The following is re-printed from the Bryn Gwlad e-mail list:
Historical and archeological evidence is available for lamellar scales of brass/bronze, wrought iron, leather, rawhide, horn and (in some Chinese examples) stone. Ridged, fluted or embossed examples exist in both brass/bronze and iron. Iron lamellar is known to have been tinned or bronzed in some cases, including some where bronze leaf has been applied with a bituminous glue. Lacing materials include brass or bronze staples, leather and silk cord. While linen or hemp cord makes sense to me I don't remember seeing any evidence that it was used.
It is important to realize that making hundreds of scales by hand is a project for fanatics (Hi Aeddan!) and not recommended in this case. So we are down to commercial sources of scales which at present includes 2 sources for stamped plates in stainless steel, a couple of sources for mass-produced aluminum plates in a variety of finishes, a few sources for custom designed laser-cut plates in a variety of materials, one source for leather plates and one for plastic in a couple of sizes/styles and a variety of colors.
Considering cost, maintainability, durability, weight, ease of ordering, authenticity of materials and authenticity of appearance I recommend 20 gauge stainless with a central flute down each scale, laced with paracord and edged with chrome-tawed leather. These fluted scales are only commercially available from one source to the best of my knowledge. This will do an excellent job of representing an authentic wrought-iron lamellar laced with silk cord and edged with alum-tawed leather. After a single week of use, this will appear MORE authentic than an armour of perfectly authentic materials because we beat up our armour far more than our ancestors ever did, we persist in working or going to school rather than spending our off-time polishing armour like a legionary or a steppes nomad, and we lack the servants of an upper class cavalryman or officer of the classical or medieval periods.
On a chemical level stainless steel and modern mild steel are both quite a ways from wrought iron, but it would take advanced instrumentation and a highly trained eye to spot this difference on the field. When you add in the effects of various heat-coloring and finishing techniques it is simply not possible to tell the difference between these materials by eye. While many people (some of them Laurels) have claimed to be able to spot this difference, experiments have shown that they are mistaken. On the other hand, if you mirror-polish your stainless and then expose your unwaxed mild steel to some humidity the difference is obvious.
Some day I'd love to make some wrought iron scales and experiment with tinning and bronzing methods, but that would be an arts and sciences project rather than practical armour for on the field.
My closest second choice for a practical recommendation would be a mass-produced aluminum scale, either acid etched or annodized for a desired finish. The added thickness of this material catches my eye but it does not bother most observers, and it has the benefit of being easier on the lacing material. This makes an assembled lamellar more durable. It really comes down to cost and aesthetic preferences. See: http://www.mefario.com/eldesar/lamellar.htm
I fought for years in the plastic lamellar and now my son wears it. I feel that it does a reasonable job of simulating a hardened leather armour if made from appropriate colors, but the "metal" colored plates look a bit off and look far too thick to be realistic simulations of metal. Given the comparative cost and availability of metal and leather lamellar plates I no longer recommend purchasing plastic lamellar for adult fighters, but if I was given some I would certainly put it to use.
I'd need to run some tests to be sure, but I'm not convinced that the plastic or aluminum plates are any lighter weight than the 20 gauge stainless. Both steel and aluminum provide far better heat transfer than leather or plastic.
Maelgwyn
Showing posts with label materials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label materials. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Helm progress
My lovely fiance got me some new swage blocks for Christmas, which I have used to complete the ridge for my new ridge helm. Now I need to set the final size of the brow band and begin marking and punching or drilling holes. I'm not sure how well the .062 inch thick 410 alloy steel will work with a hand punch, but I am about to find out.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
What is authentic?
re-posted from the Armour Archive
We speak of authenticity as if it were a single and simple thing, but that is often not the case. Modern re-enactors, martial artists and sport combat enthusiasts all use and maintain their armour in different ways, and none of us use it just like the original armour was used. This often forces us into a variety of compromises.
1. Chemical and physical composition - we can measure the composition and even analyze the crystalline structure of medieval armours and use that as a basis for planning our reconstructions. If we did this then as I understand it we would use far more work-hardened wrought iron for pre-1350 armour than is currently done. For post 1350 armour a steel of moderate carbon content, at least close to the surface of the steel, would most commonly be appropriate. Modern 1018 mild steel is not a very good simulator of either of these materials. Modern 1050 steel may be as close as we can get to the later armour material without custom-smelting steel with deliberate impurities for reproduction purposes. And those impurities varied from time to time and place to place, with the most "desireable" impurities resulting in a reputation for the local ore to produce "good steel" in places like Solingen, Germany. There is nothing commercially available that comes particularly close to the wrought iron used in earlier armour.
2.Structural performance - If you want your armour to have a comparable resistance to denting/deformation to what the original would have had, you might be willing to forego a close chemical match in favor of some other material that gets the job done. Thus 4130 alloy steel might be used instead of 1050 to get a similar end result. Likewise, a thicker piece of mild 1018 steel might be used to achieve the dent resistance that you would expect from any piece of armour from the age of plate. This kind of thinking may have contributed to the use of very heavy 12 and even 10 gauge armour by some people within the SCA, and the corresponding belief that plate armour is inherently too heavy to wear without handicapping your combat ability.
3. Weight and thickness - If we are actually trying to do something in our armour, the weight becomes a critical factor. This is where mild steel fails IMHO. If you need to add inauthentic weight/ thickness in order to get even marginally acceptable structural performance from your armour and this causes you to perform/behave inauthentically while wearing it, what is the point? Of course, for locations where your historical exemplar didn't wear armour, the most authentic weight is as close to zero as possible.
4. Finished shape - This factor gets a bit tricky but I think it is important. I see little to no evidence that knights and their well-armed retainers went about in armour battered and dented until it looks like a prune. If you use your armour to withstand hard contact through multiple bouts, multiple times per week and you do not have the services of a professional armourer on staff to daily remove the signs of this wear and tear, then you may achieve a more authentic appearance and presentation by using armour that retains its original finished shape much better than the original would have done. In this way spring steel armour may give a more authentic appearance under actual conditions of use than some other options, even when used to represent what might originally have been wrought iron.
5. Polish - Similar to the shape argument, a case can be made that medieval armour wearers did not go around looking like rusty buckets. If you will be wearing your armour rain or shine, multiple times per week and you do not have the paid staff to polish it between uses, then you may again be able to maintain a more authentic appearance with a more rust resistant alloy of steel. Note that this does not give carte blanche for wearing mirror-polished stainless with in-authentic shaping, nor does it allow the active fighter to go long without needing to clean up tape marks and other marks of use, but it does allow a more moderate workload while maintaining a suitable, authentic appearance on the field.
With all of these parameters of authenticity in mind, I currently choose to make most of my combat armour from 410 alloy spring stainless. For a purely display piece or an exploration of medieval armour manufacturing technologies I would make different choices. Others may weight these factors differently and select different compromises, and that is fine too.
We speak of authenticity as if it were a single and simple thing, but that is often not the case. Modern re-enactors, martial artists and sport combat enthusiasts all use and maintain their armour in different ways, and none of us use it just like the original armour was used. This often forces us into a variety of compromises.
1. Chemical and physical composition - we can measure the composition and even analyze the crystalline structure of medieval armours and use that as a basis for planning our reconstructions. If we did this then as I understand it we would use far more work-hardened wrought iron for pre-1350 armour than is currently done. For post 1350 armour a steel of moderate carbon content, at least close to the surface of the steel, would most commonly be appropriate. Modern 1018 mild steel is not a very good simulator of either of these materials. Modern 1050 steel may be as close as we can get to the later armour material without custom-smelting steel with deliberate impurities for reproduction purposes. And those impurities varied from time to time and place to place, with the most "desireable" impurities resulting in a reputation for the local ore to produce "good steel" in places like Solingen, Germany. There is nothing commercially available that comes particularly close to the wrought iron used in earlier armour.
2.Structural performance - If you want your armour to have a comparable resistance to denting/deformation to what the original would have had, you might be willing to forego a close chemical match in favor of some other material that gets the job done. Thus 4130 alloy steel might be used instead of 1050 to get a similar end result. Likewise, a thicker piece of mild 1018 steel might be used to achieve the dent resistance that you would expect from any piece of armour from the age of plate. This kind of thinking may have contributed to the use of very heavy 12 and even 10 gauge armour by some people within the SCA, and the corresponding belief that plate armour is inherently too heavy to wear without handicapping your combat ability.
3. Weight and thickness - If we are actually trying to do something in our armour, the weight becomes a critical factor. This is where mild steel fails IMHO. If you need to add inauthentic weight/ thickness in order to get even marginally acceptable structural performance from your armour and this causes you to perform/behave inauthentically while wearing it, what is the point? Of course, for locations where your historical exemplar didn't wear armour, the most authentic weight is as close to zero as possible.
4. Finished shape - This factor gets a bit tricky but I think it is important. I see little to no evidence that knights and their well-armed retainers went about in armour battered and dented until it looks like a prune. If you use your armour to withstand hard contact through multiple bouts, multiple times per week and you do not have the services of a professional armourer on staff to daily remove the signs of this wear and tear, then you may achieve a more authentic appearance and presentation by using armour that retains its original finished shape much better than the original would have done. In this way spring steel armour may give a more authentic appearance under actual conditions of use than some other options, even when used to represent what might originally have been wrought iron.
5. Polish - Similar to the shape argument, a case can be made that medieval armour wearers did not go around looking like rusty buckets. If you will be wearing your armour rain or shine, multiple times per week and you do not have the paid staff to polish it between uses, then you may again be able to maintain a more authentic appearance with a more rust resistant alloy of steel. Note that this does not give carte blanche for wearing mirror-polished stainless with in-authentic shaping, nor does it allow the active fighter to go long without needing to clean up tape marks and other marks of use, but it does allow a more moderate workload while maintaining a suitable, authentic appearance on the field.
With all of these parameters of authenticity in mind, I currently choose to make most of my combat armour from 410 alloy spring stainless. For a purely display piece or an exploration of medieval armour manufacturing technologies I would make different choices. Others may weight these factors differently and select different compromises, and that is fine too.
Progress this weekend
We had a good turnout for Open Shop Day on Saturday with Aedan, Kansuke, Uther, Mary and Gracie all working on various projects. Those who didn't stay to the end missed out on the barley porridge, which was proclaimed to be delicious. Mary now has her own sword, gloves, half-gauntlet, gambeson, vambraces, rerbraces, aluminum elbow cops, and good progress towards a set of gamboised cuises with aluminum splints and aluminum knee cops.
We modified a mostly-unusable helm (the blue one with the really tall point) to fit an actual human being and after a bit of welding it will be ready for her to use. All she needs now is to finish these projects and add a gorget and a coat of plates in order to take the field in her own gear.
Unfortunately the elbow cops cracked a bit during assembly. I tried to use a dart and rivet pattern in order to get a deep point but the street-sign aluminum did not hold up to that tight of a curve. I am having better luck with dished knees so I may try a pair of dished elbows as well.
I cut and ground a new shield grip for a center-grip shield out of 1/8"x2"x7" steel bar, so now it is ready to be curled in around a 1/2" wooden dowel. I think I'll try heating the sides with my propane torch before I curve them. I've done it cold in the past but it takes a lot of force to get that metal to move. Once they are in position I'll just add a rawhide spiral-wound covering and the grip is finished.
I have made good progress on the central ridge for my new helm. I did a first pass of creasing the ridge with a blunt chisel, working with a 1/2" channel routed into a piece of pine board which I then clamped to the top of my workbench with side blocks to keep the metal band centered over the channel and a wood shim clamped in place to provide a guide for the chisel. This gave me a very straight first crease, but I could feel that a lot of the energy was being absorbed by the soft wood. So for a second pass I used 2 steel pipes about 1.25" in diameter, clamped into my vice. Using the initial crease as a guide I was able to place the chisel accurately and bend the metal band into a much deeper V. My son also helped a lot by coming out to the garage and holding the band while I worked with the hammer and chisel. Then for a third pass I placed this V inverted over a 1/4" rod that Gaston and I had welded to the side of my dishing form (the cut-off end of an oxygen tank) and hit it on both sides of the V with my customized peening hammer. My thanks to Halberds on the Armour Archive (http://armourarchive.org) for this idea. A bit more work to even up the shape of the cross-section and I will be ready to adjust the curve and begin marking and punching holes. This helm is made of 16 gauge 410 alloy spring stainless steel, and it will be pretty much bullet proof when it is finished.
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