The Armour Archive

Im just starting out and have a idea of what i need to do but info from experince armourer would help alot lol --thx

You'll get more and better help if you are more specific.

You need basic tools: a hammer, dishing form of some sort, a simple anvil.

As far as a first project try spaulders. Fairly simple but excellent for learning how to dish and shape metal, assuming metal is the material you wish to work in.

Beyond this, read the sticky on the front page of this forum that says NEWBIE QUESTIONS ANSWERED and then use the search function. Starting out armoring has been discussed many times on the AA. Once you've been through, you should have a clearer idea of what you want to learn and you'll be able to ask more specific questions.

May this be of help to you,

audax

audax wrote:As far as a first project try spaulders. Fairly simple but excellent for learning how to dish and shape metal, assuming metal is the material you wish to work in.

Welcome aboard!

Here's a great tutorial to start with:
http://www.arador.com/construction/index.html

And the essential dead-tree-format how-to source is Techniques Of Medieval Armour Reproduction: the Fourteenth Century by Brian Price, now available new in softback for around $30, hard around $50, and worth twice that. With that big a mouthful for a title, we usually abbreviate it TOMAR, and searches on the abbreviation will give you some idea of why we like it. Right now to do armor well that works ergonomically on you, you need knowledge and its history of development from mail to plate to armours of proof even more than you need tools.

Let us know what tools you already have available or are going to get in the immediate future. It is a mighty and worthy road you've chosen for yourself - perhaps a little longer than you might have expected, but we'll try and help the walking of that road be plenty of fun all the way. Welcome, alexxander, and well come.

well the tools I currently have is everything but a anvil.... and i do not have a clue were to get one...lol ive looked everywere...

is starting off with 14 gauge mild a bad plan? im also curoius on whats rolling steel, is it hard to bend? and does all armouring need to be forged? and I am also un clear on how bending a sheet say into a greave form works... i have a good idea of the concept but not fully.. -thx

Two terms:

Chainmail is actually called maille;
There is no "Plate Mail"

Alexxander wrote:Im just starting out and have a idea of what i need to do but info from experince armourer would help alot lol --thx

1) Read, study, repeat.
Get lots of books on armor - all of them help in some way even if you're not interested in the time period. All of them help more than you think they do - you'll go back and hit the books again and notice something different.
Read this forum a lot, if only to glean ideas. Don't use this forum as a reference for authenticity, do that on your own.

2) Experienced armorers don't know everything. They are also not you. I do this for the problem solving, not to reproduce what someone else did. May be different for you, I don't know.

3) Lots of tools don't teach you about how metal moves, nor do they develop good technique. But they sure are handy.

4) Despite what I insinuate in #3, it's perfectly acceptable to work in non-metal media.

Alexxander wrote:well the tools I currently have is everything but a anvil.... and i do not have a clue were to get one...lol ive looked everywere...

is starting off with 14 gauge mild a bad plan? im also curoius on whats rolling steel, is it hard to bend? and does all armouring need to be forged? and I am also un clear on how bending a sheet say into a greave form works... i have a good idea of the concept but not fully.. -thx

For an anvil you can try a piece of rail road track or something similar, any somewhat big, kind of oblong piece of metal will do when you are starting out. An anvil is just a piece of metal to pound metal on, it doesn't have to be a big ol' 400 pound monster. To make spaulders you really just need something to dish in and a hammer. You can make a lot of things with a dishing stump and a hammer, in fact.

Cold rolled just means the steel was rolled into sheet at a low temp, rather than at high temperatures. It is what most SCA armors are made from, if that is your interest. 14 gauge is fine (also what most SCA stuff is made from), but you'll probably have an easier time with something thinner, like 18 gauge to begin with, just because it is easier to work. Not all armor needs heat treating (forging, annealing, etc). Heat treatment works for things like spring steel. It allows you to make armor out of much lighter gauge metal, that is just as strong as 14 gauge cold rolled steel.

In my ever so humble opinion, greaves are rather advanced pieces to make, because of all the compound curves involved. As it turns out, the human lower leg is not a tube or a cone. It is a surprisingly complex structure. Make the spaulders first, then make some more, then maybe try some couters or poleyns. Making these fairly simple pieces will be the best experiential training on making armor you can get. Once you've got these down, try some more complex pieces, like a helm. You can make all these things with nothing but a hammer and a dishing form and a simple anvil for peening rivets.

Welcome to the madness, dude.

audax

I heartily second Konstantin's advice on picking up TOMAR. It is THE armoring resource.

one last question, lol whats dishing?

Alexxander wrote:one last question, lol whats dishing?

It is the act of pounding a piece of metal into a shallow concave form (like a dish or bowl) in order to form a concavity in the metal so that the armor piece can be made to embrace the curvy bits of the human form. Check out the spaulder tutorial at Arador that Smilingotter posted. It'll show you what I'm talking about. Check these pics http://www.arador.com/construction/index.html Dishing and sinking are pretty much the same idea. You can also deburr metal with a file.

Alright awesome! id like to thank u all for ur help:)

There are two basic ways to get a compound curve into metal: dishing and raising. Dishing we've already spoken of -- pound metal into a form: tool and die stuff. Raising (has its own chapter in TOMAR, practically) is considerably better for making really deep curvatures, and amounts to hammering something down from the outside over a form of some kind, rather than hitting on the inner surface as dishing does. Dishing stretches and thins the middle of a piece of metal like blowing a piece of bubble gum; raising pushes the outer edge of a piece of metal into a smaller radius, slightly thickening the metal, at least in theory -- you'd need careful measuring to see the difference, though. Raising is essential for making a really good elbow cop and is pretty much the only historical method of making a hounskull visor for a 14th-c. bascinet -- the pointy visor like a greyhound's shnoz.

Spun metal -- see "spuntops" -- is a power-tool, lathe-like edition of raising. It's a feature of some quite inexpensive, crudely formed but reasonably effective (that is, you don't get your head caved in) Creative Anachronist helmets.

Do you have a particular medieval-fighting game you are designing for? There are some few medieval-combat groups, ranging from some pretty fluffy LARPs through the SCA on to several living-history groups with very meticulous focus and equipment standards to match. All these have their peculiar, particular requirements from their armor and these needs reflect in the design. For instance, SCA armor favors more movement at the wrist and the knee than many historical plate harnesses would give, and this often shows in a bit of extra articulation.

14 gauge mild is an excellent material, particularly for helmets and kneecops made by dishing. The thick metal gives you a margin for error. If you find yourself an anvil [RR track, shortish length of I-beam] you'll find use for it, but to an armourer, an array of stakes to form the metal over and something to hold the stakes in, is of more use: mushroom stakes or ball stakes in a few sizes, creasing stakes, and raising is done over stakes a lot. Much armor plate shaping is done cold, but doing it red hot (at least right where you're pounding) can be both faster and easier, particularly in initial roughing-out.

By "rolling steel" I suppose you mean hot-rolled or coldrolled steel. Hot-rolled is black/rusty in color and is somewhat softer mild steel than cold-rolled, which is steel color and a touch stiffer to begin with. Both can be made somewhat stiffer by the workhardening that occurs when you hammer metal into compound curves. You don't want too much workhardening all at once because right after workhardening comes fatiguing of the metal and it begins to crack, which pretty much ruins that part of the metal. Steel such as this is suitable for plate armor -- high-grade/high-carbon steel is for springs, knives, swords, razors, files -- stuff that cuts.