The Armour Archive

I got caught in a rainshower at an event last weekend and after spending god knows how many hours scouring the rust spots off my helm(and it still looks slightly rusty anyway) i've decided i have to do something to make it more rust resistant. I seem to recall reading that both painting and enameling armor were common in the middle ages, and i was thinking that i might be able to use a paint with a rust resistant coating on my armor. Can anyone confirm that painting armor was common in the late 14th century, and give me some sort of idea of what colors might be typically used? Im also open to any other suggestion anyone has for dealing with this rust problem, but i'd like to try and stay as historically accurate as possible.

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Otto von Aachen
Kingdom of the Outlands, Canton of Hawks Hollow

Hi Edward. The simpelest form off rust protection is to apply and buff a good coating of wax to the peices in question. You'll have to replenish this periodically but not nearly as often as you might think-- something on the order of once a month is typical depending on degree of use. More permanent solutions include russeting, tinning, and painting though off the top of my head I'm not sure which of these are documented for the period your asking about. There was is a very informative thread on this subject on the Firestryker site in the Arms and Armour section which Goes into more detail.

As a matter of livability, paint the inside anyway. Cuts your maintenance problems in half.

I have been using linseed oil for some period woodworking projects, and the bottle claims that it also protects metal. Any evidence that period armour was rubbed down with linseed? Would it adversly affect the leather?

If it's pure linseed oil, it's just a natural oil and shouldn't have any ill effect on leather. "Boiled linseed oil" contains drying agents and other hazardous chemicals, so for that compound, all bets are off.

A woodworking teacher once said to me, "Heck, you can drink pure linseed oil, and all it'll do is slick and lube your insides."

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"Or, a pall inverted surmounted by an orle Azure counterchanged"
mka: Sam Pearce

Not a period solution but....

My lady, 6 years ago, started waxing her helm with polycoat 2000 (a polimier wax for cars) because it had been consistantly rusting before that.

Since then she has had NO rust at all, she does apply a new coat once a year to her helm.

after application, it does not show at at all of course.

Mav

Thanks for the replies everyone. Using some sort of wax that doesn't show seems like a fair compromise to me. I wasn't overly thrilled with the idea of painting my armor, so im really happy that their are alternatives that won't be visible after their applied.

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Otto von Aachen
Kingdom of the Outlands, Canton of Hawks Hollow

A lot of meseum pieces have a black paint or tar like coating on the inside. Is this original, or is it a means of conserving the pieces? And what is it?

Linseed oil: I've used it on the inside of a few helmets. It's yellowish, and sticky for the first few weeks, but seems to hold up pretty well. I haven't done any "environmental testing" yet, but it survived the aggressive environment of my smithy