Main > The Armoury
My Armor kit - Historical Fiction?
SirNathanQ:
Yeah, I wear a gorget under my avenaille. Concealed is concealed, if someone asks about it, I tell them it's safety gear. But if my neck is that exposed in a harnisfechten match anyway, something worse than my historicity is gong wrong.
If you really want to cheat, go German like me. Optional sabatos, jupons that cover the arms and the breastplate, padded aventailles, you can go nuts.
Sir James A:
--- Quote from: Ian on 2014-05-29, 21:20:11 ---You have to consider that most extant aventails are small rings, much smaller than the modern standard 9mm maille. So very small riveted rings, layer of padding, another layer of riveted rings, another layer of padding... that's good protection.
--- End quote ---
This is a very important point, and something I specifically don't mention with our demos, as I don't want them to get too confusing. There are even extant mail shirts which have larger diameter rings on the body, and smaller diameter rings for the neck, but all built as a single shirt. The collar will literally stand up on it's own on some of them, because of the small size of the rings and density of the weave.
I might bring my 6mm mail standard this weekend just to show the size difference to the 9mm we are used to. I don't want to thrust at it or hack it up, but just to show difference up close in how much smaller it is. And when we see that... I've handled period mail that was 3.8 and 5.3mm! I believe it was 16th century, but the tech certainly existed in the 12th and 13th century for them to make the same.
Sir Martyn:
Agreed. This discussion is now a bit ironic considering the need for better neck protection was proven clearly this past weekend :) My harness helm may look good, but the gap is just too wide for safe fighting.
I'll probably come down with a close-fitting bascinet with a good avential and optional visor (something along the lines of what Jorge found) and get some good neck protection to boot.
Meantime, in looking for possible great helms, I noticed Jeff Wasson has a mild steel, blackened great helm made of 14 ga mild steel available (http://wassonartistry.com/show.php?id=forsale).
I was thinking about picking it up in additon to the 14th century knees (1050 Spring steel) and shoulder cops (same) for my new kit. As I would want to use the helm for combat as well, re: durability, he said "The mild steel helm will get dented up over time depending on how often it is used."
Opinions?
Ian:
What would the shoulder cops and knee cops be used for? Are you getting rid of the idea of plate or splint arms and legs? Cops like that are typically used over maille. They're not intended to be articulated to the rest of an arm or leg harness. They could be 'floated' to a cuisse by pointing, but articulation is much better if you're going to wind up with cuisses anyway.
Once I made the jump to spring steel, I would never go back to mild steel. But if still has that great helm available that's certainly a good price for it if you don't mind dealing with dents over time.
Sir James A:
If you saw the dents in my helm, I bought it earlier this year, and it's 14 gauge mild. Handling dent removal on blackened armor is a very involved process, including re-coating of the blackening afterwards.
Second Sir Ian's question on floating cops.
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