Building a Milanese Curiass - progress

[wcallen]

Generally I tend to use hammers on the outside of the armour that are relatively flat and relatively large-faced. That mimics Mac's comment. Many surfaces are convex on the outside, so a flat hammer face works well there. Where it isn't, I can usually get one of my not quite flat round/square or octagonal. Most of my hammers used for shaping do have pretty well rounded edges to limit the accidental damage. There are a very few times where I am doing something aggressive like fluting or recessing where I use a very, very sharp hammer, but that isn't what we are talking about here.

Wade

[Tableau]

I see what you guys are saying. I had a hammer that I used in situations like this, but I left it in Ottawa. I was thinking of making a new hammer, but I probably don't have time. I have already made 5 hammers so far this school year. Perhaps I will just buy a ball peen hammer or two and round their faces.

Do you think my hammer would be appropriate for more heavy duty raising from the outside of a piece, or would you still recommend a larger faced hammer?

[Mac]

My heavy raising hammer looks a lot like the one you showed, but I can't tell if they are similar in weight.

For a light or medium weight "outside hammer", you can do a lot worse than to buy a cheap ballpeen form a yard sale or from "Horrible Freight" and spend a few minutes cleaning up the face. You can always make a nice one to replace it when you have the time.

Mac

[Tableau]

I might root around the shop and see if I can find some appropriately sized stock for an outside forming hammer. I know there's some rather large stock, but I don't know if I could convince any of my classmates to spend a bunch of time striking for me. The plus side to making my own is that I could get two similar faces with different levels of curvature. What kind of weight do you think would be appropriate? 1 or 2 pounds? Do you have some pictures of the faces of ones you use?

[Mac]

I'm not sure we are on the same page, so I will attempt to clarify.

Here is a pic of my favorite heavy raising hammer (along with its little brother which I use for my 1/4 scale tin helmet experiments) It weighs about 1lb 13oz. including the handle. I use the short side where I can, and the long side when I need to keep my knuckles clear of the edge reflex.



For medium or light outside work, I have several ballpeens with different degrees of "flatness" to their faces, and their edges nicely rounded. I use them for a number of things including planishing, and light raising. I also use them for shaping up lames from the back by "squashing". They weigh about 11 or 12 oz., including the handles.

Mac

[Tableau]

Yup, I think we're on the same page here. My idea of the hammer-to-be would be basically like a ball peen hammer, except without the ball side. Instead I'm picturing two round faces with differetnt degrees of flatness.

[Tableau]

I recently made a second raising hammer that's closer to the size of your raising hammer. I think the faces of mine are a bit narrower than yours though. Do you think it would be worth reheating the ends and upsetting them for a bit more surface area?

Edit: I just did some tests on a piece of scrap to see how the hammer marks left by my raising hammers compare to a commercial raising hammer I have that has less narrow faces. There was no significant difference. I'll probably just buy and modify a cross peen hammer and then eventually build a more specialized hammer.

[Tableau]

Okay, I got some more work done on the back plate. I had to remake the third plate, and I thought I may have to remake it again, but I think it may work out as it is.





Looks like I have the backplate tilted too far back in this picture. The edge of the lower plate doesn't quite line up with the edge of the plate above it, but I am hoping this won't end up mattering too much. Also, I feel like I need to puff out the centre of the breastplate a little bit.



Strangely enough, you can't see the backplate in this last photo. You can see it a couple inches to either side of the breastplate in real life. Maybe I will take another look with just one eye. I think I will puff out the bottoms of the plackart a little bit after I detatch it from the breastplate.

Fitting all this stuff together is really tough!

[Nicknizh]

The edge of the lower plate doesn't quite line up with the edge of the plate above it

Trim the upper one, draw the edge of the lower one, I think it'll be ok.

The first picture strongly resembles the picture of Avant backplate from Dupras's thesis. I like it.

[Mac]

And while we are on topic of backplates, Mac, can you tell us how you treat the overlapping rolls of such pieces? I've yet to discover a surefire way to make them pretty and flush.

Nick,

If you show us some pics of places you have had trouble, I might have specific advise, but in general....

--trim the edges to a nice curve while the plates are temporarily assembled.
--mark the place where the hem will begin with a sharpy marker on the inside.
--cut away the underlaping material from the line to the edge. The hem allowance will now be only one layer at the transitions, and the allowances from adjacent plates will abut one another.
--thin the edges of the hem allowances a bit under the hammer so they will roll nicely, but take care to do it evenly and don't let them get too thin.
--grind or file the edges to a smooth curve again. (the thinning process will have left them a bit uneven)
--separate the parts and begin the hems.
--when the hems are 3/4 turned, reassemble the parts an make sure that the curve is still smooth. The "poison effect" will make the ends of the hems behave badly, so give them the full benefit of your art.
--separate the parts and continue turning the hems.
--reassemble the parts and make any necessary adjustments to the hems at the transitions.
--curse in your native language if the curve is can not be made to be as smooth as you would have liked.
--vow to do it all more carefully next time.

Mac

[Nicknizh]

If you show us some pics of places you have had trouble, I might have specific advise, but in general....

Initially, I screwed up pretty badly, I think the main reason is that I rolled the top piece to 3/4 and then trimmed the next one and so on. In the end, I trimmed them incorrectly and thus there were such gaps, and it was done 1,5 years ago. I somehow reworked the rolles last summer.

--vow to do it all more carefully next time.

Yea, next time I'll to do it your way, thank you.