SFX

One of my three piece armours. Exhibited at the Toronto Science Fiction and Fantasy Expo in August of 2008. Not too shabby a piece of armour.

Tom's Breastplate

Unprocessed images from my workshop this week.
Above, I am stretching the bottom edge of the armour. This will make a half inch wide strip onto which I can rivet a lame (narrow piece of metal) which will become the top lame of the faulds.
See how I am using the cross peen hammer to stretch the metal. If I didn't use the cross peen, the anvil would simply dent into the body of the armour, and the flange would not flare out properly.

This is the piece, half flanged out. To this point, we are looking at about 30 hours of bashing, shaping, rolling and finishing. And its not done yet.

click on all these images to enlarge.

Armour of the Week

click on the images to enlarge.
This is a standard three piece armour set. Although it is really basic, bottom of the line armour, I decided to do some upgrades....I uced better buckles than I was going to use, and I picadilled the armour.
The client specified that he wanted the armour to buckle in front. I don't think that improves the looks of the armour much, but it does make it a little more functional. In the below picture, you can clearly see the rivets which hold the picadills in place. So what are picadills you ask? They are little pieces of leather under the armour which keep the layers of armour from sliding upon themselves. Prevents scratches in the protective finish, and of course, gives rust a bit of a run for the money. They also keep the armour from clanging together when you move...
I also did another couple of things to this armour which are out of the ordinary....I flared the bottom plate of the plackart, and english wheeled the surface into nice fluted shapes in the back.
Looks quite nice in the side light.

Below are the faulds and tassets..The faulds lace onto the breastplate, and the tassets lace onto the faulds. Those eyelets along the top of the top lame in the fauld set below match up with the eyelets on the bottom of the breastplate in the very bottom picture.
Below are tassets which lace onto the faulds above.
Above are the fairly standard tassets, rounded to prevent injury, and eyeletted rather than buckled. The buckles look kind of nice, but the client can do that himself next year when he has some more cash.

And the nice three piece breastplate. I also picadilled the breastplate, so the scratchy surfaces which have plagued my armour all these years might be a thing of the past.

My only real regret is that the picadills, like the tongues of leather under the shoulders, don't really show, yet they take more than an hour to install. So these nice additional touches are all fine and good, and will get me more work, yet they add a lot to the time it takes to make the armour.

The classic battle between quality and price I guess.

Rob's Armour

Three piece armour. I did not make the helmet or the shoulders. Or the sword, or those kuul boots. But I DID make the breastPlate, Back Plate, Fauld and Tassets.

I am thinking a different style of tasset should go with those boots. But I dunno, these are pretty period.

Surprisingly enough, this is actually MY backplate. It is fairly easy to bend and twist this style of backplate around until it fits. Took about half an hour. The bottom plate goes half way around his body in front underneath that custom breastplate. Oh well, at least it works.
And he can train in this armour, so we fit, function, suitability, and I think good looks. I am rather proud of the effect!

Barrel Helm

Nice little barrel helm. The eyeslots don't get used nearly as much as the row of holes just below them. The chin strap is laced onto the helm with those little red laces, so that if for some reason, the client gets hurt, they won't have to tilt his head back to undo the chin strap. Just a quick slice at the exposed laces and off it comes. I put eyelets in to keep the laces from cutting themselves! Not that I think that getting hurt is very likely in normal combat, after all, it is 14 gauge throughout!, but you know, in case he tries to head butt a bull or maybe a train.
If for some reason, his marshals don't like the chin strap being laced on, it could always be riveted into place. Standard 3/16 rivets would work just fine...there are 44 rivets in this helm...about three quarters of a pound just in fasteners alone.
Oh, and check out my new helmet stand! It has an eagle on it! Kuul!

Jacob's Helm

as usual, click on the images to enlarge. This helm is the second one I made for Jacob. He liked the look of the grilled face helm, but there was just no way he could fit his noggin into it, and STILL have the required full inch of padding all around. Since he is relatively new at this fighting game, he expects to get hit a lot, and he wanted the best protection he could get!
The skull is a 10 gauge steel spinning, cut and stretched like a stretch limosine with a 10 gauge strip up the sides. This adds a full inch front and back. The steel rivets are standard 3/16 dome headed rivets, and the little copper rivets hold the chin strap in place.
The face plate is 12 gauge, with welded 5/16 bars, and the little "smiley" chin piece is measely 14 gauge. That will be strong enough to attach chain mail, or perhaps another little bit of steel to prevent anything from sliding up underneath the helm. Those 5/16 bars are so heavy that they don't need support up the centre, but because some Marshals are (ahem) a little paranoid about distortions they have observed in the usual 1/4 inch bars, they may demand that Jacob insert a welded centre bar, and weld the nasal. We will cross that bridge when we come to it, same as the possibility that it doesn't come down far enough in front. Both fixes (assuming they are needed) are really easy, and I will wait to see what the Marshal says before I add even more weight to this already quite heavy item.
This tank turret is rather heavy as far as helms go, but on the other hand, that is not necessarily bad...if Jacob gets hit in the head, the weight will soak up the impact, and slow it down, reducing concussion. It is nice and roomy, so it won't give him claustrophobia, and the visibility is absolutely stunning! It comes around the front enough to allow some cheek padding, and a second chin strap can easily be mounted. The human neck is surprisingly strong in compression (people carry huge weights on their heads, and you can even stand on your head) but it doesn't take kindly to twists and knocks, so heavy is good.

Armour for the big and tall

Not all that happy with this armour.... a 7 0ut of 10 design wise. But functionality is 100%. The finished piece has faulds, tassets that fit, and some chain mail filling in that gap at the front of the arm. It will look great for his wedding, particlarly good from the back. The tassels were just a whim...and the client seemed to like them, so we'll keep 'em.

I am rather pleased at how Korey's tassets and faulds turned out. I think I'll keep this template.