Apprentice to be an armour maker

A letter to me from a fine young man who wants to become a blacksmith.  Although I think this is a laudable goal, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.  Often they want to "apprentice" to me.  I have talked to a lot of the old guys, and even at the turn of the last century, apprenticeship meant a lot of different things than it seems to mean to young folks today!  Nowadays, of course, you can take an apprenticeship course at a college to become an electrician, or a sheet metal worker.  Very often the unions get involved.  When you take an "apprenticeship" course in Ontario, you need to take courses to ensure that when you actually show up at a job site, you are worth the electrician's trouble to train you further.  That pretty much means all the "book learning" is behind you before you even darken the door.  Clearly there are no Trade Certifications in armour making!  But, the idea of learning as much as you can before you darken my door is pretty universal!

This is the answer I made to the very understandable request to take on an apprentice...
cut and paste follows.

>How can I say this without sounding like a total dick.  Hmm.  Please bear in mind that I am not as grumpy as I sound in an email.  That I am not mean and nasty at all, and understand totally where you are coming from. I sympathize with your position and understand your needs.  Probably more than you do since I went through this already both when I was learning the trade and several times since with enthusiastic students.  I get a half dozen requests just like yours every year, and to put it mildly, these schemes rarely work out.  So consequently, I have an alternative.  Three of them actually.   I'll get back to that in a bit.  The fact that I am taking an hour of my precious time to answer this email alone shows that I have a great deal of sympathy for your position.


   If you are injured on my premises, I am responsible, so I cannot just point to a pile of steel and say "I want to see a dozen helms built when I get back".  I would come back to a pile of unsaleable junk and a load of broken tools, and likely blood on the floor.   No reflection on you of course...it is what would be expected of an unsupervised individual.
    Working in my shop requires supervision. You can't work unsupervised. You don't give me one hour or labour, I give YOU an hour of supervision. I cannot afford to take three weeks off to further your educational goals, nor can I afford the "changing horses in mid stream" way of working which would be required of me for that three weeks.  When I am supervising the new guy, my production goes from 100% down to about 20%. There are ways to limit this, of course. I could put you to digging over my garden, or trimming cedar hedges, grinding stuff "over there out of my way".  Doesn't sound very much like an educational opportunity to me, and you would rebel rather quickly.  Nor would I blame you. Obviously if there were to be "armouring work" I would utilize a human resource for that first, but then we are getting back to the supervision thing. My helpers are better if they are trained.



  You stated in your letter that you have not communicated your goals correctly.  Thats true.  You have not stated any goals at all except that you want to work in a blacksmith shop and be educated (so far pretty undefined) through osmosis instead of by lecture.  You have not stated any educational goals at all. Did you have a curriculae in mind? I know I do. My curriculae don't involve digging over gardens.

   As I state in my "requirements" on my web site, the "payment in kind" method is the most difficult. How you going to eat?  Pay for a place to stay?  Were you going to pitch a tent or kip down on a cot in the back of the shop? Sleep in your car or your mini van?  These are the devilish details which have collapsed "payment in kind" schemes in the past. These details are supposed to by YOUR problem, but they become mine far too easily.

http://www.southtower.on.ca/armour/Requirements.html

Oh right, I said I had an alternative.  A couple of them actually.

Alternative 1, assumes you already know all this stuff and are just looking for a place to work, say to create your own armour for fighting, in which case, working "in-kind" is a piece of cake.  You look after your own meals and accomodation, and work for me in the morning as a trained helper and on your own in the afternoon.  No lectures, little or no instruction involved, and you can go for as many or as few days as you like.  We do this on Saturdays on a first come, first serve basis already, and I have a shift worker who drops in during the week building an armour worthy of a museum.  This is a method which is favored by people who have had my lecture series or are already fully trained in metalwork. Self guided and beautiful armours result.  This method has a history of success.

Alternative two...  Assumes you don't know squat about how to work sheet metal and don't know the difference between a tippet and a tasset.  But you want to learn all there is to learn about making armour from sheet metal.  Find a grand somewhere, take my lectures.  Work in your field, build armours. Refine your skills as an armours' helper, and then as a full fledged armourer. Make yourself into a person who is useful.
     The question of whether I would have a grand worth of work around the estate would be a serious question.  It would depend upon my plans for the spring, and whether there is sufficient work on the estate to justify taking on a hand for a couple of weeks.  That would be two weeks of doing stuff possibly not related to armour making.  This was your idea....and as you can see, it is fraught with difficulties.  I see problems...not solutions. But, it IS an option.

Alternative three.  You don't know squat about how to work sheet metal, and you don't give a hoot about armour or history, but you figure the skills you learn here will be applicable elsewhere.  Find a grand, take my lecture series, and then work here or anywhere else you fancy.  Build your own workshop.  Make stuff. Take the skills you learn here and build cars or motorcycles or airplanes.  You would need your own shop for that because mine is solely dedicated to making armour.  This is an excellent choice.  By not depending on me to find you work, it goes much more smoothly.


    There is pretty much no way to work in-kind as payment for a lecture series.  They take six days to complete and take at least that much more for me to prepare.  You don't get one-on-one instruction...you are in there with two or three other people. On MY schedule.  During that time, the only thing I will be creating is an armour maker.   This lecture series is a prerequisite for working in my shop.



http://www.southtower.on.ca/armour/metalworker%27s_test.txt


Well, I could go on and on, but this should give you something to think about.

Bill Fedun
Armour Maker

These two separate helms from Austria are worth the time to examine, in only to clearly get an idea of the "form" of a real helmet.  They are salets with visors of course, very heavy ten guage or heavier, though it is a little hard to see that from behind the glass!
        These helms are for jousting.  The wearers were up on a horse.  Way up there.  Take a look at the second picture...how narrow the frontage is.  How narrow the eye slot is.  How sharp and defined a keel it has.
         What can we learn from this?  Well, among other things, we can learn that any serious impact on the "nose" would rock the helmet up.  Pushing the helmet back would cover the eye slot. 
         But.
         A more over riding question would of course be "Why have two parts, a top part (salat) and a bevor.  Would this not risk a lance head being shoved under the helmet?" Well, when you consider that they would employ a Grande Guard to prevent that eventuality (sometimes), they clearly didn't worry themselves about it too much.
         My thinking is that they were prepared to lose the salad if it got hit hard enough...better to lose the armour than to break your neck.  But that does not explain the popularity of a helmet form which you can get a lance head under!
         I may have to revisit this line of thinking...perhaps some of my readers have an idea or two on the subject.


 Oh, and the one below?  Well, I just had to include the most beautiful helm in the collection!  Click on it to see it in all its glory!

"plain" breastplate

  

This "simple" breastplate is a very serious piece of armour.  The only pointless decoration on it is that fancy fan out in front.  But piercing is a nice decorative touch, there is no etching or other silly fripperies as a part of this piece.  

It is in Austria, and part of the collection there, it is generally considered to be "Gothic" on the basis of its fluting and pierce work.  Closer examination reveals it to be more Burgundian than German, the flutes are not s deep as is generally found in German work, and the fancy dented safety rolls are positively Belgian!  Sliding rivets allow this armour to tuck under the pot belly. Often there is a "turn in" at the top of the placquart which makes it look thicker than it is...this feature is totally lacking.

  

The more you look at this piece of kit, the more things you can learn from it.  Salient points might include the deep pot belly, the lack of a keel, the ninety degree out turn at the neck. 

This was a sort of "erratic", an unlabeled piece of armour in the Austrica Museum.  One could do worse than to make armour like this.   

This armour was better seen from the side like this.

Roman Vienna Tools

 Vienna was once a Roman City.  Water came in aquaducts from the Vienna Woods, and boats cruised up the Danube River.  A large city grew up here.  The Roman city is still here, albeit pretty much underneath the present city. Since this is an armouring blog, I thought I would post some of the pictures of the tools which were used by those Romans far away!

Above a Fransica style curved axe, paired with a mattock.  The axe might have been a war weapon, though I doubt it, but it IS a little small to be a hatchet.  The hatchet below is more what I think of when I think of a hatchet.  The swept lines of the "beard" are a joy to behold!
      Click on the pictures to embiggen them, of course.  Feel free to download them and use them in your own collection. 

Below shows the very modern looking needles, and stuff for net making.  The antler shows all the wear one would expect from a career of net making.  

Below, a knife with a VERY robust tang.  Roman knives are almost never so robust, so this little knife was made for very heavy jobs.    The chisels we use today for cutting and shaping stone look exactly the same as the wide bladed one below!

Another mattock.  This one as well was made from iron, and therefore could not have been cast...the Romans never cast iron.  But this is a pretty heavy lump of iron!  Remember, iron was much more valuable then than now.

This beautiful adze is an absolute work of art! I wondered about that spine on the top face for some time, until I realized that the re-enforcing spine you can so clearly see does not come even close to the actual cutting edge.  

Templar Video Game Armour

 click on the picture to badassenize.  

This was an email from Rico.....wants me to consider making the armour in the above pic.
Fascinating idea.

But problematic.  Could I MAKE such an armour?  Well, maybe....its not that spectacularly difficult.  Elaborate though. 

 By the way, you can get these pictures in a much larger size suitable for computer wallpaper here...

 Rico met me at Fan Expo, and this was was he emailed me...  I have juggled them to put the oldest at the top....
I dunno.  Any armour makers out there think I over quoted?    Should I get into this world?  That is to say, does anybody think there is a future in it?   I figure by the time I built this armour, it would be as obsolete as Gimli's helm in LOTR.    It would be old news rather quickly.  Or maybe not.  Any feedback? 



Quoting Rico
Hi Bill.  This is Gxxxxx.  We met at FanExpo2012.  I showed you the Templar

Knight Statue from the Hellgate London videogame.  How are you?  Can you
please give me a price and delivery on how much a full suit would cost,
and
what material you would make it out of?

How far is Metcalfe from Downtown Toronto?

Thanks  

Gxxxxx

On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 5:23 AM, William Fedun wrote:

Hellgate London is currently owned and distributed by HanbitSoft and
NAMCO.  It was originally published by Flagship Studios, and because
Flagship Studio is defunct, some people seem to think that copyright
regulations have lapsed.  They have not, HanbitSoft owns them through their
development studio in SanFransisco, Redbana.

Back in 2008, they released this report...

"(1) HanbitSoft is an exclusive licensee of both Hellgate and Mythos in
Asia, with rights to sublicense the games; (2) in addition, HanbitSoft is a
secured creditor who has been pledged the Mythos (but not the Hellgate)
intellectual property as collateral for a loan; (3) Comerica, another
secured lender, has been pledged the Hellgate intellectual property as its
collateral for a loan; (4) Flagship Studios does not currently own the
intellectual properties to either game, which are held in separate
companies subject to the security interests of lenders, and Flagship
Studios’ interest in those companies is also pledged to its lenders; (5) it
is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft
offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open, but
HanbitSoft hopes to work with Comerica and some of the team at Flagship to
see if there is a way to continue to generate content to keep Hellgate
online in Asia and to finish the development of Mythos."]

Clearly now, we would have to contact HanbitSoft's attournies to obtain a
licence to build an armour based on their intellectual property. Since they
are in Korea, this may prove to be problematic.

http://hg.hanbiton.com/Home/**Home.aspx<http://hg.hanbiton.com/Home/Home.aspx>

Such licensing fees may be cheap, or expensive, depending on many factors.
You must obtain a licence before I can make this armour.



A suit this large would require a design work-up out of cardboard.
Several fittings later, we would have the first of many collections of
templates.

  Then the second step is to make the individual pieces out of steel.
This is the design test stage, which is used to modify the templates.
This is still part of the alpha design, and none of the steel is actually
used in the final product.  (edges are not finished, hammer marks are not
removed, etc.)

The third step is to fit it to you, the wearer.  This will require
modification of sizes and dimentions, and a decision on materials.  A
jouster would require heavy stainless steel and an actor would require
light aluminum for instance. Material selection will have an effect on the
time it takes to do this work.  Factors used in materials selection would
depend upon how much maintenance you would be prepared to do...aluminum
will be forever denting.  Steel will be forever rusting. This third step is
the final set of cardboard templates.

The forth step is the simple one...actually MAKING the armour. This would
be a beta version and might well require some modifications to keep it from
pinching you or otherwise render it unsuitable.  Such modifications will
allow me to deliver a serviceable package.

And then there are the license fees.  There were representatives of NAMCO
at Fan Expo, keeping an eye on costumes and making sure that nobody was
ripping off their work.  They don't care about one person doing themselves,
but they REALLY care about a company such as me making them for sale to
somebody else.

I could make you a perfect templar armour exactly like the one in the
video game out of steel for twenty to twenty two thousand dollars.  (plus
licensing fees of course.) The second one would be a lot less (about seven
thousand including helmet)  of course.  The work to accomplish this task
would take me five to six months of shop time.

Bill Fedun
Armour Maker

Quoting Rico

OK Bill.  Thanks for replying to my inquiry.  I'll see about getting the
license for the armour.  This may take some time and I'm not sure if I'll
be successful.  I'll let you know.

You seem to really know armour, and the quality of your work is amazing.
You're definitely at the top of my list.

How far is Metcalfe from Brampton?

Thanks again.

Gxxxxxxx


Easier to build you a car.....

Less complicated!

As you can see by my reply that I took this question seriously.  However, I suspect that there must be a reason why you would want to get such an armour.  A car...you can use to get around.  An armour?  An actor would need it as part of his job.  A jouster would need it as part of his job or hobby.  Advertising companies need armour to make movies or adverts.  I fear that this project may fall on the fundamental problem that there is actually no real use for it in real life.

OTOH, there is no real use for purebread horses, yet people get them anyways.  Oh well.  Let me know how the license hunt is going.

Bill

Freidrich Kurfurst von der Pfalz 1450

 A complete armour (harnishe) built for a Burgundian in 1450.  It has that peculiar Burgundian style of helm, but Freidrich was not going to do everything in the Burgundian style...lots of good solid German stuff going on here as well. 

Details like the pointed elbow cop, the rondel, are very German, whereas the plain shoulder is so reminicient of Belgium or for that matter, Burgundy.  

The very plain tassets are almost an afterthought, though you notice the slightly smaller back tassets are hung along side the front ones.  Very Burgundian French in their execution.  (The Burgundians never considered themselves to be either French, Belgian or German during this time, an opinion which was not shared by those fine countries at one time or another)   All in all, a very straightforward armour.

This closeup of the helmet just makes me cringe...somebody had to wear that!  

Oh well.  The long toes were the style at the time.  I always wondered if they tied the tips of their toes up to their knees with string!  Anyway, the whole story is down there...for anybody to do the translation.  

Stirrups

 I will let these pictures of a set of stirrups in the Vienna Armour Museum speak for themselves.

 As usual, click on the picture to make it bigger

Spangenhelms

 Vienna Armour Museum, 2012.  The spangenhelms shown here are the finest I have ever seen.
Who wears spangenhelms?  Well, these ones were worn by migration period celts rather than the Romans. More information on Spangenhelms may be found here...this post is a short one designed to show the beautiful helms on display at the Vienna Armour Museum. 

Focusing closely on this magnificent gold plated steel helm, one is struck by the beauty of the symmetry, the incised decoration and the  careful use of precious iron.   This is the sixth century, the period in which the Romans are on the wane (in some places!), and young kingdoms are struggling to establish their personal image in a cultural vacuum. 
          The use of triangular shaped "spangens" is well known and to an armour maker, they look like they are better forged than chiseled out of flat steel.  The ones in the above example even look to a hasty eye to be cast, say, out of brass, but of course, they are not.  The rivets are all beautifully set round and proud, and of course the bottom row of rivets exist solely to attach the padding inside. 
            A more common type of helmet, one which is easier to make and in fact, creates less waste in production is the single wide strip which goes front to back, with a minimum of dishing.  A material like bog iron won't stand for much dishing or three dimentional deformation, so you find the below style to be more popular than the spangenhelm throughout the period from the 500 to 1100 AD.  The coppergate helm, for instance is built on the below pattern.  It looks much prettier, but the fundamental lines are the same.

These two sets are of the same helms, just from different angles.  They have been subject to a very interesting process which involves electrical rust removal.  I have done a little of that, the results always look interesting.  Folded steels will benefit most from this process, and you should pick pieces which are so rusty that there is simply no other way to clean the rust off.  

Books, reference material

 Books.  There are so many.  Many are copyright...Brian Price's armour making volume, or Stone's Glossary are in print.  I recommend them.  It seems that nowadays anybody with a little bit of skill or knowledge seems to say to himself...gee, I could self publish this stuff.  And that is excellent, but lets face it, your book can get lost in the Amazon Noise!  Many of them are just picture books, coffee table books which look good but are not really very valuable if you want to really get into making armour.  Stylistic variations are often more the perview of antique dealers or artists rather than armourers, such books are excellent and beautiful.  David Edge's book about the Knight in the Middle Ages, for instance, is THE go-to book to make sense of all the styles and types of armour which were used throughout Europe, but good luck finding results of an assay on the metal, or a decent picture of the strap work which holds it all together inside!

    Many of the older ones are treasures from old bookshops,many were written by curators, and include catalogues of collections.  Some catalogues are VERY boring...I swear Mr. Edge wrote his fine book after he went cross eyed studying the un-illustrated catalogue of the Wallace Collection.  A phone book would be more interesting!

The Internet Archive is the finest resource I know for old, out of print, out of copyright books.  It is like the most wonderful library up the road!

 These have mostly all been scanned in, photograph by photograph.  There are a few missing or damaged pages, a few dog ears, a few coffee rings and bits of cigarette ash on the page when they photographed them.   I personally think this does not detract in the slightest from their value.

The internet archive is free.  Knowledge is priceless.  These are the books I downloaded onto my Kindle before I traveled to Europe to study the subject matter in the museums. 

There are lots more than this small sampling!  But if any of my readers get through even a fraction of this list, they will have a better handle on the subect than even Gary Gigax! 

http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924032523841#page/n7/mode/2up

http://www.archive.org/stream/ancientarmouran00blaigoog#page/n4/mode/2up
http://www.archive.org/stream/ancientarmouran02hewigoog#page/n8/mode/2up
http://www.archive.org/stream/ancientarmouran03hewigoog#page/n5/mode/2up


http://www.archive.org/stream/recordofeuropean02lakiuoft#page/n9/mode/2up
http://www.archive.org/stream/recordofeuropean02lakiuoft#page/n9/mode/2up

http://www.archive.org/stream/recordofeuropean04lakiuoft#page/ii/mode/2up
http://www.archive.org/stream/recordofeuropean05lakiuoft#page/ii/mode/2up

http://www.archive.org/stream/treatiseonancien00grosrich#page/n7/mode/2up

http://www.archive.org/stream/inventorysurveyo02ffou#page/n5/mode/2up
http://www.archive.org/stream/inventorysurveyo02ffou#page/n5/mode/2up

http://www.kb.dk/da/nb/materialer/haandskrifter/HA/e-mss/thalhofer/thott-2_290.html
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL7574308W/A_glossary_of_the_construction_decoration_and_use_of_arms_and_armor_in_all_countries_and_in_all_time

Making armour

The picture says it all.

Costume Armour

Two hours develping the pattern from client's sketch, (another two still to go to modify them to be useful in the future) two hours on the buffing wheel, and three hours to cut out and mount them.
    And a happy costume shop customer in Toronto.
           Now to get paid.  I hate rush jobs before halloween....little things like cheques and client approval letters get neglected.   Almost always to my detriment. 

Vienna wotsthisthen?

Click on these pictures to enlarge them and see if you can figure out what they are.

Pretty cool hmmmm?   Check out the knuckle spikes! 

Nesselbeck

I have seriously GOT to get here someday

Quinn's Armour....redux

http://drocan.deviantart.com/

Clearly Quinn has found some admirers.  This armour was featured here a few months back.
    I didn't make the shoulders or leg armour though.

Please, go and check out Quinn's Deviant Art page.
http://drocan.deviantart.com/

Music Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zP50Ewh31E4#!


Why can we not do a music video like this one?

One of the many fights at the Osgoode Medieval Festival.  Thats me on the left, and Jeff, pretty much destroying Mark.

This little battle is a VERY good example of the South Tower fighting style...the "Glass Sword" style.  Watch it a couple of times, you will see how and why it works so well.

Traveling in the Deviant Art universe

J.... asked me if I could make her a nice sexy armour.    She linked me to a Deviant Art site which illustrated what she had in mind...and on the way, I visited several other sites.
     The mind boggles at how many ways there are to enclose the female form in steel.
    Well, the least I can do is to send my readers out to check out some of these links.  So please, spend a half hour surfing and let me know what you think!
     Please note that I have intentionally kept these AS links, rather than thumbnails.  As anyone who knows me well is aware, I am very fussy about copyright.  Links ain't copyright...grin!

     But I would be honoured to make ANY of these designs in my shop!



In Leather...     http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/25041437#/d4y52fg

One of me....   http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/25041437#/d4lakir

I like all the jewelry here...  http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/25041437#/d419rs1

moulded plastic?  ...    http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=25041437&offset=24#/d4qmvon

I could SO see a lady in this....   http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=25041437&offset=24#/d4qp4uo

I like the way the chain comes down in the back of this...  
http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=25041437&offset=48#/d4joe6x

This one shows an innovative way to use a little cloth modesty top.  But its not very viking...
 http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=25041437&offset=72#/d4anlx4

More along my usual line...   http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=25041437&offset=120#/d3dwkkd

And just for fun....   http://norn-fans.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=25041437&offset=144#/d3g9je2