The Armour Archive

Greetings,

At Pensic some of you may have seen the gauntlet I was trying to make, an hourglass mitten gauntlet mad to look like a finger gauntlet(the Mark 1). Now I am working on the Mark2(thumb in the right place this time). For the first one I tried to articulate the lames together. Carefully examining pictures of what other's have done, it looks like many are riveting the lames to a pice of leather, more of a scale construction than an articulation. Questions, which method would have an appearance closer to gauntlets used c1380?
How well would the "scale" design hold up under SCA combat? If doing the "scale" should the lames still be slightly dished (in pictures they seem flat -- or as flat as possible given the lames are shaped as if they were fingers).
I think I like the look of the scale, but I am reluctant to give up on making the articulation, it feels too much like quitting because it's hard.

Geoffrey

Okay. you have actually got a few questions of wildly differing answers going.

Okay, firstly, most mitten guants seem to have been articulated plate-to-plate....the fact that you have made it look like it has fingers is merely a matter of decoration (hopefully nice decoration, but not severly relevent in that what we are dealing with is a mitten gaunt.)

Some of my gaunts are made with leather articulation, but this is an adaptation for the highly wrist-based style of SCA fighting. Leather articulation lets you get that roll and tennis-raquet power-grip thing happening. Purely a sports equipment that looks like armour based desicion.

To the best of my knowledge Gaunts in 1380 were still mostly maille gloves or mittens with a half-gauntlet. Maybe even a half gaunt with one articulated plate coming down from the knuckles. Full clamshell gaunts are a later period artifact. So whatever you come up with is going to have to have an element of compromise for safety and compliance with the rules.


The answer to almost any question of "should this be dished" is yes. The human body offers very little in the way of great flat expanses.
The dishing in gauntlet parts adds strength and gives a much better stylistic line to the result. Also consider counter-rolling or belling out your cuffs.

Don't quit becasue its hard. Make a commitment to make at least four sword gaunts that test and improve your skills, one after another, using what you learnt form the last to aid the design of the next. If at the end of that you are still getting severly restricted movement and people you have asked for advise just shrug and say it is as good as it is getting....then consider compromising to the SCA sports version. Try for the real thing first. It isn't easy, but it is doable and emminently satisfying once you have managed it. Hint is that everyone's hands are different, so is the way that everyone moves. Buying off-the-shelf or website ordered gaunts is never going to be the best solution.
Hint two is not to use overly large rivets for articulating gaunts. 1/8 shank rivets are about as big as you want to get, anything larger starts restricting plate movement just by the amount of bulk that each rivet takes up. (but use decent sized rivets on legs, helms and other armour, of course)

Finger gaunts (if you decide to go that way) are even more of a mine field walk between authentic armour reproduction and SCA neccesities.
If you make the nifty metal-to-metal articulated finger gaunt then each finger will be spread by the width of four layers of steet and two peened rivets at every joint. This gets painful and crampy real fast. It also tends to be heavy.
If you go for the more period solution of using scales on gloves for the fingers then you will need to curve the plates so as to spread the impact to the rattan...this makes the scales more prone to tearing free or chomping down and pinching other finger. ouch.

For the above reason, I also tend to "fake" fingers onto mitten gaunts for SCA combat.
but the wallpaper on my computer is of a pair of beautiful full gothic finger gaunts....

Still, as a friend once said about SCA armouring "If you are in service to the dream, then armour authenticity is your worst nightmare"


Sasha


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Work like you were living in the early days of a better nation

-Oysterband

Since I haven't used gaulntlets made in either way I can't give an opinion as to which works best, but I know that Robert MacPherson does a shell articulation while most others I have seen in this style articulate the lames on leathers. Don't know if that helps.

Dave