The Armour Archive

There is an excellent essay on this site, "Construction of Chinese Mountain Pattern Armour" by Sun Lu-shan. He says it is also called Chinese Star Scale armour.

Has anyone got any other sources for this type of armour?

Thanks for the reference, but that's the one that started my search! I'm looking for others!

Found a reference to the "wu pei chi", a book published in China in 1621, which might have some info. Anyone know if it is available? My searches so far haven't found a modern (re)publisher.

one of the local Mongols has made a set of this, sewed each side of each star to all the ajoining sides, must have been an incredible pain in the arse to sew, but the end product is awful nice looking

Halvgrimr

Hi andras,

If you find any information, let me know! I've been looking for a few years now, and while I have constructed a test piece out of 20g stainless, and my *theoretical* design works well, I have not found any concrete construction details. Plenty of statues and paintings, but not one piece of existing armour. I have a good chinese reference book that has at least 100 images of this type of armour, and might have some construction detrails, but I can't read it . Anyone able to translate Chinese?

Here is a pic of my test piece that I made with klangiron:



these plates look like hell, but experimentation has inspired me to try to find an affordable source for the 800-1000 that I'll need for a full suit. So far, no luck.

Cheers, Lu-shan

Oh yes, updates to my armour saga can be found here:

http://www.geocities.com/schizeckinosy/Shanwenkia/shanwenkia.html

Cheers, Lu-shan

Lu-Shan,

Thanks for the prompt reply!
My wife has a student who can read Chinese, so if it isn't too much trouble to photocopy the relevant pages and mail them to me (I'm hesitant about readability if it's scanned and then printed), I'll see what I can do.

I'll be glad to pay photocopy and postage costs, and will post the translation here (and send you a copy as well).

Andras Salamandra

David Wendelken
818 Azalea Drive
Fayetteville, NC 28301 USA
davewendelken@earthlink.net

Lu-shan, If your interested I'd be happy to get you a quote on laser cutting the armour components. I use laser cutting for alot of my massed produced Rough from the Hammer parts and it can be surprisingly affordable. I can also look into the costs of getting a punch made which is the way I may be going for roman lorica squamata scales. E-mail me if your interested.

Dave
Vulcan's Forge Inc.

I tried to get a quote on laser cutting some titanium sheet I have in C-Springs before I left. They wanted to charge me $1.00 a plate. That's $800-$1000 for all the plates. I'm still holding out for a less expensive solution. I would be interested in a punch. How does it work? Do you drive it with a hammer? Do you use a press?

Buqu

andras,

It might be quicker and more responsive if I scan them and put them on the web. Would that work? This way, If you needed more pages I could get them up quickly.

My SS plates cost about $1 each to make as well. That's ridiculous. I'd be interested in around 15c per plate I have access to a hydraulic press I think, so a punch may be ideal.

Cheers, Lu-shan

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Lu-shan:
<B>I have access to a hydraulic press I think, so a punch may be ideal.

Cheers, Lu-shan</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Assumeing I can get the thing put together that is.

Has any of this armor ever been found? Given the lengths people have to go through to make it work, is it possible that the sculptures represent an "artist's convention", like the way some European artists represented mail?

------------------
Owen
"Death is but a doorway-
Here, let me hold that for you"

[This message has been edited by Owen (edited 10-30-2002).]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Owen:
<B>Has any of this armor ever been found? Given the lengths people have to go through to make it work, is it possible that the sculptures represent an "artist's convention", like the way some European artists represented mail?

</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Owen, AFAIK, none of this armour is extant. China being the way it is, it is quite possible there is a kit mouldering away in a forgotten corner somewhere. I have never seen a single bit, or heard reference to any, though.

I am quite convinced that it WAS an existing armour. There are hundreds of depictions in statues and paintings, and they all pretty much agree as to what it looked like. Judging from other paintings and statues that represent other, existing objects, they were pretty accurate about such things.

As far as the "lengths" I had to go to to get it to work, it was actually fairly easy to make a workable design once I had a vague verbal description of what each plate looked like. It all fell into place, and has wonderful armour-like properties The problem comes when I try to *prove* that this design is accurate.

The quest goes on...

Lu-shan

Try scanning in a few pages and emailing them to me. I'll see if the resolution is good enough.