Not dead yet

Progress has been almost non-existent lately, due to a number of reasons.  I finished up some more girdle bands, and plan to get everything assembled sometime soon-ish.

Aside from overtime at work, a wedding, a variety of medical appointments, and several other factors, there is one issue in particular which has been slowing down the armouring work.  Looking back on all the work done so far, I find it amazing that I got this far at all.  But the one thing which became hard to ignore was that most of the work I accomplished did not happen at my apartment, for the very simple and obvious reason that my apartment just isn't well-suited to the task.  Aside from cutting out a few panels and making hinges, almost all of the work happened at my friend JB's place or up at my cottage.

And while that worked OK for the prototype, making a "good" lorica and finishing it to a level of quality that I would be happy with simply cannot happen in or around an apartment -- I would require several tools which simply can't exist anywhere other than a workshop.  So, it was with some regret that I came to the conclusion that the 'good' lorica would have to wait until I bought a house -- and that admission took some of the fun out of finishing the prototype.

I have been considering making a Wisby gauntlet, or something similar such as this, since they are small enough that working on them in an apartment would be feasible.  However, I haven't really committed to this idea -- indeed, I have begun working on a different hobby altogether.  The new one is vastly more suited to apartment dwelling, and while it may at first seem like a radical departure from armouring, it is ultimately still about wearable creations.

More details (and pictures of the prototype armour) another time.

Cheers,
-R

hoping to update soon

Too much overtime at work.  Last weekend I put together a work table for my balcony - haven't had a chance to use it yet.

I'll be working over the weekend too, but hopefully I can get some girdle strips finished and possibly even assembled.

First efforts in punched decoration

These are pretty sloppy - I am still figuring out the best way to hold my converted screwdriver punches. Being hunched over an anvil on the floor didn't help, either - planning to fix that soon.  On the triangle-decorated plates (middle) there's a pretty clear difference between when I was trying to use my nail set holder (below, in yellow) and when I held just the punch itself -- I actually did much better with just my fingers!  Compare the left and right sides of the leftmost triangle plates to see what I mean.

Above, L to R:  Chisel, nail holder, triangle, nail set (circle with dot inside), small diamond, 1/4 circle section, flat diamond (slightly crooked), and (slightly uneven) dome section.

I also found that when doing decoration, it was much easier to use the 8oz ball pein hammer than the club hammer (2-3 lbs I think?).  This is pretty much the opposite of how I felt when chiseling and punching, which seems a bit odd - the amount of force used is not all THAT different... or is it?  It might have just been the difference in my work posture -- I had a much better arrangement at the cottage than I do in my apartment.  Since I also used completely different backings (wet log for punching, anvil for decorating) it's hard for me to say without doing a side-by-side comparison. 



I've also been working on my tunic a little bit -- it might be a bit too long, though.  I'll post a picture once I finish hand-sewing up the last side.  I've been pondering whether I should buy a sewing machine, but it would probably be a few hundred dollars to get a decent one and I'm not certain how much I would use it...  although I do have a number of things lying around which could benefit from a nearby sewing machine.  Hrm...

Cottage Part 4: Slots

Last time I talked about tabs -- now it's time to look at the matching slots.  The first style I did was identical to that shown on the venerable Legio XX page - cut an "I" shape with a chisel and then fold everything in.  Two of them are shown above -- the warping is from cutting on a soft backstop.  Also in this pic, topmost - a hook which broke while I was bending it.  Remember, you can only move it so much without annealing!

Anyways, time to install a slot!

First things first - we need to make a slot in the steel before we insert the brass.  To do this I used a long screwdriver bit - a Robertson.  (Some of you more sheltered Americans might know it as "that square one".)  Note: The tip of these is often slightly rounded, which makes for a bad chisel.  I ground mine flat to get a nice edge on it.

I went to Canadian tire and bought an massive (120pc) set of these power screwdrivers bits in various shapes and sizes for only $20.  I don't think you will find a cheaper source of repousse bits and punches precut to a variety of shapes and sizes.  A tiny bit of grinding or rounding and you're ready to go, with a pre-tempered bit!

A few punches later and we have a nice, rectangular slot. 

Now we insert the brass piece, and fold the flaps over the back.  Let me assure you, this is significantly harder than it sounds if you are making a thin slot!

However, the problem that I ran into was that the flaps would sometimes fold slightly crooked -- but since this wasn't visible from the inside, I didn't discover the problem until too late.  This left me with a foolishly crooked slot in some places.

Given how difficult it was to get the flaps folded over properly in the first place, this was rather disheartening.  In retrospect I can see that it would have been avoidable if I had riveted the plates on first, and then folded the flaps second.  For some reason I didn't think of this while I was up at the cottage, but I did decide to switch to riveting the plates instead -- and skipping the flaps.

Using the square punch as shown above, I simply punched out my slot in the next batch of brass plates.  Below - cleaning up the slots with a needle file.

A batch of homemade copper rivets.  I stuck some 10awg copper in the vice, peened one end, and then nipped it off.  As you can see, these are really quite crude...

However, copper is so soft that all trace of that disappeared once they had been installed.

Also, my second generation tabs, installed:

Cottage Part 3: Tabs / Tie Rings!

Ok - it's time to connect some shoulders together!  That means slots and... something.  There has, at this time, not been any discovery of a Newstead-style breastplate or backplate with the male fitting in situ. 
There is, however, one plate found at Zugmantel which appears to have held a male fastener at some point - all that is known for certain is that whatever it was, it fit though a roughly punched hole of small diameter.  Therefore the exact nature of the historical connector has been a subject of some debate.

One proposal, that of turning pins, immediately struck me as having strong disadvantages and no discernable advantages for a practical piece of armour.  The nature of a turning pin is such that, as one would expect, it turns!  Therefore they will generally work themselves back to the "open" position when moving around in armour -- resulting in a dismaying tendency to cause armour to flop open unless held shut by a split pin of some sort. Not surprisingly, this has been borne out by the experience of re-enactors who have constructed armour with such fastenings.

While adding the split pin solves the issue of the armour springing open, it does not solve the issue of why a turning pin would be used instead of the tie rings known to have been used on girdle strips.

Once inserted through a slot and secured with a split pin, a turning key fastener patterned after known examples from sports armour is almost indistinguishable from a standard tie ring.  Therefore any claim that the turning keys were selected on some sort of aethestic grounds seems dubious at best.

Considering that the turning key would in fact be slower to use than a simple tie ring, (it adds the extra step of turning the key after inserting) it does not make the armour any faster to put on.

Lastly, the method of installing the turning key on the armour - cutting a wide slot into the plate to allow it to be inserted, and then hammering the metal back to close it.  This weakens the armour far more than punching a small hole and peening the tang of a tie ring, so again it seems an impractical choice for combat armour.

In short - I'm not making turning key fasteners - instead I will make tabs/tie rings.



I spent a very great deal of time thinking about how I could make my tie rings/tabs - my sketchbook is littered with ideas both good and bad.  The main issue is that I do not have the facilities to make them by casting, which would be historically correct.  I also don't have ready access to a piece of brass sheet thick enough to match my taste.

One idea, which I think I first read on Arik Greenberg's article about his own newstead seggie, was to start from a piece of rod or square stock and cut off "coins" which could be further shaped as needed.  Although I did purchase a 12" piece of 3/4" brass rod, I  now intend to use it for something else entirely -- I realized that without a bandsaw or similar apparatus, I would not only spend hours cutting it up, but I would also lose at least 50% of the metal as cutting waste.

I still didn't have a real solution when it came time to connect my two proto-shoulders together.  As a result, I picked something out of a hat and tried it.   It's basically a folded piece of mild steel pierced with a tapered punch, wrapped in a brass sleeve, similarly pierced.  I won't say much more about this other than it wasn't a good idea and I don't recommend it.

 You can also see that I got too carried away with hammering one of them without annealing - it cracked right along a fold line.  Also featured - rust! :'(

Anyways I was very disappointed with these -- even after installing the first one I knew that I would need something better.

Fortunately, the next day while I was climbing onto the dock, I had an idea - I could flatten some of the round stock I purchased to make hooks, and use those as tabs!  Pictured below - the proto-tabs for my first girdle band, with matching slots and a hook.  I'll talk about slots next time since this post is getting rather long.

Below - my friend JB very kindly brought a vise up to the cottage while I was up there.  Anyways, as you can see here, I stuck the business end of the tab in the vice and then dropped the pre-punched band on top of it.  I then nipped off some of the shank, and started whacking away on it with the ballpein hammer.

Below - the installed proto-tab.  Much better, but still room for improvement.  This one is too tall - the hole for the split pin is ridiculously far away from the plate.

Thinking about the time spent annealing, etc. I decided to try to speed the process up by doing four tabs at once instead of two on my next pass. First of all, this meant tying them into some sort of bundle so I could anneal them all at once.  Fortunately I had some brass wire handy - steel would have been better, though.  It was still rather fiddly, so maybe I'll buy a firebrick or two to simplify this next time.

Anyways, between annealings, there was hammering!  Since I had cut these so short, I had a hard time striking them while also holding them still with a vise grip.  Fortunately, I finally discovered that my swedish cross-pein hammer was good for something after all!

Tabs, flattened and punched.  Maybe I'll try a slightly larger hole next time.

Excess tab length trimmed off, and ready to be cleaned and installed.

So that concludes today's post - I wanted to talk about slots too, but this is already very long and I'm hungry. See you next time!

Cottage Part 2: Girdle Vertical Connectors (Hooks)

Now that I had two more-or-less complete shoulder sections, it was time to start thinking about the girdle section.   The first stop on that train of thought was connecting the girdle to the shoulders.  (What's that? I skipped the part about connecting the shoulders to each other first?  Stay tuned for the next update!)

For Newstead and/or Corbridge B/C, the girdle hangs from the shoulders via hooks and eyes.  As suggested by Matthew Amt, I made these by flattening one end of a 3/16" brass rod, annealing 3 or 4 times during the process.  Below is the first hook after hammering... you can see I wasn't hitting it very straight in the early stages since it looks a little lopsided.

Fortunately the lopsidedness doesn't matter since this will be going on the inside of the girdle band.  Following the much discussed but never published Stillfried artifacts, my hooks are riveted on the inside and then pass through the girdle band itself, as shown below.

For the sake of simplicity I put a 7/32" hole in the band to provide some additional wiggle room for the bent shaft.

I have installed my hooks with screws for the moment since I plan to anneal the rod shaft before doing the final bending -- which will happen after the girdle sections are assembled.  Below - one of my work stations up at the cottage, with more hooks in progress.

For now the matching eyes for the hooks are simply holes punched in the back and breast plates.  I will add the decorative brass work a bit later -- ideally after I've figured out how to get my repousse work to really pop out the way I want it to.

Cottage Part 1: Carlisle Hinges Revisited

All right, so I forgot to take some pictures of the cleanup work on the Carlisle hinges, but there wasn't a whole lot to see.  As previously mentioned, I used a grinding stone on my dremel to smooth out the rough edges as best as I could, and "finished" the rest with needle files.  I think there's still room for improvement, but until I have a realistic method of buffing these I'm not going to worry about it.  As previously noted, these hinges are only 5 cm wide, while historical accuracy would require something in the range of 6-7.5 cm.  I'm just saving material since this is still the prototype.

Cutting out the triangles turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated, possibly because I was using too soft of a backstop (wood) for most of it.  (I was using a chisel...) Anyways, as a result the hinge plates bent back and forth quite a bit and had to be hammered flat repeatedly.  This means the edges of the cuts aren't very clean - the metal around the edges is a bit wrinkled from the stretching and compressing.  On the bright side, my hinge plates are probably pretty close to full hardness after all the hammering.

Some of the more observant might notice the stamped rings around the rivet holes --  Historically, this seemed to be a common "decorative" feature of hinge and buckle plates.  However, the circles you see here are not decorative, but accidental!  They are a byproduct of the whitney punch being maladjusted.  This made me wonder whether the "decorative" rings on historical finds might also just be a side effect of the punch used to make the holes - but I haven't looked into it.

Cottage Hoard Uncovered!

Back from the cottage.  Less progress than expected - the devil is always in the details.  Still, the prototype cuirass is approaching completion.  Details to be posted soon-ish.

Delayed Updates

I've been splitting my time between "real-life" concerns, and some research for future armour work.  Next week I'm heading up to the cottage, so I've been reading up on some different things to work on and collecting some of the necessary tools and materials. 

I'm hoping to finish the prototype cuirass while I'm up there, and might start on a side project or two.  Foremost on the to-do list is to practice my punch, chisel, and repousse skills so I can make some belt plates.  Next on the list is to work on riveting with both copper wire and nails (still no local source for off-the-shelf solid copper rivets).  I may also work on putting a manica together.

I was also hoping to try some wire inlay, after adapting some concrete nails into the appropriate shapes.  Since I won't get a chance to visit a bench grinder before going away, I'm not sure if that will actually happen - I doubt I can do it with just chisels, but I might try anyways.

Anyways, while I will be away from the internet for most if not all of next week, I will still be taking pictures of my work.  Once I'm back, I'll start posting the new material in batches while I play catch up.

See you around!

Carlisle Hinges

Back to the dremel - time to rough out the shape of my next set of hinges. I plan to use Carlisle-style hinges on my final version, so that's what I made today. At 5cm, these are wider than all of the other hinges I've made so far; but they are actually still too small. The real ones were around 6-7.5cm wide!


This time I wrapped the plates in painter's tape - it's like masking tape, but less sticky.  That makes it easy to peel off without leaving a residue.  I sketched out the rough cuts in pencil for the bulk removal - after the big chunks were gone I would need to do some finer shaping.

I am getting much better with the dremel, but I still need to learn more. I did all of this shaping using only a cut-off disc. Need to smooth things out a bit more with needle files, but otherwise not too bad!

On second thought, I should try some of the smaller dremel grinding stones first, and then use the needle files for those little nooks and crannies... hrm.

New Leathering Method in Practice

I decided to put my theory into practice, to see if it could repair my faulty shoulder section.  The short answer is...  YES!  The only thing I changed was the holes in the straps! 

Below: Series of pictures demonstrating how the leathers flex when you raise your arm.  Note how the front & rear leathers stay flat and relaxed - only the central leather has to move.  You could optimize this by using a thicker leather on the front & rear and a thinner one centrally.

Some pictures of the releathering process...


Attach central leather to set the minimum overlap.

Below:  After attaching the central leather, I am tilting the lame to the desired angle so I can mark the new hole locations on the straps.  Note how this results in more overlap at the front & back than it does in the center.

(You don't strictly need to clamp things in place, but it definitely helped me to take pictures of the process. )

Again, attach central leather first to select overlap.

Angle the plates, mark the holes, etc.

My mirror is dirty... need some windex.

Maybe a little bit too much clamping....

Here are the leathers from inside that shoulder section...

Purple dots - original rivet placements (BEFORE picture)
Green dots - revised rivet placements (AFTER picture)

Below: The same image, except I have clearly labelled which sets of holes go together.