The Armour Archive

I like to think of myself as a pretty good armourer; 18 years has to pay off somehow. Most of what I work on is built using historical methods insofar as we understand them and/or interpret them.

Having said that I have been working on what might sound like a simple piece: the top most intersecting 'lame' to a late 14th/early 15th century fauld. Its the anticlasticly shaped piece (pringle) that theoretically bridges the breastplate proper and the fauld proper....but its mocking me...its mocking me I tell ya!

Now, Ive made many a faulds in my day. Most were segmented faulds. A few were long horizontal strip faulds as we might normally see. And I have made many of those peculiar anticlastic intersection strips (AIS), usually for normally sized guys and/or for brigadines which means they arent as long.....hint hint.

Problem is, for the love of me, once I have achieved a perfect fit into the actual cuirass, and then go to flare the upper edge of the AIS which hangs inside the breastplates lower edge.....I cannot get this damn AIS piece to keep from curling inward. I have tried every method I can think of....from opening it up a bit more to compensate for the curling....Ive tried using smaller straight peins in hopes I might disturb less metal each time I work on the flared edge.....Ive tried clamping the AIS down on each end and using heat to work the piece night and flush.....and each time, the second its released it closes up faster than a venus fly trap. So I opted to use some heat to anneal it......to little affect. Its just bloody mild steel Im sure of it.

In any event...I know Ill get this thing to work. Part of the problem is the sheer size of my cuirass being a large fella its more to work and deal with. Its just that there is a lot more room for error with a piece thats nearly 30 inches long (and I am not rotund by any means).

But this trip into madness got me to thinking critically about these early period cuirasses (and the essence of my post).

As I look at the few scant remaining 14th/15th century cuirasses and a lot of the period artwork I began to notice something.

There seems to be very evidence for the existence of a long AIS strips used for exposed steel cuirasses. We have that velvet covered cuirass which has one.....some bridagines which have very short AIS strips....

Aside from a pretty large number of cuirasses with a great variety of scale faulds (Ive been amassing a collection of pictures) I also began to notice was the number or cuirasses with folded edges along the bottom edge. What occured to me was that a folded edge starts off like a flange....like a fauld lame. Connect the dots.

Now.....Here is my theory which we cant prove or disprove but it sort of makes you say hmmm.

Since we really do not have any (that I know of) full cuirasses with faulds permenantly attached from the late 14th/15th century (ie, breastplate directly connects to fauld --no plackart used)..... but there are a number of late 14th/early 15th breastplates in artwork which show a folded edge along the bottom than why would we assume that full cuirasses of this period would incorporate a seperate AIS strip, when in fact they could have had their bottom edges flared out to create a flange that a fauld would rest upon? Maybe this is what we are seeing in all those effigies. Its not an outlandish theory really.....later breastplates incorporate this...and by 1410+ we see plackarts do the very same thing.

I can understand the use of an AIS strip for a shorter breastplate, or its use in a brigadine or late COP construction, but technically the cuirass can be flared out along its bottom edge, so a seperate AIS piece is technically unnecessary. Sure it offers a bit more bending articulation, but its not that much, and in any event the flared bottom edge wouldnt stick out too far anyway, just enough to rest the fauld upon.

And while its plausible that countersunk rivets were used, I dont see any evidence or hint of evidence in the artwork for rivets used on the breastplate itself for attaching the leather (to articulate the fauld)....the placement of rivets would be lower. Surely, we would see some example in the artwork of a line of rivets along the belly of the cuirass for use in attaching this AIS strip, unless the frequency of latten decoration edges was also used to attach this AIS strip at the same time (which is naturally counterproductive if its argued that the AIS strip added a measure of articulation....furthermore, why not simply flare the breastplatse bottom edge!?).

Either way, its an interesting progression of thought. As I can best figure it out, the AIS strip used in exposed white harness cuirasses (breastplate attached directly and permanently to fauld) is essentially extrapolation. I dont see any evidence why a flanged bottom edge would be inherently inaccurate given that the metal work involved is fundamentally the same as starting off with a rolled bottom edge of a breastplate which we see quite a bit of anyway.


Talk amongst yourselves....Im going for more coffee.

Weird.

I was thinking about this very subject myself this afternoon.

I wish that I had some profound insight about it to share, but I don't.

But I was thinking about it.

based on the picture provided; where the arrow on the left is pointed to, looks like a strap to me

Somehow I don't get the starting point of the whole argument. An AIS is (for me at least) one of the more fun things to shape, because it so clearly demonstrates the desire of iron to move in "unexpected" ways.
I frequently use it as a demonstration that hitting a piece of metal "here", will make it move "over there". For me it's just basic metal dynamics.

Just give it a try: take a strip of metal, curve it into a gutter shape, and then stretch the edges equally on either side. The gutter will start to turn into an AIS, without a single blow seemingly forcing it in the anticlastic direction. It's all done by the stretching of the metal at the edges, providing all the force needed to curl the AIS. Stretching one side more than the other will curl the AIS into a banana-shaped AIS rather than a "straight" AIS, I think that's the problem you're experiencing. Stretching the left edge on one end and the right edge on the other end will turn it into a cork-screw AIS. With this knowledge, the shape can be pretty much controlled the way one wants to.

+1 what Ralph said. You don't need to worry about the edges thinning too much because the thin parts will be under the breastplate and fauld. I find them fun to do as well.

You can do long ones like the one I did here for my Maximillian cuirass.



If I remember correctly all I did to match it to the breastplate was to check the fit often and hammer the edge more where it needed it. I matched the top fauld lame to the AIS. On mine I put too much of a sharp bend in it, I think it should have been more gradual so it would be more comfortable.

Andrew,

I'm not really sure if I followed all of your thought pattern above but as evidence either for or against it: The artwork in Rene de Anjou's treastie on tournies, writen about 1460 I believe, depicts a single piece breastplate (no placard) with an integral flange connecting it to it's faulds. there is no 'AIS' strip or waist fauld. On the one I am constructing the breastplate was raised into shape and after the first 2 or 3 passes we simply stopped the raising wave at the waist line rather then continuing to the edge but I still need to refine it. This was easier then bringing all of the metal into a curved shape and then flaring it back out.

Honestly a good commad of anticlastic shapes and curvature transitions is what seperates 'HVAC' armor (armor that looks like 2 uniformly dished helm halves were welded to a simple bent strip) from proper looking armor. They arn't SUPPOSED to be easy, they are the sign of skill. If anyone could do them then it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. That said I can only do them in limited variations and over specific tools like Halberds 'Y' stake.

Good luck!
Sean

First off, my original post is really a combination of multiple thoughts, and its a bit rambling.

I spoke with Mac on the phone which was also helpful as a sort of pep talk given my frustration. (thanks Mac). Im working furiously against a tight deadline next week to finish a 'nice' suit for myself and I dare say I dont work well under that type of stress. I was sick with a stomach flu last week and lost at least four days of shop work, ergo my stress.

Indeed, Ive done plenty of anticlastic shapes! The difference is that Ive not done an AIS quite so long as what is needed for my cuirass's sheer size (youz normal guyz got it easy I tellz ya!!!). I also think part of the reason is because I started off using too thin a piece of metal. I moved to a thicker piece and its working out fine and Ill grind it thinner later. Because of the size I had a similar situation with my greaves,..I had to start off using 14 guage to finish off with something that was structurally strong enough after working and grinding/polishing...the greaves were about 2 feet tall and ended up being about 16 guage which was strong enough....mild of course. (Its the old adage that King Kong's bones wouldnt hold up because they would not be proportionately strong enough to deal with his weight and pressure of movement; so they would have to be disproportionately thicker at his size. )


WORTH NOTING:

I relied on a curved plate from the onset (cut-out in a curved shape) and fit into the cuirass. I then flared the edge. But as I flared the edge I was experiencing too much inward curl towards the sides....remember the AIS piece here was about 25" inches long. The curl in wasnt drastic, maybe a quarter inch but enough to be frustrating with such tight tolerances and under a deadline.

My new approach which worked like a charm was to also flare out the AIS piece about 1 inch roughly every two inches..... and then returning to the unflared sections in a second pass to then flare them out. This approach is great because seems to help "lock" the piece in place (largely avoiding the curl-in factor) while some adjustment can still be made in the unflared parts to get the AIS very flush with the breastplate.

One other thing that occured to me was that narrow AIS strips are much trickier to control than wider ones. In ther words, even a short plackart is easier to control than a 2 inch high "strip" is. And in many cases, even the earlier plackarts are bridges between the breastplate and the fauld (there are a few inches in between breastplate and fauld). With late 14th/very early 15th century cuirasses, the AIS strip is so short that there isnt any room for error in connecting the two halves. It makes me wonder if this is one of several reasons why the plackart/fauld begins to evolve; its much easier to connect the breast and fauld this way.
---------------------

On that note, the other thought I was bouncing around was the logic that flaring the bottom edge on a breastplate to create a roll/fold (fairly common in the late 14th/early 15th century) is also essentially the same approach to creating an anticlastic flare.

So its not a great implausible leap to suspect that some period cuirasses (circa 1400) may have incorporated a flared edge for the first lame rest rather than a seperate AIS piece. In many ways its less work (time, fitting etc) to flare a cuirass bottom edge than to make a seperate AIS piece.

I dont have prove of this per se, but its not a great leap. This is especially true given that we do have breasplates with bottom folded edges (meaning that a flared edge stage did once exist in the process of making that fold/roll and the fact that few effigies or brasses show much suggestion of any rivits above the cuirass bottom edge which would be needed to affix the AIS strip (remember we are dealing with multiple leather strips spaced vertically along the fauld for articulation during the early cuirass period....so given how many effigies and brasses exist during this period, we would think to expect to see some indication of rivets over the cuirass edge but I cant think of any).

I had another thought which I have forgotten. Im sure Ill remember it when Im in the shop again.


Thanks for your thoughts guys. Im doing okay now.