Louis's shoulders

click on these images to enlarge. Below is a closeup of the shoulders. I think they are strips of overlapping leather, perhaps with some decoration on them. In two layers.


Below is a picture made by an eye witness to real Byzantine armour. It is of a fairly high ranking (white cloak!) individual. The painting is on the wall of a church in Cyprus


Louis wanted an armour which would look Byzantine. That means scales, oxblood leather, and of course, it has to be solid enough to stand up to the sudden impact of SCA fighting. I can do that.

These shoulder cops are made from sixteen gauge steel to withstand the impact, and they buckle around the upper arm with a one inch strap. I am not really fond of the location of that buckle though....but there are not a lot of choices here. I may install a tongue under the buckle....not that I am especially worried that the buckle would be driven into the skin, it will be on the inside after all, but maybe better safe than sorry.
The eyelet holes, of course, are for the elbow cops which I have yet to make. He will only use two of them, but this will provide some adjustment. Once you get all the equipment out to set eyelets, it takes much the same time to set six as it does to set four. I am sort of thinking right now that they are all out of place, but oh well, at least they are decorative. More eyelets are easy to install if I need to.

How does it look so far Louis?

Joe's armour, finished.

above, side view, tasset is shifted to the bottom a bit. The top fauld lame does not have a point, it does however, have eyelets which match the eyeletted holes in the breastplate.

The points are bent upwards just a smidgeon, to reduce the scratching when the lames ride up. This picture is kind of neat because it shows the faulds spreading out to the side a bit, showing the finished arch in the middle. Normally of course, that arch does not show.

This is the back. Much the same as the front, but without the tassets.

I have made the faulds so that they form a nice rounded cover over the tush. That is to say, it comes in at the bottom a bit. Looks neater that way. This is a feature of the South Tower armour...the originals tended to flare out like a skirt.

Above you can see how the faulds look when they are hanging properly. The gap in the middle closes, and it looks nice. The tassets have the same upward crown as the tassets, and the bottoms are pointed...but not so much that they will stick into his leg.

The only things the client might want at this point is buckles holding the front and back faulds together.

Two Piece Armour

sixteen gauge front and back. (darned heavy!) It looks a little like a short jacket at this point. Thats good, since the faulds (skirt part) will be very long. Client may find that he needs to squash it in from the side a bit when he gets it. Or maybe not.

three piece back plate. This is kind of bent over the box to enable me to give it a spray with clear lacquer.

The client is really fit, all chest and no waist, so I made the placquart really flat to show off his physique. Most of my clients like a little more room in the belly though.

No picadills or any frills whatsoever. Just a nice, competent armour.

client's armour

Not quite sure if this is what the client wanted. He asked for a gothic arch in the front and squareish tassets with a centre line. You can see the fauld piece in back which has yet to be rolled, when it eventually gets rolled, there will be a little arch in the bottom fauld. I may change this yet...lop off an inch off the top of the arch, tilt the tassets more sideways, and maybe reshape the line afterwards. Or not. (this is where some communication is valuable) Minor changes, if any....

Below you can see some of the pieces, all bouged, shaped, rolled and finish sanded. The client is slim and will have a flatter belly armour (that would be the piece at the far left in the picture)so all the blowing out had to be done to the breastplate. This involves a combination of dishing and shrinking. Considering this is ALL in heavy battle grade sixteen gauge steel, this is a remarkable achievement in only six hours.

Below you can see the plaquart (belly section) and the overlapping faulds. I don't like pointy faulds, but this is what he wanted. The reason I don't like them is because the centre lines have to be so perfectly lined up all the time...a quarter centimeter out in straight faulds hardly even show, but pointy ones require a LOT more care. grrrr. Oh well...if it was easy, anybody could do it.

As you can see, in this picture we have got around to shaping the faulds to 12 inch radius wheel, and rolled the arch into the bottom fauld. The faulds need the larger radius because they have to match up to the back faulds. Its okay I guess...and it is perfectly period, but I don't like them as much for SCA activities because the faulds are more delicate the larger the radius. Tight radius faulds are less period, but they are sword proof...Erin's coloured armour a few posts back shows the tight radius faulds. In this case, I made them wider so that they would have more of an overlap, and therefore would hopefully self support better.

The above placquart is actually shaped to a 12 inch radius...the same as the fauld sections....though you really can't see it in this "head on" picture. Items made on the 12 inch ball looks almost flat, but it's not "quite" flat...there is enough radius to allow it to be pretty tough still. The flare was about two inches from the bottom, and it needs to be that wide because of the points on the fauld lames. You can see in the photograph how the flare was made, then rolled as flat as we could get it with the flat wheel. It was a pretty heavy weight on the wheel, as you can see it polished the surface. The wheel was pushing pretty heavily to result in that much polish. Of course, by now the polish has been all sanded away like the rest of the armour...which is sitting at an 80, non reflective grit.

Here is the back plate...the sides all rolled and ready to have the neck roll done. The creation of a back plate is a post all in itself...there is every difficulty one can encounter involved in making a back plate. Fortunately, I know most ways the steel can play tricks on me!

These are the back faulds...again, possibly a little too pointy for my tastes. And I'll be darned if I know how he will ever sit down! But, they make a nice completer piece for the armour. I think I will need to make a fourth lame at the top which will fit more neatly into the body armour.

Bayonette scabbards part 1

The picture below shows some of the stages in the process of making a scabbard for a bayonette suitable for plating. There are so many stages...and they all have to be done perfectly or the result will suck. The first step is to find a piece of scrap steel a bit larger than the bayonette blade, and fashion it into a shape around which you beat the brass. In the picture below, you can see that mandrel, and you can also see that it has undergone considerable pounding in the process of getting the blessed thing out of the tight confines of the brass.

There is no great mystery to this, just fold the metal over to trap the mandrel inside, then beat on it, heating the brass from time to time to soften it again, and gradually work the brass around the difficult point. If you do this, you will ruin more than two for every one which might be considered good enough. Well, at least I did. Each one will take you about 4 hours to get to the stage you see in the middle of the picture below. Not counting the failures which end up flying across the room in disgust. The scabbard on the right is almost finished...that is, it has been soldered, shaped, sanded, and rough polished. I once had a scabbard fail on me during the rough polishing, but that was my fault...I had inadvertently allowed the metal to become too hot under the buffing wheel, melting the solder. From our mistakes we learn....grin!

Above are four of the better ones. The surface of the top scabbard shows fire scale. Thats the mark left by the torch that I used to soften the metal.

Above is another angle of the same scene. This time I flopped the right hand scabbard to show the underside. Yup, still lots of polishing to do yet! Its not like auto body work where you can just slather in a little body putty and paint over the defects, here all the defects show. Its sort of a case where we need to decide when to stop seeking perfection....the client won't pay for that search! Mind you, I give as good as I am capable of, and every scabbard is (I hope) a little better than the last one.

The brass is nicely cut out and ready to be clamped onto the soldering plates. That'll be a post for later in the day....

Charles A's faulds and tassets

These are the three piece faulds with their tassets...spread out as they would normally be worn. They hinge up on the sides to allow Charlie to sit down, and the tassets are removeable in the event he wants to change the look of the armour by bringing in different ones. Traditionally the tasset straps and side straps were left uncoloured. Charles would find it easy enough to dye these straps in situ if he chose, but it is not necessary.

The rest of the armour is coated in a layer of lacquer. Not the strongest method to prevent rust, but certainly the easiest to repair...after all, ANY varnish, no matter how tough will get scratched, but the lacquer repairs with one simple swipe of a lacquer thinner soaked rag. It melts it, and the lacquer reforms, and dries in less than a minute. Gotta like that.

Now for the breast plate, most of which is done as can be seen in a previous post. Just a few straps to be mounted on the front, a few inside, and I believe Charles wants a sliding post in front rather than a centre strap. (I imagine if he wants a strap instead of a post, he will let me know in the comments. ) And of course, the side straps, which are one inch straps. The buckles are already mounted on the back plate. This job should be done today. Ready to be shipped day after tomorrow.

How to build a pauldron, part one.

These pictures are made to be clicked upon to enlarge. This is a photo essay on the building of Charlie's armour. Hopefully it will show all the steps which go into making such a fairly straightforward and basic piece of armour as a pauldron. Also, I tend to use the term "pauldron" and "spaulder" interchangably. There are differences, but nothing I need to chat about here.



Step one is to lay out the patterns on some nice sixteen gauge steel. Thats a fairly heavy gauge of steel, and it will take a fair amount of oomph to move it into position. The first pic below shows the pieces all cut out, edge safetied, and sanded to a nice 80 grit (matt) finish. No rust allowed from here on in. Note that one of them has already been marked off for the rolled edge which will go up against the neck.

The first step is to fold the rolled edge downwards, that is towards the inside. The steel resists this process, and you can see it bending away from the anvil in protest. If it complains, hit it again. This is very satisfying.

For this job, I use the anvil I made from a chunk of railway track, and the peen of my cross peen hammer.

I see that I will have to dress this anvil sometime soon, there are a lot of dents in the surface. I am using the point of it....please note that the anvil has a bull nose along one side, the side nearest the camera, and a relatively sharp edge along the far side.

Now that I have finished, I have a fairly distorted piece...this is the piece which will go up against Charlie's neck. The wide part is in back, the narrow part is in front, so I believe this will be the top piece of the left hand pauldron. I make a point of marking "inside" of all the pieces since ipt gets confusing as all get out once you start rolling.

The picture below also shows the next tool needed to shape this piece of armour...the dead blow rubber hammer. A dead blow hammer has the property that it does not bounce. The entire hammer blow is transferred to the workpiece, and stays there. They are remarkably expensive, but invaluable, and worth any number of cheap rubber or lead hammers. This very handy hammer will flatten these pieces out on the wooden anvil. Don't knock a wooden anvil, it doesn't leave marks on the metal like a steel anvil would.

Here, I have hammered the piece flat. And in retaliation, there are a couple of rebellious portions which popped out...they will need to be hammered back into place.

Here is one of the rebellious parts that popped back when I whacked the rest of it straight.

And below is the other outside curve. Outside curves are a real pain to make. Inside curves are really simple.

Below you can see how I just fold the piece back down where it belongs. And of course, the whole piece warps in consequence. So another trip to the wooden anvil, and a few more whacks with the soft hammer, and back on the steel anvil, repeat as necessary. Eventually you WILL beat it into submission. Or you will turn to drink.

I have modified some teeth from a huge earthmoving machine to fold the steel around. Below you can see one of these teeth. They are pretty solid...they sort of have to be...and it took a long time to grind them to suit. If you don't have something like that, you can always modify a standard cross peen hammer as shown in the picture below. In fact, for many applications, mostly huge inside curves like necks and under the arms, I just use the cross of the cross peen hammer to fold the steel over.

And below you can see how you hit the top of the folded steel over the stake. A stake is the fancy term for "thinggie you shape the steel over" .

Its okay to leave some wrinkels at the first pass. In fact, it is recommended since that way you will get a nice even roll over. If you make nice even wrinkles of course.... Note that I have put a piece of duct tape on the back of the stake to keep it from marring the metal. I have a funny shop...a lot of the anvils and such have duct tape all over them, just because I don't like to make marks in the steel. I suspect in the olden days they would have soaked a piece of rawhide goatskin in the slack tup over night and let it stick onto the anvil surface. In the morning, it would provide a "slightly" soft surface. But I am just guessing here.

Take your time, roll a bit at a time, and eventually you will get the whole edge rolled over onto your stake. I usually find the wooden anvil, even though it is made from a Poplar Tree crotch, to be a little too soft for the final passes of tight rolling, so I finish it off on the steel anvil. If it was lighter gauge steel, say, eighteen gauge, then sure....the wood is good enough.

Another thing you might notice about my wooden anvil...the fairly deep depression in the upper right which will accept a nice whack from the hammer and result in a nice deep dent, the shallow dent at the three o clock position (hard to see...but its there.) and the vee shaped groove at the seven o clock position which will be good to sink a flute into. Just saying, but you really don't need much more than that to make good armour.

Above you can see the transfer residue from the duct tape covered steel anvil on the metal. Otherwise, the metal on this side, the outside, is dead flat.
It is really hard to get an even curve on the outside...you almost always get bumpy parts. That is to say, parts that don't go smoothly and evenly around the curve. Cest la vie...you can sometimes bang down the high spots. Good luck with that.

Below is a picture of the latest impliment which will shape and spindle this poor unuspecting piece of armour...the "flatter". I have covered it in duct tape because the metal will be in very intimate contact with the outside of the armour...the side which will show. And I don't want to be sanding away any scratches and scars. Careful with using duct tape though....it is possible to impress the shape of the duct tape onto the metal...right down to transfering the thread count into the steel.

In the background you can see a coil of wire which was being wound into chain mail helixes when I interupted that job to do this one. You can also see the edge of the flatter peeking out from under the work piece. The idea is to overlap the flatter by about three eights of an inch, and whack the rolled edge with the hammer. Repeat. Repeat. Go for a coffee. Come back, repeat. Carefully measure each whack because one mistake will show forever. Repeat. The idea is to move the rolled edge you see below down until it is flat, and raised in a nice even ridge on the outside.

And here we see the process coming along swimmingly! Below you can see the edge has been pushed down all along the middle part, and I am gradually working it down around the curve. I may need to resort to the rubber hammer and the wooden anvil at one point or another...since the rubber will not distort the rolled edge (it is too tight and robust for that!) but it would bring the rest of the piece back to flat.

And this is as far as I will take it this day.....I'll show the second part of how to build a pauldron tomorrow.

Mr Montgomery's Armour

These are the faulds. Tassets follow along with the faulds. Kind of neat...

A two piece breastplate. Slides mostly the full way along that slot. You can see all the picadills I had to put into that armour to keep it from scratching itself to death.

Not too bad....globose without being pot bellied.

The back plate is a "three piece" backplate, but instead of sinking sharp ridges, I rounded out the scapula in a more gentle fashion.

The faulds and tassets, closeup from the side.

The faulds and tassets from the front.