Plate Armouring Journal
April, 2001 - Present

~Early 16th Century Armor~
Work on this part of the armor has halted for now. I am not entirely happy with the articulation of the paulsrons or that they swallow the besegues. I want to rework the leather articulation a bit, and also find a better way to suspend them from the pins that are hinged to the gorget. However, work on those parts has stopped for now, in favor of better protecting my knees and shins, which with the armor as it is now (March 2002), are completely unprotected. I consider myself lucky to have not recieved some sort of injury from a sword to my knee.. though I have managed once to bash myself on the left knee while fighting with sword and buckler. No serious damage, but the next few fights were rather painful and it was prolly easy to see that I was limping pretty bad... so better lower leg armor will be started on in a couple days.

Most current pics of harness

Pictures from the July 29th(2001) demo at Fort Knox

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a woodcut and another woodcut showing armor similar to what I am making.

~Day 1~
1st of April, 2001
7pm to 11:00pm

Tonight I drafted the pattern for the breastplate. I realised the pattern was to big to fit in the band saw and the beverly shear was burried in the snow so I decided to go with a two piece pattern. I took my original pattern and scrawled a curved line from the top-center portion to the bottom-center. My plan was that when the two halves were shaped and fitted together, the curved line that was drafted down the center of the old pattern would match the curve of the front of the breastplate's profile. I cut out my new pattern for half of the breastplate, traced it out onto another piece of pattern material and taped the two together up the center and checked the fit. It seemed to have too much of a ridge so I cut down the curve a little, tried it on again, cut it down some more.. and kept doing that until I thought I had the fit right.

I should have mentioned what measurements I took for drafting the pattern. I added a couple extra inches for to all measurements to allow for padding, and about another inch in some places cause it's easier to cut the extra metal off than to add more on.. measurement of the waist (waist is navel level), cut in half cause it only goes halfway around the torso: about 19 to 20 inches. From navel to a couple inches below the neck (extra was added to the top of this to account for the large roll on the top edge: 14.5 inches. For the top edge of the breastplate: held arms out in front of me and measured the width of my chest where plates would not poke into me if I tried to touch my elbows together: 9.5". On the side of the body at waist level, measured the distance from waist to half way up to the under arm: 6.5". Thats it for the measurements I took. Not sure what to say about putting them to paper and making a pattern.

I traced out my new pattern on some 16ga hot rolled and cut it out on the band saw, cleaned up the edges with 120 grit belt on the big belt sander, and started shaping. Shaping was tricky at first, I had never worked with two pieces of metal this large and it was a shape I had never done before. Gregory came down to the shop and looked at my two pieces with a "what the heck are those supposed to be" sort of look. I showed him how I had planned on them fitting and he gave me a few ideas about shaping. It helped a lot and I soon had the two pieces shaped so the center lines touched at the top, bottom, and slightly below the middle.. with big gaps in between. I did tack welds at each of those points then went to pounding the gaps closed. After a few hits, the top two tack welds broke and the pieces sprung open almost ripping the bottom tack weld apart, so I went ahead and broke the last tack weld. I then noticed that my pounding that broke the welds closed the gap between the bottom and center tack welds so I welded that section together. I found that with the bottom four or so inches welded, I could shape and weld my way up the rest of the way fairly easily. Once I had the two halves welded together on the inside, I turned it around and welded on the outside.

I know had something done that looked like a breastplate... a very pointy wedge shaped breastplate. The two halves came together at about a 60 to 70 degree angle. I didn't really think that looked right so I started taking out the steep angle by going over it with a rawhide mallet over the ball steak until it started looking better. Then I placed the top portion of the breastplate on the dishing stump and flattened out the steeply angled center ridge until I thought it looked right. Looking over the surface of the breastplate, which had been slightly dished before welding the halves together, I noticed many spots where it looked too flat so I started on some light dishing and that's where I am now.

I also tried the breastplate up to myself and figured out that I need to cut down several places. I need to cut down the area under the arms about 1.5 inches. I need to cut the top edge of the breastplate so the appex of the curve faces up instead of down.. good thing I added the extra inches to that part of my pattern... and I need to even up the bottom edge of the breastplate by trimming off about half an inch in some places.

...and thats not all, I'm not close at all to being done with this. I'll need to clean up the weld on the front.. make the gussets, rolls, start the fauld, drill holes for other stuff, and rivet some stuff. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the mill scale. A while ago I wanted to do a black and white harness and if I did that then I wouldn't have to clean off nearly as much scale.. but that wouldn't match the rest of what I have done. But hey, a gainfull opportunist mercenary like myself would prolly have whatever could be picked off the battle field that fitted and was in good condition to replace my own armor parts that did not make it through whatever battle I've dragged myself away from. If I do make this one a black and white harness, It will not be the standard one seen in most pictures of black & whites, but it won't be one of the really fancy floral design ones either.

Picture of the two halves after my initial shaping and before welding them together.

Picture of the breastplate from the front with both halves welded together. The lines drawn on the breastplate, if you can see them in the pictures, show what I am going to trim from the edges of the plates.

Picture of the breastplate in profile with both halves welded together.

Now one of the hard parts, getting the breastplate to fit with the back plate... not sure how to describe this.. it was a lot of pounding and more shaping, trying the pieces together, duct taping them to myself (oh I woulda looked almost right at home on an SCA battle field ...), then more pounding, fitting, etc... got tired of pounding and fitting so I rolled a big fat edge on the top edge of the backplate, then anealed it and went at it with a hammer and dull chissel to try some roping. I only got in three roped lines before noticing that it was getting a little late so I went up stairs and showed Gregory my start at a roped edge and he told me about an artical in one of the Best of the Hammer books. I found it and read it... they use a roping steak.. it's a small steak with the roped grooves cut into it. We don't have on in the shop... I thought about making one, but I think that by the time I get done roping the top of the back plate with what I started using, I'll prolly be good enough at it. After reading the artical I went back down to the shop and messed around with more fitting for a couple more minutes then closed down the shop for the night (putting tools back, draining the gas lines and stuff on the welding tanks, turning lights off, etc...). I'll prolly be back working in the shop several more days this week, I'm on spring break :)

Picture of the breastplate and backplate sitting on a workbench. I need to do a little more shaping to both.

Picture of the roped edges at the top of the breastplate and backplate. Again, the backplate (on top) is 18 gauge and was my first try at roping.. and the breastplate (bottom in picture) is 16 gauge and was my second try at roping.

Picture of the breastplate with gussets and articulated lower plate. I bent the lower articulated plate to shape just enough to figure out where the rivet holes should be, then I drilled the rivet holes in both plates and held it together with bolts while I did more shaping of the articulated plate. I've found (with this lower articulated plate and the gussets) that after the initial shaping is done, more shaping such as rolling or flaring the egdes, is easier if the plate that is being shaped attached to the plate it is being shaped to fit. As I started to say a moment ago, once I was done with my initial shaping, I drilled rivet holes and articulated the parts together with bolts. Then I put a thick layer of duct tape over each side of the articulation and finished shaping.

Picture of the same thing from the side.

Picture of the articulated lower plate of the breastplate, this time without the breastplate. It's made from two pieces welded together. The upper piece was bolted through the rivet holes to the breastplate, then I flared the lower edge of the articulated plate. Having it bolted to the breastplate while I was flaring the edge kept it at the proper shape to fit the breastplate. The duct tape that I said I put over each side was to keep it from articulating and also prevented hammer marks. Once I had the edge flared, I made the lower plate and welded it to the outside of the flared edge. I need to do a little more shaping and cleanup before it's done.

Picture, from the front, of the breast plate with tonights and the last nights work on the fauld.

Picture of the same but from the side.

Picture of the same thing again, but without the breastplate, and from a different angle.

picture of a finished turning pin and one that has just been started.. it's been heated up, bent, and a little hot shaping with a hammer.

picture of the way I have the metal hand punch set up in a leg-vise, with the handle off the beverly shear as an extention for the punch's handle... this thing was mentioned a couple posts up.

picture ...this is what we call a stupid apprentice trick.

I decided it was time to go back to the breastplate and work on that a bit... I might have mentioned earlier that the top edge of the breastplate, the one that I spent hours rolling and roping, was to high up on the gorget... so I cut the roped edge off, then cut a little over an inch off the top of the breastplate, and welded the roped edge back on.. once the weld was cleaned up, the roped edge somehow looked nicer than it did before I cut it off.

Because of the amount I cut off the top of the breastplate, the gussets were too long so I trimmed them down to match the breastplate again, and punched new holes in both because the old set of top holes was on the part that got cut off. I finished rolling the edge of one of the gussets. On one of the gussets, I tried to make a slot for a sliding rivit in the bottom hole, but it bound up and never worked good, so I filled in the slot with weld and got the weld cleaned and smoothed up. I realized that If there was going to be a sliding rivet on the gussets (to give more freedom of movement to the arms with the gussets in place), that the slot would be from the top hole in the gusset... so I put a bolt through the bottom hole and held the top hole of the gusset over the top hole of the breastplate, then let the gusset pivot down while I had a sharpie marker in the hole of the breastplate.. this traced out a line on the gusset that showed exactly where to put the slot. The slot came out perfect and I'm thinking about making one the same way for the lower hole of the gussets, but I'm not sure yet if that would be a good idea... gotta give it a little more thought.

picture of the inside of the gusset, articulated to the breastplate by bolts. On the right side of the picture, if you look close, you can see where I filled in the old slot with weld and did not clean it up much cause it's on the inside and no one will see that while I'm wearing it... it looks much better from the outside. On the left is the new slot.

picture of one of the turning pins that holds the fauld to the bottom part of the breastplate. something to take note of... the hole that the pin goes through has the narrower part of the "keyhole" pointing towards the center of the breastplate, and once inplace, the pin is turned to face the opposite direction. If it was the other way around.. with the narrow part of the keyhole pointing out to the side, it would make it easier to mount and dismount the fauld from the breastplate, but it would put a lot more stress on the pin and keyhole and they might chew through each other.

picture of the completed fauld and tassets mounted to the bottom articulation of the breastplate. It's not some illusion or trick played by the light... yes, one of the bottom plates of the tassets is about an inch longer than the others... didn't notice it until it was all put together. if I was getting paid to do this for someone else, I would have pulled it apart and fixed it, but since it's mine, it can stay like that.

picture ...detail of the bottom edge of the tasset.. the edge is rolled, then I put sort of a rounded flute along next to the roll.

picture of the inside of the fauld and tassets (still mounted to the bottom part of the breastplate). Hmmm.. this might not be entirely done yet... Looking at this picture, I remembered that I was going to make some metal tips for the straps. I might not do that though cause they'd just clank around and make lots of noise.

I used a small tub of muriatic (might have spelled that wrong) acid to take the mill scale off the breastplate... it made big billowing clouds of white stuff (Clorine gas, I think) so I had to do it out side and wear a big respirator and other safety stuff like thick rubber gloves and a face shield. It was fun watching the mill scale get eaten away... like watching paint dry. Then I cleaned up and nuetralized all the acid covered stuff. I think the nuetralizing stuff was baking soda and water? maybe... next, I took the breastplate in and went over it with a 400 grit belt on the big belt sander, then buffed and gave it a nice coating of paste wax.

On the breastplate, I continued puting in the sunken edges around the armholes for the fake gussets. I did this by taking a block of wood and cutting a 1"x1/4" section out of one corner, then used the 1/4" deep L shape that was created by the cut out to hammer the metal into, forming a slight shelf, or recessed edge around the armholes. I still have to clean this up... right now they are looking a little lumpy. I also started to roll the edge of one of the armholes. Oh, and I punched holes in the backplate for the two shoulder straps.

Now I'm trying to decide... steel or leather shoulder straps.. I've seen both on this style of armor. I might go with leather with steel riveted onto it in places.

All I had left to do on the breastplate was to put the decorative edge on the bottom (a few minutes in front of the belt sander, and a couple more minutes with a file), then rivet it to the lower part of the breastplate, and rivet in the gussets. The slotted rivets on the gussets seem to work really good so far.. just have to put the buckles on them. Only thing left to do on the breastplate is put the buckles on, and add whatever other fittings it needs to attach to the backplate. I'm kind of hoping to have everything but the arm harnesses done for a demo this weekend so I'll prolly be in the shop a lot this week.

Next, I traced it out and made a brim for it, then welded that in place and cleaned up all the welds, polished, drilled a hole, and it was done. It came out a little smaller than I would have liked, but the hole I had left between the tassets was a little small to begin with... and because I do a lot of demos for schools (a lot of 1st through third graders), I didn't want a cod piece that was as large and obscene as many of the period ones were on this kind of armor.

Of course, when I was talking to Gregory about it he said, in response to whatever questions the kids might have about his eight inch long phalic cod piece "what's this thing? it's an advertisement... and where I keep my water bottle" *then he'd pull a rubber hose out of the end of it and take a drink*... could keep a sandwich in it too, and some hotdogs... and the conversations went down hill from there.

anyways, the cod piece is currently held in by a nut and bolt, and I'll prolly leave it that way until after the demo this weekend. I left the shop, wearing my armor, at about 3:00am and walked the 30-45 minute walk home... I think I need to add one more set of holes to the shoulder straps, and a little more padding into the hip area of the gambeson... no complaints on weight, it was fairly light and easy to move in. It makes a nice rhythm of clanking noises that reminds me of something by Laibach... sounded cool echoing off the buildings in downtown.

First on tonights list of things to do was a little bit of work on the straps that hold the breastplate and backplate together... I punched two more pairs of holes in the shoulder straps, and cut the ends of the straps of cause there was no way I'd ever need most of the holes, and the long straps got in the way of the breastplate's gussets. I also made another hole in the waist belt strap. Sometime, I might make some metal tips for the straps, but maybe not... just another something to clang around when I move.

I started on the arm harnesses... starting at the shoulders and working down. I have a good start on the pauldrons/spaulders/shoulders. I'm not sure if I'll keep the ones I'm working on now... it'll depend on how I like the design. I'm using one large-ish cop for the shoulder joint, two lames below that, and a larger plate below that(reaching almost to the elbow). There were two other designs I was thinking of using. One was a very large cop for the shoulder (like the one I'm making, but with the two lames being a solid part of the cop), and a series of lames below the cop (an example can be seen in one of the woodcuts linked to the top of this page), but I decided the largeness of the cop would restrict movement, and Gregory agreed when I described the idea to him. The other design is the kind I have seen most often with this type of armor... a dished out rectangle (placed horizontaly) over the shoulder joint, with a sort of football shaped lame articulated to the top of that, and several lames below the dished rectangle.

So far, I have the shoulder cops dished and plannished, all the lames cut out, and two of the lames for one arm are roughly shaped. I might have to do more dishing on the shoulder cops.

He never did come back down to the shop that night, but that's okay cause I my armor to work on...

I'm still trying to decide exactly how I want to attach the pauldrons to the gorget.. so while I'm undecided on that, I started on the couters (a style of elbow cop that was usually tied to arming points on a gambeson or arming doublet). The woodcuts linked to the top of this page show a style of couter similar, in some ways, to what I am making. Another picture, a modern recreation by armourer Robert Valentine, can be seen at Valentine Armouries... once at his website, go to the historical armour link, then the Landsknecht link. One of the harnesses on that page has couters that might be closer (in some ways)to what I am making than the ones in the woodcuts.

anyways, I decided to do them in two pieces; a deeply dished plate for the elbow, and another plate for the wide brim sort of thing around the edge of the cop. As things went together, my two piece pattern turned into a four piece pattern. I cut out and dished the elbow cop, then cut out and roughly shaped the brim.. I did a couple tack welds to hold the brim to the cop, and decided that it would be easier of the brim was in two pieces, so I use some metal snips to cut it into two pieces while it was still tack welded in place. Having the brim in two pieces made it a lot easier to finish the shaping and after I was done with the shaping, I welded the brim in place. My welds on sheet metal seem to be getting a lot smoother.

As I was welding the brim to the cop, I noticed a flaw in my pattern... towards the inside of the elbow, on the top side of the couter, there is supposed to be a sort of extension that comes up and around the inside of the elbow joint a little; and as it comes up and around, it's supposed to have sort of a V shape (with the V pointing in towards the arm)... it had all that, but the plates did not come together... there was a big wedge shape that had to be filled in. I thought of a couple ways to fix it, but I liked Gregory's suggestion the most... he suggested welding a wedge shaped piece of metal into it from the inside; and with the lines of the couter, it might even look like it was done as a decorative thing. So I tried it, and it worked great... welded it in, and with a little pounding, got the inside line into the V shape that it's supposed to have... only shaping I have left to do is to roll the edge of the brim and maybe rope it.. then all I'll need to do drill a couple holes, clean up the welds, polish, and strap... then make the other one. I also started on the besagues, but only got them traced out onto metal before I realized it was 2:00am... and the bandsaw is one floor below, and directly under Gregory's bed (he'd prolly still sleep through it).. I went back to doing quiet stuff like welding. For a besague pattern, I used the bottom of a coffee can. It seemed to be just the right size, and I remembered someone (maybe it was Gundo) on the Armour Archive mentioning using coffee can lids or bottoms to trace out besagues.

...and it's back to the shop again tomorrow.. on monday, I found out I'm doing another demo (at the Bangor Public Library) in a couple weeks. It would be good to have my arm harnesses done for that.

Pictures of the mostly finished couter from different angles, all edited into one pic.. the streaky look that the metal has is just the massive amounts of paste wax I put on it to protect it from the humidity, not ugly grinding marks.

Picture that sort of shows the pattern I am using. The dished piece of metal is the cop, the lemon shaped paper next to it was the pattern it was made from. The two other pieces of metal on the right are the rim plates... when I first made the pattern I had them as one plate.. but once I had it bent roughly to shape and tack welded to the cop, I found that it would be much easier to do them as two plates. The little square hole towards the front of the picture was made to hold stakes, but I found that the hole was also very useful for doing deep dishes like on the cops... I do my initial dishing in the large dishing hole or the cut off bottom of an oxygen tank (using the 5+ pound ball stake that fits in the stake-hole).. then I use the little hole and a large-ish ball peen hammer to dish it deeper. I find that the small hole gives me better control over the dishing, and the sides of the metal do not warp. To do the deep dish, I start by hammering around the edges, about a centemeter in from the edge... this sort of turns the edges up about 30 degrees.. then I do another pass around the cop, this time just a little closer to the center than before. Now the cop will look moslty flat, with upturned edges (looking from the inside).. I keep doing the same thing, each pass around moving closer to the middle. Once I reach the center, I start over again... and keep repeating until I have a nice deep dish. I also find it useful, at least for the first few passes around, to have lines drawn in to show where I am supposed to be hammering.. but after a few passes (or lots of practice) it should be easy to see where it needs to be dished.

Picture that shows the mostly complete couter with the mostly complete pauldron. The couter just happened to fit with the pauldron without any refitting or bending of either piece. Going to be a fine looking pair of splints when I'm done. Again, the streakyness on the metal is all the paste wax I gooped on to keep it from rusting while I'm not in the shop (and from rusting while I am in the shop).. it seems to buff off to a nice shine again while leaving a thin layer of wax on the metal... but not until it's out of the shop. Stuff rusts up overnight in there.

I've had some time to try out my method of pointing the pauldrons to the mantle of the coif and decided I did not like it. The pauldrons flop around to much and just don't feel right... So I decided that tonight I would solve the problem by tackling the "post & hole" method of attaching pauldrons to the edge of the gorget.. this method seems to have been common in the 15th and 16th century, at least on some German armor... most period examples I have seen pictures of consist of two (one for each pauldron) small hinged tabs on the gorget. On each of these tabs is a post about an inch long.. in some pictures, there is a small spring loaded flange built into the post to that when the post is placed through a hole in the pauldron, the flange will depress and spring back out once the plate is moved down over it, thus keeping the plate from sliding off the post. In some pictures, the post does not have the spring loaded flange... maybe it came loose or maybe in these cases, they just relied on gravity to keep the post through the pauldron... I don't know. I'll be really surprised if any of that made any sence.

I originaly wanted to use this method to keep the pauldrons in place, but was not sure I wanted something as complicated as the spring loaded flange.. I needed something that could stand up to being hit a few times and not need much for repairs.. so I decided to use points. Disatisfied with points, I decided to do the post and hole thing, and instead of a flange, use a small wire cotter pin through a hole in the post to keep the pauldrons from comming off.. once I got started on the whole thing, I figured out a way that seems fairly sturdy and lets the pauldrons still be removed from the gorget.. The post has a hole drilled through it like I would have done with the cotter pin; and placed through the hole, is a short section of wire bent into sort of a V or U shape. The hole through which the post passes on the pauldron is round, with a narrow slot cut out of opposite sides of it forming sort of a key hole for the post and wire. Pictures will describe how this works better than I can... pictures are below.

Now, to make the hinge and post... for the actual hinge part, I took a short length, just a little less than an inch long, of 5/16" round stock and drilled a hole (about the size of a nail) through it length wise. that was prolly the hardest part, but a drill press and something with a square edge helps. Once the bar was center drilled, I cut it in half and welded each half to a metal tab.. one tab would be drilled for articulation to the gorget, the other tab would be drilled and have the post welded into the hole.. then a nail was used to hold the two halves of the hinge together.

Picture of the hinge and post.

Picture of the same thing above, this time with the pauldron in place

Picture of the same thing again, thise time from above to show the slots cut from the hole in the pauldron. To remove the pauldron from the post, the the pauldron has to be turned 90 degrees (which can not be done while it strapped to the arm) and lifted off when the wire on the post and the slots in the pauldron line up.

I might make a new pair of pauldrons... the ones I am using now still seem to slide forward on the shoulders to what seems like their natural resting place. Also, if I lift my arms higher than shoulder height, the top plate of the pauldron lifts and eats the besague when I lower me arms... seems that for wearing besagues, I do need that extra articulation on the top edge of the pauldron. If I make another pair, there might also be a small wing at the back, which might help keep it from sliding forward... or just make them larger than I initially thought they should be.

the pauldrons have changed a bit. the tabs that hold them to the gorget are shorter and I pulled out the little V shaped wire at the top of the pegs and replaced them with small coterpins made from wire. The straps that hold on the beseagues are now riveted to the inside of the pauldrons instead of hanging from the posts, sandwiched between the pauldrons and tabs. It's amazing, the besegues no longer get swallowed up by the pauldrons and spit out on my back!

This last spring I was able to make it down to the Higgins Armourie Museum in Worchester, Mass. For the first time, I was able to look in person at historical armor. This was great because I could move around some of the suits and see parts from different angles than are normaly seen in books, and see parts that I had never before seen pictures of in books... like 16th century backplates! For some reason most books only show armor from a front angle so I had made my backplate with a lot of guesswork. One major thing I found about my backplate (and sort of already knew by the way it rested on my back) was that I had not dished it enough in the top portion. I've fixed that now. I think that's about all I've done to these parts since my last update.