Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

[Kristoffer]

The Japanese russet finishes I have seen have a sort of rough texture, which I think they try hard to cultivate. As such, the metal does not need to be mirror like, but only free of hammer marks.

Mac

And my knowledge about japanese craftsmen tells me they could easily just have planished every single piece to perfection with tiny, tiny hammers before polishing it with spider web and dew gathered under the full moon on the 29:th of february... Then cover the piece with lacquer..

[Sean M]

Here is one of the images. It's of the armet when they were conserving it and had removed the brow reinforce and under it was original polish.

period_polish-small.jpg

Ok. The article by James Mann has smaller B&W photos from just after he had taken down, cleaned, and sorted the armour. He states that due to the lack of trained restorers, and his experience with armour which had been ruined by aggressive cleaning, he just boiled the armour to remove the paint and dirt, dried it, replaced the straps and buckles, and coated the surfaces with vaseline to prevent further oxidization. So the good closeup photos will probably come from the later restoration.

On the other hand, he says that the new Bishop provided a photographer who took 200 photos, and that his are a selection of those. So there may be some useful B&W photos somewhere.

At first glance, Mann does not have to say much about marks on parts of the surface which were still bright. He was more interested in the armourers' marks and the structure of the armour. He does say that yellow bands had been painted on the armour, and that these rusted less than the places painted black, so they appear as bright lines in the photos.

James G. Mann, "A Further Account of the Armour in the Sanctuary of Madonna delle Grazie near Mantua," Archaeologia, or, Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity, 87 (1938) pp. 311-351

[Mac]

The pic of the armet with the brow removed appears in Boccia's book about the armor at the Sanctuary at Curtatone di Mantova.



I dearly wish we had a bigger image of it.

Mac

[Sean M]

Does anyone know the source of the "photograph taken in the 1930s" which Toby cites at 43:52 of his Operator's Guide video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COAIQPsgZWY People here know how to contact him, but I don't. I can find the things which require academic libraries and foreign languages, but not the things which require contacts and personal relationships.

[Kalle Ommer]

Sean,

In the first part of the Der Blaupließter video, at around 11:40, the polisher takes the rough-ground blades, anoints them with an oil and emery paste and applies them to a wheel. I don't have nearly enough German to tell if they say what the wheel is made of. Can you tell?

Mac

I am having trouble with the accent and the technical words, but I hear something like:

[11:03] Das ist, uh, Naturrodum. Der sind zwei X aus ... kommt in die dunkle Farbe an. ... Pulvur ... Öl ... [11:27]Zum Pließen des Zettergarnmessers wird Schmirgelpasta in mittlerer Korngroße auf der vorgeschriftet Messer aufgetragt. Das sogennante Pließtholz dient als Werkzeug, um einem gleichmaßigen und präcisen Anbruch auf der Pließscheib zu ermöglichen. [11:46]Nach jedem pließen ist der öberfläche jedes messers feiner und glatter. Die Riefan kan ... mit der Stein verschmitten.

So the key sentences are "For polishing the something-twine-knife, emery paste in a medium grain size is spread on the required knife. The so-called polishing wood (Pließtholz) serves as a tool, to make it possible to give an even and precise contact (Anbruch) with the polishing disc (Pließscheib)." I don't hear anything about how the disc is made in that section.

It would be a great project for some of the German armourers to track these guys down and pick their brains!

Well, I don´t think you will find this guy this is a rather old documentary. A friend of mine works for a knifemaker in Solingen. I will ask him.

But now to a germany translation of the interesting part of this documentary.

At 9:52 as the narrator gets to the "Pließten" and he explains, that the "Pließtscheiben" are disks made of "Eichen und Buchenholz". These "Pließtscheiben" are made of wood. Oak and beechwood. To the edge of the "Pließtscheibe" are leather or felt tabs (10:13). A polishing compound made of some fine sand, hide or bone glue and rapeseed oil is appleid. The same polishing compound, but without the glue, is than spread on the blades. With the help of a "Pließholz" the blades are than pressed to the "Pleißscheibe".
As far as I could understand the polishing compound is mud from the Greece island of Nexos first dried and than ground to an fine powder.
This powder is than made plieable again with the help of the rapeseed oil.

I hope this helps.

Greetings from Germany

[Mac]

Thanks Kelle!

The Schmirgel from Naxos is "emery" in English. It's natural aluminum oxide.

Mac

[Sean M]

Folks who are interested in this might want to pull out Carlo's Churburg book and spend a while staring at the face opening of a barbuta in plate 94. I can't 'read' the scratches because I don't have experience polishing steel, but they might be helpful at showing intermediate stages of work the same way that the less polished inside surfaces of armour are helpful.

There are a few other interesting photos of surfaces in his books.

[Mac]

I've been thinking of that very picture.

The long deep scratched along the face hem are probably left over from the first process. The whole helmet probably looked like that at some point. The scratches are way too long to have been produced by a wheel. They are either from a file or one of those sticks like we see in the Hausbuch.

As soon as we get away from the hem, we see shorter scratches in at least two directions. I think these are more likely to be from a wheel. The hem prevented the polisher from getting at the deep scratches easily, but frankly, it looks like he hardly even tried.

On top of that we have a smooth polish which the photos do not resolve it into scratch lines.

It looks to me like the whole process took three steps, and I think that may be typical. It's a far cry from the graded abrasive "don't skip a grit number!" mentality that is prevalent today.

I wonder if Carlo would mind much if we posted details from his pics. That would go a long way toward forwarding this discussion.

Mac

[Jason Grimes]

Just looking through the rest of Carlo's book shows those same features all the way through to the 16th century. Just makes me wonder how common it was for well meaning people that helped "clean up" the armour and get rid of those nasty scratches? It also tells me that the polishers would only do as much as they could (with the tools on hand) in whatever time they had. They were not after perfection at all, at least in the modern sense. Although for really high end pieces I could see them going the extra mile and doing a better job at polishing.

[Sean M]

Somewhere there is a description of armour in the Royal Armies being polished by the garrison of the tower with ground bricks. Make All Sure has a description of the 18th century garrison of Malta polishing their muskets, swords, and armour with sand and vinegar when they ran out of oil and emery.

Jiri Klepac is trying to get customers to accept finishes like the less-polished originals, and I talked with Piotr Feret about James Arlen Gillaspie's photo "under the rosette" and Wade's photos of things in his collection that he thought might be close to the original finish. But I don't know if there are cost-effective ways to create "shiny between the scratches" today.

[Sean M]

The long deep scratched along the face hem are probably left over from the first process. The whole helmet probably looked like that at some point. The scratches are way too long to have been produced by a wheel. They are either from a file or one of those sticks like we see in the Hausbuch.

Some of the sources which mention ground emery also mention shaped pieces. Would those marks be consistent with grinding by hand with stones? I don't know how well a stick of emery large enough to fill both hands 'bites.'

[Mac]

I have never found any references to emery used as a native stone. Are you sure it's emery? Are you sure the stones are intended to by used just as they are, and not first pulverized? Can you tell what "shapes" the stone are?

I imagine that emery was exported as stones, rather than as powder, so it might well show up in merchant's inventories either way.

Pumice was sometimes used as a powder, and sometimes used as a stone. We can still buy it ether way.

The note in Ffaulkes' Armourer and His Craft from the 1553 Equipage of Henry, Earl of Northumberland mentions both of these important abrasives. https://archive.org/stream/armourerhisc ... t_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/armourerhisc ... t_djvu.txt (page 30)

Emmery & oile for dressing my Lord's harnes.
Leather, bokills & naylles for mendyng my Lords harnes.
Towles conserning the mending of my Lord's harnes. Item a payre
of nyppers, a payre of pynsores, a pomyshe/ & ij fylles. Item a
small sti'the, a hammer, and all ouy'' stuffe and tooles belonginge an
armorer.

Linguistically, he seems to treat "emmery" as a commodity, but "pomyshe" as an object. It may be putting too much weight on small matters of language, but I'm inclined to interpret this a powdered emery and a pumice stone. I wish we could tell under what circumstances he used the one abrasive rather than the other.

Mac

[Sean M]

I have never found any references to emery used as a native stone. Are you sure it's emery? Are you sure the stones are intended to by used just as they are, and not first pulverized? Can you tell what "shapes" the stone are?

I imagine that emery was exported as stones, rather than as powder, so it might well show up in merchant's inventories either way.

Our ground emery is smeriglio pesto in Italian. For example, the inventory of the Gonzaga family armoury in 1407 mentions Viginti sex libre de smiraglo Integri pisto e non pisto (26 pounds of emery Complete/Completely ground and not ground). Shops in Milan sold a good quality of ground emery wholesale by the hundredweight, and merchants sold it retail by the pound.

The passage with the stones was something like "emery in stones, 2 or 2 1/2 palms long (a 'palm' is like a 'hand' ie. a handsbreadth) which are files (lime) for traversare-ing bascinets, worth thus-and-so apiece."

[Ernst]

For example, the inventory of the Gonzaga family armoury in 1407 ....

Thanks for the link to the Mann article. Lots of interesting stuff there.

[Mac]

The passage with the stones was something like "emery in stones, 2 or 2 1/2 palms long (a 'palm' is like a 'hand' ie. a handsbreadth) which are files (lime) for traversare-ing bascinets, worth thus-and-so apiece."

Interesting, indeed!

I've just done a search to see if Naxos emery can be had as rock/mineral specimens to experiment with.... Unfortunately, I came up empty handed.

Perhaps one can try scrubbing rough armor with a whetstone, if one can be found that is made of corundum (not to be confused with Carborundum.. which is a different material).

Mac

[Mac]

OK! Well, that's easier than I thought. It looks like most of the whetstones one can buy are corundum (aluminum oxide) and that Carborundum (silicon carbide) is more expensive option.

I will see what I can do with what I have in the shop and report back tomorrow.

Mac

[Gustovic]

I think that the elmetti (helmets) refer to armets. At least that's how Boccia calls armets in Italian.

[Mac]

I did a little test this morning with a coarse whetstone and a plate from the scrap heap.



This is what about 30 seconds of scrubbing looks like. I was using water as a lubricant.



This shows an earlier test where I tried a couple of different things. For some of the test I worked dry, then I tried oil, and then finally water. For a while I tried water and loose 220 grit as well. I changed directions a couple of times even though I had not gotten rid of the hammer marks in the first direction.



My tentative conclusions are these.....

--The coarse whetstone I used is too fine to get the work done this way. The resulting scratches are not as deep as ones we see on real armor.
--I felt as though I used more energy accelerating and stopping the stone than in actually abrading the plate. Again, a coarser stone would alter the balance.
--Working without a lubricant lets the stone clog too fast.
--Water as a lubricant works better than oil.
--Steadying the work with one hand and scrubbing with the other is not the way to get a lot done. It would work better if both hands could be on the stone. This comes back to the issue of securing the work.

I'd like to try again with a coarser stone. The sort of wheel that gets used on the "coarse" side of a bench grinder might be better. They have a larger grit size and an more open structure. I will keep my eye open for a decrepit specimen at a flea market.

The other thing I wonder about is the shape of the stone. My worn out old stone was pretty concave from previous use on small stuff, but I suppose if one were to use a stone to scrub plates, it would wear to a different shape. It's easy to imagine having different stones for different purposes, and carefully cultivating and maintaining their shapes. A stone that is nearly flat will (I think) give the best results for removing the hammer marks from a convex surface.

All in all, using a stone to remove fire scale and hammer marks seems like a better bet than using a file. Files are too expensive to risk on such an operation.... back then even more so than now.

Mac

[Sean M]

You're welcome, Mac and Ernst. I have a feeling that once we know what to look for and what words they used, evidence for polishing will start to appear. For all we know the English taxed imports of Milan emery, or some Dutch firm specializing in it has left archives.

If they could call stones files, maybe they could call those polishing sticks files too?

I think that the source which Gustovic's friend found will be helpful as soon as someone can English enough of it. There are all kinds of things in Italian books and archives which nobody north of the Alps has heard of. Best wishes for a 2017 full of successful projects and new discoveries.

[AriAilin]

Is there a difference in final product between whether or not the sanding/polishing media is used in a circular or linear fashion?

What I mean is: you see lots of abrasive products/tools that spin, like an orbital sander, and lots that work in one direction like a buffing wheel or belt sander. Then you have hand sanding, which is back and forth or circle (or, if you're bad at straight lines, little arcs.)

Be it traditional sand and vinegar, or a high powered tool, will polishing with one or the other pattern change the final outcome? Does it matter more if you're aiming for mirror vs satin polish?

[Mac]

Is there a difference in final product between whether or not the sanding/polishing media is used in a circular or linear fashion?

If each successive process removes all of the scratches from the previous one, then no. Realistically, though, there will always be scratches that you couldn't or just didn't get out.

....Does it matter more if you're aiming for mirror vs satin polish?

A satin finish is pretty forgiving. So long as the final satin lines are the dominant thing that catches the light and your eye, you won't see much of what lies beneath unless you look closely. A mirror finish will reveal all of your mistakes to the casual observer.

The modern armor has to decide for himself whether or not it's acceptable to be able to see circular scratches. Me, personally, I don't want them on my work. I just feel dirty about them. If I use a tool that makes circular marks, I work hard to remove them in the next process.

Mac

[Mac]

If they could call stones files, maybe they could call those polishing sticks files too?

That's a shocking notion! I wonder if it might be true, and if there's any way to know. I suppose the smoking gun would be a reference to a "file of wood" or some such.

Mac

[AriAilin]

So functionally, swirls vs. lines is a non issue. However, professionally, swirls are considered inferior?

[Mac]

So functionally, swirls vs. lines is a non issue.

I think that's probably true enough.

However, professionally, swirls are considered inferior?

I won't have them, but we all draw our "authenticity boundaries" in different places.

Mac

[AriAilin]

Of course, but what makes swirls less authentic? I've seen manuscripts and drawings of water powered polishing wheel... but I suspect a lot of it was still done by hand. Little circles is a very intuitive way to scrub at something.

[Mac]

There are two types of scratches that can be produced by a wheel, without regard to the prime mover. The cylindrical face will make short parallel scratches, the length of which is a function of the size of the contact patch. A larger or softer wheel has a larger contact patch and will make longer scratches. The side of a wheel will make curved parallel scratches whose radius is a function of the wheel diameter. The length of these scratches can be greater than those produced by the cylindrical face because the contact patch will be greater.

Hand made scratches can have a variety of shapes. Heavy scratches are likely to be more or less straight, perhaps with a bit of a hook at the end. A straight (or slightly curved) path is energetically and ergonomically more efficient for heavy work. Circular scratches can most conveniently be made by hand with a very light tool. As such, they are likely to be fine scratches.

Orbital sanders produce tiny circular scratches which are a great deal smaller than one is likely to produce by hand.

Random orbit sanders produce scratches that are similar in size to what one could produce by hand, but have a distinctly different "character".

In my experience, the types of scratches made by orbital sanders, random orbit sanders, or detail sanders are distinct from those that can be produced by hand or by wheels. I have never seen anything like them in work that appeared to predate the 20th C.

Mac

[AriAilin]

Very neat, thanks for the clarification.

[Kristoffer]

What about the big (sometimes huge) wheels that frequently pop up in art? Would they be for grinding or(and) polishing? They seem to have a few of different size.

[Mac]

Very neat, thanks for the clarification.

You are very welcome!

Mac

[Mac]

What about the big (sometimes huge) wheels that frequently pop up in art? Would they be for grinding or(and) polishing? They seem to have a few of different size.

That really is the big question, and I wish we could figure it out.

The guys (and monkeys) who are shown working on edged weapons are using wheels which the artists have shown as homogeneous in color, and most of them are running in a trough. I am presuming that these are natural stone wheels, but I'd be pleased to hear what other people think.













Likewise, the guys working on armor in the various copies of the Bruegel's "Venus at the Forge of Vulcan" seem to be working on stones with water troughs. Again, other ideas are welcome.





In the Hausbuch drawings, we see guys working armor on wheels that look to be wood, or in some cases a wood-colored material with a rim or tire of some other material. In the two examples where we can see the bottoms of the wheels, there is no trough, and in none of them is there any sort of splash guard. My inclination here is to think of them as being fed with a grit and grease mix, but it's really a guess. Does anyone have another idea?







Our last examples are prints by Stradanus. In one of them, the wheels look like they have wood grain, but I think it's just an artifact of digitization. There are five wheels shown, and four of them have splash guards. This tells us that at least those four are used wet. Perhaps these are fed with grit and oil or grit and water. The wheel without the splash guard might be something different, or it may just be out of use. Thoughts?





Mac

[Jason Grimes]

I found a better version of the last woodcut here, except for the water marks.

politura-armorum-resized.jpg (95.58 KiB) Viewed 6432 times

I resized it up a bit, at least as far as the forum would allow. I'm not seeing a trough under the first wheel, but you can see now that both of the polishers have a bowl with a applicator next to them.

[Jason Grimes]

Also, and I'm pretty sure we talked about this before, there are some descriptions of grinding/polishing wheels in the "Practical Blacksmith" at the end of volume 2. At this time (late 19th century) they were still making wooden wheels with leather or felt tacked on the edge. Then emery was glued to the surface. They don't say what kind of glue but do mention that it needs to be heated up before use. I'm assuming it was some kind of hide or bone glue as they also said that it was susceptible to moisture? In fact they said that, now and then, you need to remove the old glue/emery. To do so, you soak the wheel in hot water and scrape it off. Not something you want to run through a water trough.

[Jason Grimes]

Ok, I found the full resolution version of the woodcut here:

http://www.renzocampanini.it/file/opere ... rmorum.jpg

[Mac]

Ok, I found the full resolution version of the woodcut here:

http://www.renzocampanini.it/file/opere ... rmorum.jpg

Excellent! I searched the other day but did not do nearly so well.

I'm not seeing a trough under the first wheel, but you can see now that both of the polishers have a bowl with a applicator next to them.

Good call! I had failed to notice the bowls/applicators before. That really makes my day! I'm thinking that the bowls probably contain oil.

In the blow up, we can see some mysterious objects sitting there between the wheels. I'm sure they're not potato chips.... The ones in the second station seem to have a lot or depth.... Bits of cotton, tow, or rags to wipe the work? Whatever they are, a guy needs more than one of them, so that rules out flint nodules to "deaden" the cut. (that's a thing that you do on glue-n-grit wheels)

Mac

[Mac]

.... there are some descriptions of grinding/polishing wheels in the "Practical Blacksmith" at the end of volume 2. At this time (late 19th century) they were still making wooden wheels with leather or felt tacked on the edge. Then emery was glued to the surface. They don't say what kind of glue but do mention that it needs to be heated up before use. I'm assuming it was some kind of hide or bone glue as they also said that it was susceptible to moisture? In fact they said that, now and then, you need to remove the old glue/emery. To do so, you soak the wheel in hot water and scrape it off. Not something you want to run through a water trough.

Those are generally called "set up wheels". Holtzapffel describes them in some detail as do a lot of early 20th C manuals on general shop practice. They were used pretty routinely until the advent of good bonded abrasives in the middle of the 20th C. The traditional glue was hide glue, and all descriptions of the management of them recommend removing the old "head" before setting them back up. They are always used dry.

I use some set up wheels in my shop. They are amazingly cheep to run if you can get the knack setting them up. I'm currently struggling with glue adhesion problems....

Mac