Thursday, January 3, 2008

Jess D.'s Armour

Click on the below images to enlarge.

Jess wanted an armour similar to what the delightful Mila J. wore in the movie "the Messenger". Essentially a gorget, placquart, and chain mail shirt. No faulds, no other armour, at least, not for now.
Above is the view of the armour from the back. It is very plain, very high in back. The lions may not stay...they are only there because they are held on with a screw set in from the back, and this means it will be comparatively easy to shorten those long straps, or perhaps move them around a bit. Building in some adjustment room is always a good thing. (I think these straps are a bit long in this picture, but hey, better than being too short!)


From the side. Jess is quite slim, a somotype which resembles Ms. J. pretty closely, so this armour will look good on her. Here you can see a little too much overlap, but on the other hand, the manniquin is a post in my shop, so what can you expect! The placqart comes down a bit in front, sort of Roman like, but not too far...Jess has to ride in this after all! If she buckles on a sword belt, it won't slip off the armour.


This front view shows a nice long, very plain placquart with safety rolls at the top and bottom edges. The safety roll on an outside curve is a real pain...and on an outward flare it is even worse. I won't do them unless I absolutely HAVE to...too much liklihood of creating an irregular line. The gorget is rolled in front, and actually came out not too bad withall. If for some reason that fancy buckle combo in front is too long, Jess can easily drill a hole farther down on the placquart. It is a tough, medieval looking belt...I rather like it. A nice choice. Again, a lion on the front which can be unscrewed from the back in order to move the attachment point if desired.



Here is a closeup of that nice belt I found.

The gorget is not the standard type of gorget...Jess is LARPing with this armour, not fighting in it, so I gave her a non fighting gorget. The inside edge is half rolled, which allows a leather thong to tuck down into it, and tie behind the back of her neck. There is no front neck guard at all, which hopefully means fewer corners and snag areas for her to catch her hair in. A scarf would still be a good idea though! Above you see the gorget with the keyhole fastener open, and below, clearly, it is closed. It takes awhile to get used to these keyhole fasteners, but hopefully she will have a friend for the first half dozen times she uses it.



All gorgets never fit right first time. Fortunately, this style, which is perfectly medieval and in period, is easy to squeeze into submission without worrying that you might spindle it into unuseability.

Above you can see how the leather thong or shoelace just ties in back. Nothing special, just effective.
And here you see a closeup of the gorget and attachment points in back. I suppose this pic should have been at the top, but hey, as long as it makes it to the blog!

click on the images to enlarge.



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