What has gone before...

"Almost certainly, you, like all of us when we started out, had your eye caught by some full suit of finely etched, engraved, gilded full plate harness, and have already decided, "I'm gonna make THAT!" Well, that's a great goal to shoot for, but if you set out on your first day on the floor of your apartment with a used road sign, some metal snips, and a carpenter's claw hammer, you are going to set yourself up for disappointment and probably failure."

-Steve Sheldon, Arador

While a lorica segmentata isn't quite the same as a fancy set of plate, the fact remains that you have to approach this kind of project with the understanding that it's going to require a lot of work. Happily, however, a segmentata is only really complex in terms of assembly and number of parts. The individual pieces don't require much skill, or at least nothing you can't learn as you go along. One advantage to having lots of pieces is that if you realize you've messed one up, you're not suffering a major setback.


I'd like to start out by directing you to my "competition" -- or more accurately, the sites that convinced me that this project would be possible for someone who hasn't worked with metal before.

• Legio XX -- Your one-stop information shopping center. Highly recommended!

• Arador Armour Library -- They have some basic patterns for segmentatas, but I found their tutorials on plate armour more helpful in terms of metal forming technique.

• Construction of a Lorica Segmentata (pdf) -- Big thanks to Alex Matras of Legio XI CPF for putting this online.