The Armour Archive

Being a perfectionist is really bad for making armour. I started 7 different spaulders today and only one came close to what I wanted. How do you get the lames to fit so close together? I tried for 3 hours trying to get them to fit realy close but to no avail.

James

James, you should know better by now.

What kind of spaulder (time period, country of origin and such are all helpful here)? Do you have a photo or pattern of what you are trying to do? What tools do you have available? What have you tried to do so far?

Much of the advice that we can offer depends upon exactly what you are trying to do. When you give very general information, we can only give very general replys, such as "put it over the appropriate form and hit it."


Frederich

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Frederich Von Teufel:
<B>James, you should know better by now.
</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You very right, I should have been more specific.

I working with a pattern very similar to Prices' in TOMAR and featured on Arador. Hte cop is 16 ga and the lames are 18 ga.

I have tried stacking the lames up together and bending them in the "poor man's slip roller" (two parallel pipes). The pipes are 2" in diameter. I have also tried hammering each one sperately with a variety of hammers; brass, wooden mallet, weighted rubber mallet, solid steel, and unweighted rawhide mallet.

My problem is trying to have no gap between the lame and the cop and the lames with each other.

Some times twisting them helps; then trimming the ends to sit flat.

Putting the ends in a padded (leather, etc) vice, and judiciously applying the proper force can help to twist them in the direction you want.

Buy a back of luck and practice. Once you have them individual pieces the way you like, they may not sit quite the same when you rivet them to leather. The leather and rivets will determine just how close they will fit afterwards...