Where to begin

[Witchfinder]

Hello all,

I've been lurking on this forum for quite a while now, and I must say I'm very impressed. The quality of craftsmanship and knowledge here is simply astonishing.

I'm a computer programmer, and I'm fairly jaded about my work. I need an antidote. Something I can do in my spare time. Something creative. I'm good at painting, but I don't find it very satisfying. I've thought about building a kit car, but can't justify the costs to the Mrs.

Armouring looks very interesting, and creative. Furthermore, with persistence, I may even be able to produce something I can use in one of my other interests: LARP (which I imagine many of you may scoff at as a shandy-drinkers' pastime, but I enjoy it).

I've taken the plunge and ordered a book which is apparently highly regarded, "Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction." However, even with this and the extensive newbie help I've read here, I could do with some advice.

Firstly, aquisition of tools: I've done nothing but look for the time being. I wanted to avoid purchasing anything without being fully informed first. The usual DIY and hardware shops don't seem to carry the tools I would need (particularly oddball stuff like dishing hammers and planishing hammers). Will automotive tools like panel beating hammers suffice, or is it viable for a newbie to adapt some basic tools (ie: grinding down a small sledge-hammer)?

How about anvils? I know some people advocate using a lump of railway track, but I'm not sure where to aquire such a thing - are scrapyards good sources of such things?

Secondly, what would be a good idea for a first project? I don't want to begin with something too big and complicated that will overwhelm or discourage me.

Your help is much appreciated. Kind regards,

[Broadway]

Welcome.

First off, what's a shandy-drinker?

ToMAR is a good first step. Another reference that isn't mentioned much, but I think is an awesome resource for a beginner is Valantine's Armouring Video. Being able to see the stuff being made, helps alot. And there are some neat shortcuts in that video that help production time. Not so much of any interest for the advanced armourer... but extremely helpful to the person just starting out, who doesn't have access to a local armourer to watch.
http://www.varmouries.com/vvid01.html

Dishing hammer: grind a dome onto a sledge.

Anvil: Buy a real anvil. At least 125 lbs. You won't regret the purchase.

Spaulders are a good first step.
http://www.armourarchive.org/patterns/spaulders_sinric/

Crusader Knees are fun too.
http://www.armourarchive.org/essays/poleyns_krag/

Some folks don't realize that the archive has more than just forums. Just in case:
Essays
Patterns

Good luck with the new hobby.

[knitebee]

First off, a hearty welcome to the hobb...y... er addiction .

As for tools yes its very common to regrind more ordinary hammers into those more particular to armouring. I've an ordinary ballpien hammer that I reground so that both heads are rounded nicely, even though I've got a good selection of hammers now it is still the one I use the most. Since your "Over the pond" from him shipping my be prohibitive, but Halberds here on the archives makes an excelent beginners tool kit. The auto-body hammers you mentioned do work well but many of them (not all) are a bit on the light side so they take more effort to get the same ammount of work done. Anvils are nice but not necessary. A good stump with a depression ground in it is a great and simple to make form for dishing.

As to a first project, most people suggest a simple set of spaulders. Making a set will teach you a lot of the basics without being to difficult.

[Witchfinder]

Thanks for the information. I've read through the essays and looked in the pattern archive, but wasn't sure what to pick as a starting point.

Sorry for the Britishism. Shandy is a drink made by diluting beer (usually lager) with fizzy lemonade. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandy Shandy-drinker is an insult that implies the person is weedy excuse for a man.

EDIT: A quick note; is there a how-to for making a dishing stump? I don't want to ruin a perfectly good lump of wood by chiseling a way willy-nilly. I'm a big fan of careful preparation!

[Signo]

I know that the intent of make armour is cool, but from what you say, i feel that a metal shop is not your home, probably you will need a lot of tools that you normally don't use.
I think you could start in a painless, cheap, and easy way working on something like copper, maybe you could make some decorative pottery that mothers love to hang to the walls of the kitchen.
For this you can rely on less specialized tools, because copper is soft and ductile, and if your first goal is to fill your spare time, this could be a start.
After this, when you have some skill in the hand, you could swap on iron and the easy projects suggested before.
I don't want to discourage you, but armouring can be very frustrating at the beginning, and very expensive if you buy tools and never use them.

p.s. scrapyard are the best place to search for tools and stakes, but probably you should have access to a grinder and a welder to turn rusty metal scraps into useful tools and stakes.

[Witchfinder]

Thanks for the advice, Signo, but armour is where my interests lie. I usually make one or two trips a year to the Royal Armouries at Leeds (I only live about 30 miles away). It's something that inspires fascination and admiration in me.

[Kase Villand]

Greetings and welcome to the world of metal-pounding!

Don't worry too much about trying to BUY tools. Almost everyone who has been doing this for very long has ended up making at least some of their tools. Specialized hammers can be found online if you're willing to pay for them (hammersource.org and centaurforge.com are good places to start) but if you can't look at a hammer and visualize what you're going to do with it, you'll probably be better off grinding it out of a cheap ball-pein or soemthing.

The best thing you can do is find a local welder and make friends with him. Find out when he closes his shop, ask if you can stop by with a 6-pack and z couple bucks to put some stuff together for you. Or, better yet, take some classes on welding at the local tech college (you'll get access to their shop!)

Scrapyards will have lots of things that will work for you- just gotta look at them right. While I've borrowed an anvil from my ex-blacksmith uncle, the thing I use most as an anvil started out life as a 2" square bar of steel that I picked up for about $25. A local welder friend made a T out of it and I spent some time with a right-angle grinder making it into a great raising stake.

Good luck! Tell your wife this is a great stress reliever... hot fire, big hammers, and you get to hit things until you're sore. Like kickboxing classes, only louder.

Kase

[Broadway]

I completely disagree with Signo... dive in, buy everything you want, and build some neato armour...

Forget baby steps... jump in head first.

[mattmaus]

Regarding tools...

Unfortunately, you're right. There aren't a LOT of the things you will want at the DIY stores.

You need to get creative with a lot of the tools.

You will probably need to either make a lot of them, or end up 'kustomizin' other tools to do the trick. Keep your eyes open for big hard peices of scrap. To this day I have never regretted the pile of jackhammer bits I picked up, and some of my friends are right envious of them still.

You will often find yourself thinking "I need a stake that looks like this..." and end up making it. You may find that you purpose build a tool for one thing and never use it for anything else. You may find that you build it for one thing, and it serves 5 other purposes as well.

I tend to dissagree about anvils. They are extremely usefull things to have. I think though, that for someone just starting there are more usefull things to be had for the money, unless you can find a REALLY sweet deal. When ARMORING I personaly tend to use stakes, bowls and other things a LOT more than my anvil. The anvil has been more than a little usefull in the fabrication of some of those stakes though.

[Kenwrec Wulfe]

Hi, my name is Keith.

*crowd* - "Hi Keith!"

....and I'm an addict!

*crowd* - "Welcome!"

Welcome to the addiction!

Remembering the newness to this gut-wrenching, finger smashing love, I will make these suggestions.

Start simple and slow.
- Get an 8oz and a 16oz ball pein hammer - make sure they have the rounded ball and not the onion ball - unless you want to grind them round.
- Get a small anvil or piece of raidroad track (no idea on where to get that. I got an anvil )
-Get a wood chisel set for chiseling out your dishing stump.
-Get a leather/rawhide mallet - 2-3lb should do it.
-Get a piece of pipe - about 6-8in ID (inner diameter) about 2 feet long and something to hold it secure (a vice maybe)

Start with spaulders - They are a good combination of basic skills - You have to dish, curve, planish - Depending on the style of spaulder you could also flute, leather articulate or metal articulate. The essay here on AA is a great starting point.

[Thomas H]

Shandy is a week beer, common amongst chavs and alcoholics (re-enactors drink it too)

Hi to another Brit.

I see your 30 miles to the RA and raise you only 10, i live in Bradford
Don't worry about the LARP thing, there's SCA people here so you shouldn't be too out of place

[Konstantin the Red]

Aw come on -- shandy is refreshing in an iced-tea or lemonadey sort of way.

If you have an anvil, you'll find uses for it in armouring -- mostly, though, in using its hardy hole as a stakeholder. What an anvil is essential for is for forming hot bar stock into finished products, be they blades, ironmongery, or horseshoes. Some armor shaping may be done hot, but a great deal of it is worked cold -- cold working accounts for some fifty to eighty percent of it.

Armourers are well served by such substitutes as railroad track, suitably anvil-profiled with a torch so one end at least can reach well into anything deep (like helm tops) for rivet-setting, among other tasks. Railroad track amounts to a bickern, and is useful for such tasks as a bickern is suited for. Even 60 to 90 centimeters of I-beam works as something to pound metal either on, around, or into.

Hammers for armourers run to long-nosed shapes of head in order to reach around edges into deep spots. The longest such hammers rather resemble baby pickaxes, and broken pickaxe heads might be just the thing to make armoring hammers from. Whatever planishing hammers you obtain or make should have polished faces, at least as smooth as 600 grit. Raising hammers are best with rectangular faces, to give an axis to their greatest forming effect and thus control over where they push the metal. One good way to build a raising hammer is to grind the adzelike edge off of a bricklayers' hammer, leaving a slightly rounded rectangular face with all its edges and corners rounded off.

Dishing hammers can be very humble affairs. Some people dish with cast-steel dumbbells -- 5 or 6 pounds, 2.5 kilos and heavier, using their rounded ends to bang the metal with. A hammer need not have a handle if it's heavy enough.

TOMAR has an entire chapter on what tools to use, so once you've read it, all of your questions will be answered.

[Alec]

Another suggestion is to start with projects that are mostly leather or cloth -- a coat of plates, a jack, etc. -- that don't require alot of specialized metal working skills or tools. Pretty much something to cut it, make holes, and file edges. Also lots of hand sewing is the kind of project that also requires a comfy couch and a stack of DVDs. Tends to reduce noise from the wife that you've abandoned her for the shop. Thought after a while the effect wears off and hand sewing armour on the couch next to her may come to count as abandonement. Its in the adaptive nature of domestic common law

You could also start a mail project. As a general rule there can never be enough of the stuff. The Fourth Castle Armoury do it yourself kit is another ideal couch armour project.

Here's a picture of me in a jack and mail skirt and standard that were constructed with some sewing machine time, but mostly watching every remote corner of the Lord of the Rings extended DVD set.


[img=http://img500.imageshack.us/img500/1738/mistscynfall0538oa.th.jpg]

[Ivo]

One thing that might be helpful- go and find a jeweller´s supply shop.

Many of the better hammers in ToMAR are silversmith´s hammers. They may be more on the expensive side (about 15 to 40 Euros over here), but they usually are of way better quality than most things available on the cheap. Try and find someone selling Peddinhaus or Picard tools, they come properly hardened and polished, ready to use. I highly recommend them.

Your Peddinghaus contact adress in the UK (taken from their site) would be

Mike Wealthall
CAW. Industrial Agency Ltd. Spring Cottage
Tidenham Lane Tidenham Chepstow NP16 7JQ UK.

Tel. /Fax: 0044 1291 / 629343 Mobil: 0044 77683 07863
E-Mail:
mwealthall@btconnect.com

http://www.peddinghaus.de/INDEX_US.HTM

***

http://www.picard-hammer.de

There seems to be no export to the UK. Hm. Sorry.

Regards

Ivo

[BlackRain]

Ok..... people seem to be missing the obvious here ..... First thing you do is get a Halbreds newbie armouring tool kit. Then go from there... just contact Halbreds here on the forum and see if he has any available for you.

BlackRain.

[Sean Powell]

Nothing beets finding an armor in your area to talk shop with and maybe play with his tools if he will let you. If you are decided to go it alone:

First project: Pair of spaulders in Larp thickness steel (18ga)

18 ga can be cut with aviation snips and a firm hand. The snips can also be used to cut leather for a while while they are sharp. They will rapidly dull and you will want another way to cut leather straps by project 3 or 4. A jig saw will be a more expensive but more versitile tool in the long run.

Get a large block of wood. If necessary glue & bolt smaller pieces together to create a mass of wood. In one end make a large shallow hole about 100mm in diameter and maybe 25mm deep. (think about the sape of a cantelopue here). In the other end make a smaller hole 35-40mm in diameter and 25mm deep. Many ways exist to do this. For the large I recomend multiple cuts with a circular saw. For the small use the largest spade bit you can find. Other methods include drilling multiple holes, chiseling, burning or just violently beating a depression in the end.

Get a hand drill and a selection of bits. Also get some roofing nails (short shank large head) find the drill bit that is only slightly larger than the shank of the nail.

Get some end nippers. Buy quality on these. Trust me! Think ratio between handle length and pivot to cutter length. Many larger nippers actually have less mecanical advantage then medium or smaller nippers.

Buy a medium and a large size ball-peen hammer. On the largest grind the flat face into a dome as well. A 32oz hammer will move 18ga fine. for thicker steel you will eventually want a 3-lb sledge or similar. Polish the faces if you can. a 16 or a 24oz hammer is good for peening rivets.

If you can find a smooth flat heavy piece of metal to bouge over this is good. If you can find a smooth rounded heavy piece of metal to planish over then this is better.

Cut some paper or cardboard per the pattern and check the fit. Easier to modify cardboard then steel. Modify if necessary.

Cut the steel per the modified pattern. Take the largest piece and beat it into the large diameter depression. Take a picture and post it here asking "Whats wrong?" No, Seriously, it takes a practiced eye to notice technique issues or poorly shaped hammers. We could try to describe it but we could also write TOMAR again from scratch in the process...

Throw out your first attempt, listen to the advice and start again. Beet the large plates into the depression. Either bouge the main plate over the flat surface or planish over the dome. Bend the other plates to a gentle arc so they nest inside the main plate and inside each other.

Sand in increasing grits from 250 until desired polish is achieved.

Cut leather straps. Punch holes in the straps and drill holes in the plates so that the plates overlap 12mm (6mm either side of the holes) working from the plates farthest from the main plate use the nails as rivets to attach the straps.

Mount to your LARP gear and look studly. Start your next project...

See? Its SIMPLE!

Sean

[Maredudd]

Thomas Hayman is probably your nearest Archive person, but I'm only in Hereford and I've sent a PM with some details.
Maredudd

[Thomas H]

I'm the nearest archiver for miles and miles, aren't you lucky

there are avrious toerh down in hereford, london and another place i've forgotten the name of (sorry Justin)

[Adam Rudling]

You also cant go wrong getting yourself a proper Hole punch as mentioned in TOMAR.

Also dont discount using the wooden mallets & a leather bag used by car-body workers, for LARP you dont need to go beyond 18g steel & you can move that quite nicely with lightish tools.

Check e-bay regularly for blacksmiths tools / anvils / whatever, I personally got myself a really nice haul of stakes, hammers & a little Pexto jenny for £50

Adam - LARP isnt wrong, just remember that most of the people on here have taken too many stick blows to their noggins !

[freiman the minstrel]

You might also consider leather.

leather is a more expensive medium, but the starting tools are cheaper, and it irritates the neighbors a lot less. It's a cleaner shop too.

You will end up having to work some with leather anyway, but as far as I am concerned, for most things, leather is as good or superior in many ways.

f

[Witchfinder]

Thank you everyone for your detailed posts, it's good to know that everyone is willing to share their expertise! There's a lot of great information here that isn't in the FAQs and essays section.

I'm considering logging my learning experiences on a website somewhere and keeping a photo-diary of my efforts. Who knows? It may even end up being useful to other newbies.

Thanks a lot.

[Armour Design]

Hi Witchfinder,

I'm in the UK too so you might find some of the suppliers linked to on my site helpful - go to the Tools & Materials page at

www.armourdesign.co.uk/tools.htm

Best of luck,

Mike

[matthijs]

If it hasn't been said yet, _scrounge_ . Most of my tools come from scrapyards and junk markets (including a 12cm(5") ball stake for 3 euro's.
Threre are lots of people clearing out granddads old shop, and they tend to have lovely tools for next to nothing.

[Witchfinder]

Again, thanks for the information. I am going to start clearing the rubbish from my garage tonight so I'll have a good working space. There's an unbelievable amount of junk in there!

Meanwhile, I spotted this that I would like opinions on. This set of bodywork hammers and dollies looks pretty good, if a little expensive. It doesn't say what the weight of the hammers is, but they look about right (from picures I've seen anyway!)

http://www.frost.co.uk/item_Detail.asp?productID=9174

Thoughts, anyone?

[Mike F]

It'll be great for planishing work, but none of it's really good for heavy forming. If you can find any one of those hammers seperately, it'd be a good investment, but the kit's probably overkill for many armorers, especially when the money can go elsewhere. I've spent much more than I originally wanted to, and I'm not even close to where I want to be.

Also, you'll find a few schools of thought and even a few lineages on the AA, and no way is superior to the others. Remember than when someone tells you you're doing something wrong.

Unless it's Mac or Thaden. If they tell you you're doing something wrong, listen.

(Both great people and wonderful armorers)

(Well, not wonderful, really. Probably the best alive. If not THE best, then in the top five)

[Witchfinder]

Well, the kit is £60 (which I suppose is about $100), but individually the hammers work out at anywhere between £15 and £25, so with the bonus of the dollies for working on, I thought it might be handy. I'll keep looking anyway, thanks.

[Thomas H]

I find a thin necked chippies hammer is good for planishing with a little TLC to the face (I.E, sanding and polishing). For dishing, a ball pein hammer with the larger side sanded/ground into a radius of whatever diameter is handy to have around. Don't forget to round off the corners

[Clinker]

I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this: a heavy 4" machinist's Vise. The kind that pivots. Mount it to a heavy work bench. Make wood, and soft metal pads for the jaws. This is what you use for holding all the metal parts for cutting and filing. Most vises have a flat spot which can be used to do riveting on.

Find a 3 1/2" dia piece of pipe, about 24" long that will clamp in the vise held just below the jaws. Now you have a surface to bend sheet metal over for lames, great helm parts etc. The end of the pipe can be used to hammer the flanges over of helmet tops etc. The length is very useful.

Other steel bars can be held in the vise with greater or lesser sucess to reach into deep spots on helmets. holding a piece of RR track gives an anvil to work on.

I have a 100lb anvil, but if I had to choose, I'd take the vise. It is far more versatile. I made a lot of armor before I ever had an anvil.

[Thomas H]

I find clamping the piece to the workbench and filing down towards the floor is easier, but, that is just me.