German soldier 1450-60, a project

[tiredWeasel]

This project I wanted to start years ago but a busy job and general laziness got in my way.

But we all have to start somewhere and so I asked a young blacksmith, who had just started his career in armormaking, to build me a helmet after my (vague) specifications.

And only a few days before Christmas I received word that the deed was done:


The helmet is of course not finished - I want to polish it myself, based on historical armor polishing methods, so the smith only planished it and on the photos it still lacks a few finishing touches from him.


It is based on several examples from various artistic sources of the 1440-1460.


Polishing, drilling the holes for the lining rivets and permanently attaching the visor will be done by me.


As the sketch shows it just covers the nose.
So of course the next step, after fitting a liner, will be a mail bevor that goes over the mouth - a solution that one sees a lot in artwork of this period.

(Karlsruhe Passion, 1450-55)

That's the first problem - how do these things hold up? One solution could be that they are fastened to the lining leather of the helmet or that they are attached to a "cap" worn under the helmet. For practical reasons I think I go with the latter.
To achieve the shown fit it would be possible that they were open in the back and fastened.

For torso protection I want to make a padded jack of the, as I call it, Zebra style - it's basically the reason why I want to build this kit.
(I started a thread about these garments nearly 4 years ago: http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... ?p=2811385 )
It's a sleeveless padded garment, with vertical quilting that is painted with black stripes parallel to the quilt lines.
Because of the mail bevor it will remain without a collar. The red woolen fringes at the armholes are a must.

It is worn over either a shirt of mail or mail sleeves and either a skirt or brayette. I already have the basis for sleeves and a skirt.
Above it goes a breastplate with a fauld and maybe tassets. The breastplate should either be an "older" model or a simple infantry variant.

That is problem number two - I'm not sure yet how the breastplate should look.

The shoulders, arms and gauntlets should be based on this roman soldier dressed in a fancy Zebra-jack who guides Longinus' spear:

(A crowd at calvary, 1460)
They are simple designs, well suited for the intended project.

The legs are the last of my worries.

I will commission all, or most, plate armor parts (as I did with the helmet) because I am many things - but armorer is not among them
But as with the helmet I want to apply the finishing touches - polishing, mounting fabric and leather, maybe surface treatment.

Everything made of fabric I do myself.

Everything made of mail I will try to build myself. And if I fail heroically I guess I will also commission these parts.

But first: Finishing the helmet as sonn as I can pick it up.

Any questions or tips?

Anyone has an idea how the breastplate could look like or something to add about the mail bevor?

I will give further details about the construction of the helmet, but I have to ask the smith first how he did it - but if he wants, he could say a few words himself.

[tiredWeasel]

With the Covid-restrictions relaxed I picked the helmet up in June and am now in the process of polishing the visor. Pictures and a short overview will follow but a quick question first:



What are we looking at here?
Just a polished helmet, polished and heat blued or polished and blackened?

Note: Every piece of armour on the Karlsruhe Passion looks like that, so it may as well be not blued but just the way the armour is portrayed.

I could just polish the helmet with traditional means and call it a day, but if I want to put a finish to it: what could I do?
Heat bluing would be easiest - I have access to a modern pottery kiln - but what are the alternatives?

[Scott Martin]

If you want to heat blue it (after polishing) then an oven will work just as well: about 30-60 minutes at 400 degrees F will give you the "French blue" that you see in most of the 100 years war tapestries. This is (probably not coincidentally) about the hardness you want to temper 1050 steel to if you are planning to use it in rebated steel combat...

The finish question will come down to your preference. If you are going for one of these "common soldiers" then you probably want a "shiny between the scratches" finish. John Cope can give you better direction, but IIRC that's ~80 grit and then scotch brite before a polish pass. Looking at the pictures you provided, you can see that there is a "grain" to the polish, particularly on the Bevor (running parallel to the plate edges) which suggests that this is the finish used. Remember to polish, DEGREASE then blue. If any of your steel has wax from the polish it will not blue, and this will give an inconsistent finish (as will fingerprints). 2 passes with automotive degreasing agent will probably work well, and (clean) oven mitts to put the helm in and out of your heat source.

Scott

[tiredWeasel]

Wouldn't a deep blue not be around 550°F/290°C? (IIRC the helmet is made of C45)

I don't want to discuss the polish - I have the thread about armour polishing open - but want to hear some thoughts about historical alternatives.
I want to go with the "french blue" but just want to hear some thoughts, ideas, alternatives.

The polish I'm trying to achieve is the "bright between scratches" but I'm working with files for the rough pass and polishing sticks for the finishing touch.

[Gustovic]

Wouldn't a deep blue not be around 550°F/290°C? (IIRC the helmet is made of C45)

Helmet is mild steel, actually =).

[Sean M]

Wouldn't a deep blue not be around 550°F/290°C? (IIRC the helmet is made of C45)

Helmet is mild steel, actually =).

I can't recall any evidence whatsoever for heat blued armour in my period of focus 1360-1410 (and I wrote a 15,000 word article on the subject), but I have a wild guess that artists might show more dark but shiny armour in the 15th century because of some changes in heat treatments. If my guess is correct, a mild steel salet should not be treated like this.

[tiredWeasel]

@Gustovic: Well then I did not recall correctly Mild steel it is.

@Sean M: Thank you, that makes sense that the blue colour is a product of the heat treatment and not a deliberate decoration.

So I guess the best way to finish the helmet is polish it (shiny with scratches) and leave it blank.

[Sean M]

@Sean M: Thank you, that makes sense that the blue colour is a product of the heat treatment and not a deliberate decoration.

My understanding is that if you temper carbon steel in an oven or kiln it will darken. This gunsmithing site has some photos.



I think in the 14th and early 15th century they usually polished the dark layer away, then a bright lad realized they could skip the final polish and tell the customers that the steel was supposed to be dark.

If my guess is right, it would have been like Owen Bush leaving hammer marks on his hilt parts to show he made them with a hammer. He deliberately decides to leave the hammer marks, but removing them would be a decision too.

[tiredWeasel]

Oh I know how steel reacts when you temper it. I'm a Büchsenmacher myself. I just thought that the blue color was a deliberate choice and was applied as an decoration.

I'm just not sure what I'm seeing on most of these pictures - it does not look like blank steel, like "white" steel - especially not like polished steel.

[Scott Martin]

Since the deep "French Blue" color can be seen in a *lot* of art from the 15th century and on, I would argue that it is both functional and fashionable. If your armour is the correct colour then it has the correct temper, and if you polish your armour between the quench and the temper, then the blue will be a polished (almost iridescent) blue when finished, which is an awesome contrast to gilding, as can be seen in Chris Gilman's Greenwich armour.

On the chart above, chisels and the like are generally tempered to straw (between 350 and 400 on this chart - the 40o is a bit dark IMO) while "working tools" like hammers are generally tempered to purple - if you are tempering a hammer head and have a torch heating the middle of the face allows you to make a "bullseye" where the middle is purple and the edges are dark straw (similar to the 440) which gives you the best of both worlds - a hard (enough) face that won't chip with a harder heel and toe when you need them.

If you are looking for a "man at arms" armour, you may be best to do a "shiny between the scratches" and then blue the kit. If you use brass capped rivets they will visually "pop" against this background giving a very nice overall effect.

Scott

[Sean M]

If you are looking for a "man at arms" armour, you may be best to do a "shiny between the scratches" and then blue the kit. If you use brass capped rivets they will visually "pop" against this background giving a very nice overall effect.

Scott

Scott, do you think they would have bothered to put the armour in an oven if the armour was not quenched so did not need to be tempered? I have never done any metalworking with hammers and heat.

What I think we are both saying is that tempering darkens the steel, but one shop could choose to polish the steel white again, and another could choose to leave it dark. The bluing was probably not "just for pretty" but if they left it like that it was because they liked the look. I am pretty sure that when Datini bought tempered breastplates from Milan in 1383 they were polished white.

[Scott Martin]

Scott
<snip>
The bluing was probably not "just for pretty" but if they left it like that it was because they liked the look. I am pretty sure that when Datini bought tempered breastplates from Milan in 1383 they were polished white.

Hi Sean

To clarify, if armour was heat treated and NOT polished, then you can look at the surface, and if it is the right shade of blue, you can be fairly confident that it is *correcty* tempered. I think that "the look" was more a visual way to check the quality. Higher quality armour was often polished white, but the reputation of the armourer (and their marks) atested to the correct temper. a "generic" city mark (like Ausberg) would have a lot of variability, so having something that allowed for a check of the quality would have value (and monetary value). I think that there is a reason that the art of the era showed that particular blue for helmets, breastplates and the like, and it is a very similar blue to the slate roofing on castles in that region of the world.

Worth mentioning that according to Dr. Alan Williams ("The Knight and the Blast Furnace") after the 15th century most armours were NOT heat treated, IIRC they went back to being treated in the 17th century.

So to take a different tangent, if it's got a Helmschmidt or Negroli mark, you can probably be confident that it is properly heat treated even if it is shiny. If it has an unknown armourers stamp and a city stamp, you probably want it to be the right colour before you buy 100 sets. From my reading I get the sense that there was a healthy "resale" market for munitions armour as well...

Scott

[tiredWeasel]

To clarify, if armour was heat treated and NOT polished, then you can look at the surface, and if it is the right shade of blue, you can be fairly confident that it is *correcty* tempered. I think that "the look" was more a visual way to check the quality. Higher quality armour was often polished white, but the reputation of the armourer (and their marks) atested to the correct temper. a "generic" city mark (like Ausberg) would have a lot of variability, so having something that allowed for a check of the quality would have value (and monetary value).

This is also a possibility. We know that the medieval cities and guilds took their quality seriously and tolerated no "faking". You can't fake tempering colors and it is a visual identification that is sometimes still used today for that exact reason.

You mention high quality armour - but we already have some kind of munition armours in circulation at that time and the color would be a quick way to make sure the ordered batch was treated properly.

That being said: tempering colors are not very durable. So it would be no quality indicator for reselling armour.

[Christian Wiedner]

Note: Every piece of armour on the Karlsruhe Passion looks like that, so it may as well be not blued but just the way the armour is portrayed.

Well, that is not exactly true... there are variations (central weird helmet) also dont look only at the armour but to all metal objects.
For the general variations of the surface treatment, the options range from left rough by the hammer to high polish - each may be combined with a extra coloration which can be achieved by oxidation, burned oil, plating and probably even more.
It is mostly impossible to tell exactly what the artist really wanted to show as to all the options there has to be to consider also some artistic conventions.

Still I am pretty convinced almost all variations existed.

A word to the prove of heat treating. The colour is just indicator for the annealing not for the quality of the whole process. So I would not count it as "quality seal"

[Mac]

This is also a possibility. We know that the medieval cities and guilds took their quality seriously and tolerated no "faking". You can't fake tempering colors and it is a visual identification that is sometimes still used today for that exact reason.

An unhardened (or even unhardenable) steel can be heated to make it exhibit temper colors. While this would not be faking tempering colors, it would be faking the useful and valuable effects of hardening and tempering. What am I failing to understand here?

Mac

[Scott Martin]

An unhardened (or even unhardenable) steel can be heated to make it exhibit temper colors. While this would not be faking tempering colors, it would be faking the useful and valuable effects of hardening and tempering. What am I failing to understand here?

Since the temper is one of the more difficult things to check, retained temper colour would be useful. If the piece doesn't skate a file, then you would be treating it as unhardened anyway. I would anticipate that there would be a QC check by the buyer:

• Skates a file - Check
• Has the right colour so it's unlikely to shatter - Check
• Rivets are all solid - Check
• No Sharp edges - Check
• ...

Having a visual check would be MUCH better for both the buyer and the seller than testing one (or more) representative pieces to failure (or "good enough") similar to the "proof" marks on higher end Cuirasses made by firing a gun at a set range at the finished piece. Proof marks can be (and were) faked - IIRC proof tests were often witnessed. Rob Valentine used to add proof marks with a small ball pien hammer to get the right look

On the flip side, for the recreation piece if it's done in mild steel you can recreate a tempered steel colour regardless of the carbon content, as noted by Mac above

[Sean M]

Since the temper is one of the more difficult things to check, retained temper colour would be useful. If the piece doesn't skate a file, then you would be treating it as unhardened anyway. I would anticipate that there would be a QC check by the buyer:

• Skates a file - Check
• Has the right colour so it's unlikely to shatter - Check
• Rivets are all solid - Check
• No Sharp edges - Check
• ...

I had never thought of the possibility that customers might know enough to test steel with files or stones or otherwise "scratch test" it! Before the 20th century, the tests for swords around the world I have read are mostly hitting and thrusting them against various things and bending them to see if they bend back. Touchstones for gold go back to the iron age at least.

Here is the bit of Natural Magic on tempering blades and files https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A5548 ... w=fulltext I don't know if we have any sources for tempering in an oven or kiln which seems to be what works for complex volumes like a headpiece or cuirass.

[Scott Martin]

I had never thought of the possibility that customers might know enough to test steel with files or stones or otherwise "scratch test" it!

Arms and armour was a big business in the middle ages / renaissance in much the same way it is today (look at the diplomatic blow up with Australia dropping their French sub contract) Not testing the wares would be an excellent way to go out of business, and there are a LOT of references to the quantity and quality (and costs) of armours being purchased: "The last Knight" has a lot of historic documents with various armour manufacturers complaining about not being paid...

Anything that would make testing easier and faster for everyone would be likely to be embraced, and I would also anticipate a healthy market for "off spec" material as well, as many documents exist where folks were purchasing "Proof" armour as well as "good and sufficient" (AKA "munition" with no proof test) armour.

Scott

[Sean M]

I had never thought of the possibility that customers might know enough to test steel with files or stones or otherwise "scratch test" it!

Arms and armour was a big business in the middle ages / renaissance in much the same way it is today (look at the diplomatic blow up with Australia dropping their French sub contract) Not testing the wares would be an excellent way to go out of business, and there are a LOT of references to the quantity and quality (and costs) of armours being purchased: "The last Knight" has a lot of historic documents with various armour manufacturers complaining about not being paid...

Anything that would make testing easier and faster for everyone would be likely to be embraced, and I would also anticipate a healthy market for "off spec" material as well, as many documents exist where folks were purchasing "Proof" armour as well as "good and sufficient" (AKA "munition" with no proof test) armour.

Scott

OTOH, the properties of steel were "the secrets of the art" not something anyone could learn for the asking. Fiore makes a big deal of knowing "the temper of steel." The rule of the bladesmiths of London had a clause that all edges and points must be hard all the way along, but all the tests by customers and middlemen I have read are "bend the sword and see if it rebounds" and "strike the flat against a log five times" and things like that. And by the 14th century there were proof tests of armour by shooting various weapons at it.

The way it worked in the documents I have read was that Datini had one of his agents buy, say, six pairs of greaves in three different sizes by "A or B or one of the other masters who does good work." Or he ordered a batch of paintings of the Virgin Mary on panels "and don't pay more than a florin for each." And the guys who an artist looked at and thought "I can see him holding the crowds back on Golgotha" often have lower-end kit.

Edit: I am looking at tiredWeasel's project as "I have a mild steel salet in the style of the mid 15th century based on a guard at the Crucifixion, how should it be finished?"

[tiredWeasel]

Edit: I am looking at tiredWeasel's project as "I have a mild steel salet in the style of the mid 15th century based on a guard at the Crucifixion, how should it be finished?"

I will polish it and I could leave it blank, of course.
But as I said: There might be other possibilities, heat blueing might be on of them, and I just want to know what else seems reasonable given the timeframe.

An unhardened (or even unhardenable) steel can be heated to make it exhibit temper colors. While this would not be faking tempering colors, it would be faking the useful and valuable effects of hardening and tempering. What am I failing to understand here?

Mac

I don't understand the question. It might have been for QC and offers some security. Of course the material used may have been the wrong kind but this is always an issue and can bes tested with different means.

Well, that is not exactly true... there are variations (central weird helmet) also dont look only at the armour but to all metal objects.

True, not all but most. The issue still stands.

A word to the prove of heat treating. The colour is just indicator for the annealing not for the quality of the whole process. So I would not count it as "quality seal"

It may or may be not have been a sign of quality. Without a modern oven it is difficult, not impossible, to reach a uniform temperature on such a big working piece.
I think some may be focusing to much on the aspect that it was a stand alone or even foolproof "quality seal" - that claim was never uttered and as far as I can tell was not the intent of the idea.

[tiredWeasel]

I apologize for the lack of pictures:
We are moving (into a house build in 1752, unfortunately *not* medieval) so other stuff comes first.
I hope the project will resume in December/January and then I'll post pictures of the progress.

[Sean M]

Another possibility would be to cover it. I forget what cheap fabrics are attested aside from precious velvet, but it was already pretty common in Datini's day to cover open headpieces in fabric. If it was covered, it might well be varnished. My working hypothesis is that varnish is a burned-on, oil-based finish.