then stop there. Try clamping your chisel in a vise and using a mirror faced hammer to sharpen them up.
But practice is the real key.

Chris

deleted

You could get this video that contains fluting:

http://www.armourguild.org/videos.php

The worst thing about this is that they are mostly shaped on a chisel stake. I dont have any raising hammer and there is no place to get one around my home. It's a bit expensive. I've tried to make one but didn't make the round surface it explain alot of things

By the way, what the stake in the video is made from, it looks like very useful.

A well polished small ballpien with the edges rounded over works almost as well as a raising hammer for cleaning up the flutes.
I bought several hammers from http://www.bernieslapidary.com My favorite is the # 37.303 Silversmiths hammer. It is a bit light for heavier gauges but works great for the thinner stuff.

Chris

The video stake is probably forged and treated steel.
The sketch was very well done. I can't improve on that.
Allot of good advice so far.

Only thing I may add is on the hammer. Notice in the sketch by Gruber,
The hammer is longer in the horizontal axis.

Eastwood Co. has an auto body hammer called the door hammer. It has a nice shape.
http://www.eastwoodco.com/images/us//lo ... l/p896.jpg

A small cross peen hammer ground to that shape is nice.
A larger pall peen hammer ground would work too.

My fluting stakes are merely the pointed end of a RR spike, sanded smooth.
They are the tools that made Debby knight of the living dead, the skull face helm (which by the way got bumped from the armour of the month club). Kyle rounded down one RR spike quite a bit, and used it to flute the eye and cheek bones.

I have used a small hand ax blade to flute on. It is the tapping with the hammer that makes it work. Hold the metal at an angle and tap on the side that is in the air.
The stake will show thru as a bump, use this as a guide.

Best of luck on your quest.

Hal