The Armour Archive

I borrowed a really deep throated micrometer and waved it around on some of my pieces of old armour this weekend.

This was by no means really scientific, but it was kind of fun.

Some results:

Late 16th cent. normal burgonet. German, Nuremberg. polished. Bowl varied between .050 and .060 in thickness. The cheekplates were about .050 - thinning dramatically at the edge of the flair to about .030. The brim got down to .020 leading me to believe it is reasonable to flair them from the bowl.

c.1600 rough breastplate - purportedly from Gratz. There is a good deal of variation since it looks like the only hammer the maker had was a broad cross-pien, but it is basically .050-.060.

c. 1550 german breastplate - the pointy one I posted a while ago. It was even thicker than I thought. The thickest area is in the center. It gets up to .20 (yes, 2 tenths of an inch) thick. It tapers down to .060 at the sides.

c. 1560-80 B&W peascod breastplate. about .090 for most of it, tapering a bit at the side edges to about .070.

I have one 17th. c. breast that gets up to .30 in the center.

Another plain 17th c. breast gets up to .20 in the middle and tapers some at the edges, but not as much as the good armour.

Just food for thought.

Wade

I've done a similar quick inventory of weights of helmets, from musea catalogs. Big variation there between roughly 1 kg and 5 kg.

It often depends on the use the piece of armour was about to see, of course. Jousting armour for pointed lances will be different from parade armour, even if the style may be the same.

Nice to see some numbers though!

Thanks Wade. I'm always happy to have information like this to refer to when working on a project and I appreciate you taking the time to post it. I may be able to return the favor at some point. A friend of one of my customers recently invited me to vist and take a look at an Italian infantry armour circ 1510-1516 that she bought from Sothebey's a few years back. From her description it's a composed suite put together by a "past curator of the Met"- I'm guessing Bashford Dean. At the least I should get some detailed pictures and hopefully some measurements as well.

Did you see that Siege Helm in the special collection at the Met? That face-plate is one thick slab......1/3" maybe!