Tom Bourland's Single piece armour

The front looks pretty plain but elegant. The buckles are solid brass and very strong inch and a quarter belts. They only look small....this is a big armour!

Above you can see a closeup of the neck...I rolled the neck as usual, and also raised it even higher. He will need to wear the gorget under this neckline.

Above you can see the keepers and the leather tongue which will keep his shoulders from getting the corner of the armour buried into the flesh. I have punched some holes for the shoulder armour and the arm armour...he can use them or not. At least they are there.

The backplate is fairly standard....albeit a bit large for most people. But then, Mr. Bourland is a bit large as well. There should be plenty of space in the shoulder blades. This armour is designed to be held together by a large belt going all around the body....and therefore there are no side buckles. I can add them if he wants.

A view of the the top part....showing that there is plenty of chest room. This armour only took me a solid week of pounding to make all that chest room! Makes me want to build a power hammer!

A nice pinch in towards the waist (how medieval is that!!!) and the new faulds and tassets which replace the ones that got rusty over the summer. These look better anyway. The tassets are based loosely on the picture in the Osprey book shewing the Battle of Wakefield. I skipped the extra piece which goes on top, replacing it with the "impression" of the tau cross. They actually hang a little straigher when he is standing than this picture shows since of course the armour is lying on the ground.

The client may choose to grind the points off the bottom of the tassets. They are 60 degrees, making them "legal for SCA", but some people are a bit anal about points on armour at all! I would be okay with that....rounding the points would be a shame but would not void his warranty in any way.

Note that in a departure from the laces, and in response to the client's request, I riveted the faulds onto the breastplate.

But just in case, I used rivets which can be easily removed. I drilled holes in the rivets, put them through the holes, and threaded a wire ring (a chain mail ring) through it to act as a cotter pin. Looks good, is very strong, yet the faulds may be removed for replacement, repair, or cleaning.

Above is a closeup of the join between the faulds and the breastplate from the inside. The little rings are a little easier on the underlying body than pointy cotter pins would be.

There we go...this armour was finished last year, allowed to languish in the shop for most of a year, and had new faulds made for it and attached. It is ready to go.