The Armour Archive

I'm cosidering basing my new legharness on the example from Chartres Cathedral where the poleyn is articulated directly to the cuisse. I'm concerned, however, that this articulation may not allow sufficient range of motion for the SCA convention of fighting from one's knees. Does anyone have experience or advice in this regard?

I had that exact same concern, so I had Mac do my Chartres cuisses with a more standard (to our way of thinking) articulation (not because I want to be able to kneel in them, these legs aren't for that). One person I know who did it this way said that it limited your ability to go to your knees; his contention was that heavier folks would have difficulty bending their legs because the room simply wasn't there.

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Hugh Knight
"Welcome to the Church of the Open Field, let us 'prey': Hunt hard, kill swiftly, waste nothing, make no apologies"

The Chartres Harness was not designed for kneeling in, only normal walking and riding. While I haven't seen the movement of the real harness, I'd be surprised if it would bend much past 90 degrees.

For a comfortable SCA combat leg harness, the ideal range of motion is from straight (or preferably a bit more than straight, if you look at your leg you will notice that it hyperextends a bit) to a 45 or 35 degree angle when bent. You don't need a full 180 degree range of motion as with a good arm harness, simply because your legs don't bend that much. (Or at least, most peoples legs don't.)


Frederich

There are a few surviving sets like this. There arepictures of them in L'Arte - and it bends past 90 degrees. You can see two of them on pages 47 and 54.

I have a pair that I made for SCA combat.

They work just fine.

You can't quite sit on your ankles, but there are a lot of reasons for this in my legs. One of them is that they don't bend back a full 180 degress - never really necessary but SCA people seem to have the impression it is. More importantly, they are actually made to kind of fit my legs, so they aren't a mile wide at the knee. This limits somewhat the amount you can flatten your leg out into a pancake while kneeling. This really should be true of any reasonably formed set of legs no matter the form of the knee articulation.

Make them this way - we need some more variety in the SCA.

If you make greaves to go with them you can make everything stop before you sit on your ankles - then you don't have to get into this absurd position and your armour can look reasonable.

Wade

Thanks for the advice gentelmen. I will go ahead and make them as per the Chartres examples. At worst I'll have a legharness just for Pas and such where I won't be required to "squat like a toad".

Wade, do you know of any sites where I might see the other examples you referred to?

Thanks again

Dave

I am running out of space so I sent them to you by e-mail. You can post them if you have space....

Wade