The Armour Archive

Hey all, here are several projects that I worked on this summer (nothing like keeping a scholarship and your parents letting you work on metalworking projects all summer). Some stick fairly close to historical styles; others are historical fantasy pieces. The pictures are in pages that are going into my armour portfolio, so that is why there are the layman's explanations about some of the pieces. If in any of the text you see glaring errors (such as attributing a style to the wrong century or period, please say so).

After seeing some of the other fabulous work that has been posted over the summer, such as Ugo's wonderful Gorgon pauldron, I feel like some of my work isn't quite as impressive, but then I remind myself that I've only been doing this for two years and that many of the guys on here have been doing it for decades. I feel like practice makes perfect, and I hope that constantly working I will continue to develop my eye and my hammering skills so that eventually I will be able to make pieces that are as close to original pieces as possible.

Enjoy! Please comment and criticize!

all the best,
Martin Hodges


p.s. I apologize for the grainy image quality...I had to reduce it a lot to get them to fit on the message board. If anyone wanted to see higher quality images, I can pull some pictures out separately.

Um, I don't see any pictures...

image problems fixed. here are some more.

and one of my favorite shots of me modeling my armour and helmet.

I can only see a few of them, but I can see the pic of you modeling your own stuff. Pretty cool look, sorta a futuristic feel to me.

Nice!

Do you have a website?

Very nice.

Chris

My my... you have been busy...

Welcome to the archive and thanks for the pics I enjoyed them.

Hal

Ivan, I don't have a website yet, but I hopefully I will before too long. Until then I will continue to post my more interesting projects here at the AA.

Martin

Nice!

I espcially like the corinthian helm with the sunken in cheeks, it adds quite a evil/futuristic feel to it IMO. I like it, taking historical designs and adding your own little flair to it. keep up the good work!

Happy hammering and welcome to the Armour Archive,

Aaron

I espcially like the corinthian helm with the sunken in cheeks, it adds quite a evil/futuristic feel to it IMO. I like it, taking historical designs and adding your own little flair to it. keep up the good work!

Thanks, the helmet was one of those projects that took a life of its own. When I began it, I merely took the idea of combining a Corinthian helmet with spangen construction. I made the skull and the flared skirt on the back, but when I got to making the face, it had such a skeletal, evil look to it that I hadn't even intended, so I decided to emphasize it. I sunk the cheeks in even more. And I left it with a raw steel finish. The final result I thought was quite an interesting combination.