The Armour Archive

Can an arming coat serve as a purpoint if you just put the cuisses points on the bottom? Or is it better to wear both?

If you were to try to get everything for making a purpoint and or arming coat, what would be the best material to get? What kind of padding? And why is it better than another material? What are the arming points made out of? If its just a leather patch sewn into the garment where the arming points are going to be laced to(which I have been told) , how to you sew the leather to it?

Good questions Dracus, I'll see if I can shed a LED's worth of light on the subject.

The simple answer is 'yes' you can have points on the purpoint.

In one reference to the Chuck du Bios coat (Arnold?) there is a diagram of points on the inside of the coat. Were these for metal legs or the cloth undergarment is not known. I'll need to reread the reference. The interesting thing is that the point is stitched to the inside and is not eyelets. I'll try to get a scan of it and post it.

To give an over-used but very helpful tip:

Look in "Techniques of Medieval Armor Reproduction" by Brian R. Price. (TOMAR)

Some good info on 14th c armoring clothes.

On the other hand, imho, you could do an arming coat with points for the legs as well if, and this is a pretty major if, the coat does not lift at all (or very, very little) when you raise your arms. Just think of the mayhem you would endure if every time you raised your arm so swing a blow your right leg lifted so the knee armor wasn't where your actual knee is anymore. Armor bites in abundance I imagine.

According to TOMAR, the purpoint was a long vest to hold the legs only. I can understand this since the mechanics of the arm and shoulder will lift most garments when the arm is raised. A well and properly cut vest will not lift the same, thus allowing a purpoint to stay pretty much where it is supposed to. If, as in some gambeson patterns I have seen, the arm is constructed on a purpoint so as to intersect with the garment in a way that will not cause undue lift when the arm is raised, then the two can be combined. However, being no master at tailoring, I really cannot recommend the proper method of arm attachment other than saying, don't mess with the armhole and shoulder strap size of your purpoint when figuring out how to attach sleeves.

As far as material goes I am limited in knowledge. I would probably recommend some sort of canvas like material in two layers for an arming coat as well as purpoint but there are those here who know far more than I about tailoring and probably know a better looking and/or more correct material.

best of luck.

Angus (Matt itrw)

I see, the interaction of arm movement with the points for the legs makes sense, so I will definatly wear both a pourpoint and arming coat. I have been told cotton canvas before, but wasnt sure it is readily available or will get me period lectured. Is using 2 layers enough, or would you reccoment a layer of padding in between?If so, what would it be padded with?

I can't see exactly what you'd use extensive padding on the legharness "pourpoint" for, if your arming-cote à grands assietes is already quilted.

A legharness pourpoint does strike me as an excellent location and carrier for concealed kidney belt plates for our SCA correspondents who don't otherwise have a hard shell about their midsections.

A legharness pourpoint does strike me as an excellent location and carrier for concealed kidney belt plates for our SCA correspondents who don't otherwise have a hard shell about their midsections.

Brilliant! You've just solved something I was thinking about.


Effingham

I have a Black Swan 15th C. arming cote, a Revival 14th C. cote, and an old MacKenzie-Smith cotton gambeson modified into an arming cote, and I wear each one over bare skin since anything under the cote can bunch-up as you move. I point my cuisses to them, as well as the maille fauld, the steel arms and the pauldrons. The BS one has maille stitched to the armpits, too.
I have never had any trouble with the material being rigid enough to pull the legs when you raise your arms. With a proper fit, especially around the hips, I can't imagine that as being possible. Now when my belly was bigger than my chest and I had to wear suspenders to keep my maille chausses up, that phenomena definitely was a problem. Perhaps it is a design flaw in body shape rather than in garment function?

Konstantin the Red wrote:I can't see exactly what you'd use extensive padding on the legharness "pourpoint" for, if your arming-cote à grands assietes is already quilted.

A legharness pourpoint does strike me as an excellent location and carrier for concealed kidney belt plates for our SCA correspondents who don't otherwise have a hard shell about their midsections.

I was talking about padding the arming coat, not the pourpoint.

When it comes to your "armynge-cote's stuffynge" there are rather a lot of ways to go, some more satisfactory on grounds of heat-shedding, or of periodness, than others. I've built one Charles de Blois of two layers of needled 100% cotton quilters' batting, three layers in strategic spots, i.e., the points of the shoulders. The stuff looks like thick, muslin-colored flannel, though it's really more of a felt. Aside from the padding layers, there is a lightweight lining, and a broadcloth outer shell. The Charles VI of France coat-armour, somewhat later than the C-d-B, was linen lined, silk damask outer shell, and stuffed with wool, vertical quilting lines, narrowing slightly to the waist and spreading a little at top and bottom of the garment. So there's some example of some of the materials used in period.

Cotton stuffing was known over much of Europe from certainly the time of the First Crusade. Cotton got popular then among those Europeans who could afford to import it.

Multiple layers of 100% linen cloth (anything up to thirty plies in period), bought from discount operations which are generally online, are reported to be superior to anything for comfortable, relatively cool wear, and the determined searcher can come up with linen tow also -- medieval Fiberfill(tm), basically. The fabric is more damage-resistant, of course. The basic method is quilting layers of fabric, not stuffing between them. Machine stitching to quilt is fast, hand stitching is very simple and simply drips with period genuineness!

Stay the hell away from lofty polyester, of course. It's intended to hold heat in, not necessarily for absorbing shock. It isn't designed to do what we want done.

The quilting lines are most often vertical, but may be artistically arranged in sprays and such, supplementing a basic vertical quilting line. Our forebears don't seem to have gone out for outlining much of anything representational in the quilting lines, not even Gothic foliate motifs -- at least, we can't show that they ever tried anything that elaborate. Are figural quilts something of the twentieth century at the earliest? Seems hard to believe.

From one who has fought (SCA) in both and without either, I say, without doubt, use both! The freedom of movement I have been able to achieve using both has been amazing, and I know I am not even using all that I have now. Prior to my current kit (which includes many pieces of my former kit - modified) I have added a gambeson, then a pourpoint and the freedom of movement added by each piece is amazing. Pointing my arms to the gambeson instead of to the spaulders, that were pointed to my CoP hasbeen like a weight lifted...literally! Pointing my legs to the pourpoint has allowed movement in the mid-body at almost a 100% unarmored level. Sorry... I get a bit excited about it... This has been a recent change to my fighting kit and I am still in the marvelling phase of what it has done for me. I will pipe down now....