The Armour Archive

And more pics

Wow, this is getting really old

While working on the spaulder, I ran into a little bit of a snag. When I try to rivit the lames onto a strip of leather I cant get one side on. I have the rivits hidden behind other lames so that it looks better, but I believe this is what is causing the problem. The problem is basically that I can't get my peening hammer underneath the other lame in order to peen the rivit. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Start at the bottom lame and work your way up to the shoulder cop. That way the rivets you are working on are exposed.

Keep going. You are getting the hang of things.

Chris

Finally finished those spaulders and here are the pictures of the thing.

Definitely making a lot of progress.

I think some of your problem may lie in your dishing stump. From what I can see, it could be a lot smoother on the interior and maybe a little more concave. An angle grinder can help with that. Do a search here on the archive for dishing stumps and you'll be able to see what other folks have done. If it's smoother when you dish, you won't have such a hard time planishing in the end. Any errant stroke while dishing will give a much harder row to hoe when you get to the planishing stage.

How do you secure your planishing stakes?

Your work is really improving.

audax

audax wrote:I think some of your problem may lie in your dishing stump. From what I can see, it could be a lot smoother on the interior and maybe a little more concave.

Yeah, it looks like it could be deeper.

Icefire - The cops don't appear to be dished so much as given a wide reverse flare at the top, since the bottom 3/4s of it look bent rather than dished. This seems to be a feature of many of the pieces you've shown us.

Icefire wrote:About planishing, I have already tried that for quite a bit. Probably 30 miniutes.

The photos of the shoulder cops (100_0546.JPG and 100_0549.JPG) look like you missed a lot of spots, maybe 80%? By the time you're finished planishing, there should be no square millimeter of dished surface that hasn't been hit by the planishing hammer. Otherwise, polishing can take forever, unless you use really aggressive sanding and remove way too much of the thickness.

For my second pass of planishing, I will take a small piece of #400 or #600 sandpaper, and rub it lightly over the outside of the steel, all in the same direction. If you hold it at a certain angle to your main light source (positioned off to the left or right side), the fine scratches (which should all be running towards and directly away from you, not left-to-right) will show up as bright highlights because they are reflecting light from the side. Everywhere you hit, the fine scratches mostly disappear, and the spots you hit now reflect whatever is directly across from you (say, a wall). If that wall is dark (or at least not brightly lit), then the hammer mark goes dark too. Essentially, I just keep hitting at all the bright spots until they're gone.

I go by sound, too. If it's more of a "ping" than a "clank", then I move on to another spot, 1/8" away.

The "dollies" you're using for planishing might be fine for certain surfaces, but you should get something like a large mushroom or ball stake, with a more spherical curve. It doesn't have to be a complete sphere, like a shotput, as long as the top is round like part of a sphere. I mostly use one of two cast-iron dumbbells (cheap, from WalMart). A 3-pound one, and (I think) a 10-pound one. Both have had the ends ground and polished to get rid of the rough surface, and one end of each is slightly more tightly curved than the other end, so I have more choice in the radius.

Before I got my big bench vise I found I could use the big dumbbell by sitting it on an upside-down peanut butter jar lid, and duct-taping it down to keep it from wandering around.

That hammer with the pick on the back end looks fine for planishing, especially if you keep it polished.

As for the ball-peen hammer, the ball end might still be too pointy for most dishing. Doming and polishing the flat end might work better for you. Save the ball end for peening rivets, or get a different hammer for all-purpose bashing and peening so you don't wreck the polished domed faces. You can't have too many hammers. - http://justus.pair.com/ShopPhotos/slides/Hammers4.html

Hi Icefire,

You're doing pretty well but I agree with what others have said - your dishing stump should be as smooth as poss. and you need to take care to cover the entire piece when planishing. In this pic I have started planishing the shoulder cop after dishing.

You would do better using a ball stake ( a shot-put ball welded to a post would do fine ).

You can see the rest of the spaulders and cop at www.armourdesign.dial.pipex.com/pc08.htm if it's any help.

and in this one the planishing is finished


Mike

Hi Icefire,

I was the one who made the suit in the first photo you posted and am in the process of making another for a customer. The cuirass is about 70% finished and I will try to get a few pictures for you of how the straps and lance rest work. My mind is on a lot of other things right now so please email to remind me if I forget and don't post in the next few days.

That style of armour is a bit deceptive and is harder to make than it appears. Don't let it intimidate you though. Any armour is hard to make but the bulk of this suit isn't harder than any other IMHO. The pieces I find tricky are the cuirass assembly and the armet. What makes the breast and back assembly so hard is trying to get all the pieces to mate up and move well. The rough forming of those pieces are no harder than any other breast and back... Just the fitting them together properly.

I find that the more challenging a project is the more I learn. I won't discourage you from making a Milanese harness but just be prepared that it is going to be time consuming and may not turn out perfect on the first attempt.

Keep up the good work. I will try to upload some pictures tonight or tomorrow.

William

I am sorry I didn't reply as soon as said I would. Some things came up that demanded my attention for a few weeks.

Anyway, This may be too little too late but here are some pictures of the cuirass and lance rest pegs I was taking about. The lance rest isn't finished yet. I decided to make the lance rest out of 2 pieces and weld them for now and maybe forge one later from one piece someday when I have free time.









If you do decide to make a Milanese harness I highly recommend the world of the Medieval Knight by Christopher Gravett as it has exploded detailed illustrations of every part in a Milanese suit. I have a link to it on Amazon from the book page on my site... http://www.ageofarmour.com/instock/books.html

Hope this can be of help,

William