The Armour Archive

As my first post (a long time lurker) I would like to say you folks run a good forum here. Very informative, polite, and super interesting!

Ok, about me:
1. Never been to a SCA meeting but i know i'll enjoy it.
2. You can guess from above i haven't done any SCA fighting.
3. I plan on making my own armor, might take a while- but thats ok.
4. I've ordered a b2 Beverly!!! I can't wait!

What I'm thinking about doing:
1. I'm mostly German with a Lithuanian family name, so i want to steer in that "general" direction.

2. This is the helm i ordered (crappy photochop i made) that sparked my whole interest into this realm. I have zero clue how i landed at trueheart armories' website, and why i order it. It should be done at the end of this month (with additional SCA grill). I know the visor is long-
[img]http://valuckas.com/armor/helm1.jpg[/img]

3. This is the only Lithuanian armor reference pics i can find on-line. 14th century i think- You guys would know A LOT better then me! So I'm trying to find the main themes of this time in their armor.
[img]http://valuckas.com/armor/lith.jpg[/img]

4. OK this is where I'm getting really weird on you. This is a pic from the movie Jin Roh- I would like to take from this source as well as above.
[img]http://valuckas.com/armor/jinroh.jpg[/img]


5. This is a fiberglass version i made (fiberglass sucks!!! Fun to make though). The plates were super clunky.
[img]http://valuckas.com/armor/fiber1.jpg[/img]

6. Here are some chops i came up with while thinking about the armor setups.
[img]http://valuckas.com/armor/armoridea1.jpg[/img][img]http://valuckas.com/armor/armoridea3.jpg[/img]

7. This is going to be my first kit, so its going to be pretty raw and straight forward (nothing much like the above pics). So look at the big picture. I would like a nice blend of real and fantasy.

Well i hope you didn't vomit too much, Thank You for any insight and practical knowledge you can provide!

Great Jin Roh armour. I am more of a Ranma fan myself, but I have friends who are in to that. I wonder if Briarios from Applesead.. never mind.
Anyway, I am also very new at this and finding a lot of help here. The big advice I have seen is start small. You may want to avoid buying things until you know that they qualify for the rules and also that they fit. I have heard that when you buy online you either send in your measurements or you end up sending back and forth till it fits. (if you are lucky and they will customize it). The other option is modifying it yourself. I personally started on a helm and found that the most important things to get, besides the shear, are dishing plates. They let you make things cupped instead of just round or wrinkled.
Find out if anyone in your area is currently making armour. If you can get help from someone who has done this before it really helps.

As a side note, steel looks great and has all kinds of advantages, however, speed of creation is not one of them. You might want to start with plastic or leather armour while you start making patters for your dream "harness."
Good luck

I have learned to never ever ever trust any manga-stormtrooper suits.

There's a reason European plate armor looks the way it does: those shapes are the most ergonomic. The farther a manga-stormtrooper suit strays from the original plate armor configuration, the worse it works. A point you should keep in mind is you're going to have plenty enough to do in fighting just the other guy -- you shouldn't be fighting your suit too.

The pic shows gear from the fifteenth century -- you can tell by how many different kinds of helmets there are -- barbutes, sallets, kettlehats. I bet you could find some close-helmets (armets and close-helmets) too if you look close. Oh, yeah, there's one, center right. Below him is somebody in a cone-top barrel hat that's really late 13th century, though.

I don't recommend the Uruk-hai breastplate, either. Those things were simply worse than useless, in my military mind: they added weight while their articulation positively invited a thrust from below straight into the wearer's vitals, and he too weighted by his armor to run away. That isn't protection, that is a casualty-maker. Try and design something that doesn't guide a point into your intimate personality, even if this is of limited relevance to the SCA rattan game.

In the SCA game, greaves should stop below the knee, and the knee protection should articulate. Trying to do it all with one single piece of metal with no joints and not curving around the kneecap from its top to its bottom means your leg will be acutely uncomfortable if you are fighting from your knees in the SCA-distinctive mode of battling on after getting a leg taken. A lever effect gets set up, you see, and the strap of your greave tries to drag your leg into the ground if you're kneeling -- and with force. Besides, most SCAdians usually do without steel greaves, making do with a demigreave below their knees, since the legal target area is from the top of the cop on up. It's worthwhile to make any greave you use of lighter metal, as it amounts to safety gear that will not get hammered on daily in the ordinary course of things, unlike your shieldside thigh and your helmet. You can get away with lighter metal there.

I'd look askance at that helmet, too -- doesn't look like there's good seeing or breathing to be had from it as it sits. It is made of heavy enough metal to be legal, right?? If the skull's built heavy enough, you might end up opting for a bargrill.

Likely your next purchase should be a book: Techniques Of Medieval Armour Reproduction: the Fourteenth Century by Brian Price. Shop around for a good price on it. Amazon.com runs about seventy bux, but AFAIK will ship for free at that price. Half-Price Books or AbeBooks may give you a deal you like better, though. With this book in your hands, you'll begin to gain an eye for what actual steel armor, intended to resist swords, actually looked like and how it worked.

The manga fighting suits, you've noticed, don't give you that.

Darn nice convention costume contest rig, though. Win any prizes? Even cos-play is fun.

Thank you guys Very Very much!! Thank you for giving me a detailed insight and because of that I think now I’ll stick with something period. I'll pick up a copy of Brian Price's book as well.

Thanks again, i think i needed a slap into reality HAHAHAH

Ahhh, Jin-Roh. How many times I've wanted to make that armor.

Anyway, to go back to actual topic at hand, the existant armor is, indeed, made because it's effective. However, the armor from Jin Roh and the Orc armor from Appleseed is loosely based off of real Japanese armor. The sode (upper arm coverings) in particular. It goes without saying they're decidedly un-European, however.

Check out http://www.sengokudaimyo.com and you'll see some similarities.

If you want a harness from a region and time, you're better off not doing the piece-by-piece stuff. If you want a neat looking but ahistoric composite, you can do some neat stuff, but don't expect to look authentic.

Whichever way you want to go.

As the topics have been covered, I will not reiterate them here.

I will say this.

In the SCA, start with as much historical accuracy as you can. Then improve upon it. Not only will it benefit you, it will benefit everyone around you.

I will post a couple of pics of my kit change within a 3 month period last year later this evening.

Start by going to a fight practice, getting in the nasty and ill-fitting loaner armour, and trading rattan.

This will:

- give you first hand knowledge of how your body needs to move to fight, thus allowing you to better design the kit you want. SCA fighting is closer to tennis than it is to what you see on "Braveheart". Understanding the basics of power generation coming from the hip/body and not the arm will keep you from fighting the armor -- because it was designed incorrectly.

- give you a chance to try different types of armours so you can see what workes the best with the way your body moves. I never would have used lamellar if some one hadn't allowed me to don their curias -- now I'm hooked.

- allow you to get fighting experience while you're working on your kit so that when its ready, you are too!

- get you hooked on fighting with adrenal sauce and sprinkles and a cherry on top!


Take this for what its worth, but I recommend starting with something simple like a colar gorget. Then make splinted vambraces and cuisses. Learn the basics and make a kit that you can later loan to your neighbor to beat on once you put the full kit you really want together (Rome wasn't built in a day).

My friend started fighting last summer. He's also making a full kit of plate. So far he's made the breast and back plate, and shoulders cops/ lames. He's working on the elbows and knees, but not getting the engineering down because he's spending so much time making corrections to the breast/back and shoulders. He didn't account for a padded garnment under it so he gets lotts of unhappy metal on flesh owies.

Don't get me wrong - his enthusiasm and dedication are truely motivating and for his first attempt at armouring it great, but thank God that there's enough loaner stuff around to outfit him while he's making his kit.

There's nothing wrong with buying a cheap helm and other bits also when you start. 1) the ugly factor will keep you motivated to work on your project and 2) you can always resell the stuff later.

Good luck!

Thanks for you help guys! Lots of great advice (and no flaming, you have a good forum here) and i will take every bit of it!!

Also, I note you live in Baltimore. I'm assuming that's Baltimore, MD?

There are at least three fantasy LARPs in your area that allow for fighting w/o armor. They use foam boffers instead of rattan, so you can do things like run around w/o armor, tackle, use flails, etc.

I know they get a bad rep from the SCAdains, but if you're into the fantasy aspects of things, they're worth checking out.

www.darkon.org - Fantasy based fighting game with magic and a conquering element to it. (There's a map of the world that the teams, aka countries, can conquer and take over.)

www.archaea.org - Smaller game based on an adventuring party

www.dagorhir.org - Fantasy game based entirely on fighting, with no magic elements

All those games have rules for using armor, and I know that both Darkon and Archaea ban plastic, titanium and aluminum armors.