Main > The Armoury
friend of mine's sca kit
Sir Edward:
Yeah, customizing the riveted stuff is a pain, because of all those darn rivets! :)
In terms of adjusting the fit, one of the biggest benefits comes from removing some material from the sleeves so that they taper towards the elbow. You need to leave enough width there that you can still flex it, but make a smooth transition from the width at the shoulder down to a thinner width at the elbow. If the sleeve is longer than the elbow, you can make the width even from the elbow to the end, but you may also want to add an expansion area (gusset?) around the back of the elbow to aid in flexing too.
Adjusting the fit of the body is more difficult, since technically the back should be slightly wider than the chest (allowing the sleeves to bend forward more easily), and it should widen slightly at the shoulders. The shoulders also shouldn't be perfectly horizontal at the top, but angle up towards the neck opening slightly, since that's the natural shape of your body. Also, at the bottom of the hauberk, it should widen as it gets closer to the knees, away from your hips. This latter one is one of the easier to do, since it can just entail adding triangular expansions to the sides of the bottom of the hauberk.
These are all sorts of things that are often overlooked in off-the-shelf armor.
Sir William:
So I've noticed...and we talked about this at length last Sunday. I swear I don't have the patience but in the end, it might be worth it to attempt to alter the one I have. I've seen newer hauberks that offer the option of tee-shirt style shoulders (where the arm hangs at 45 degrees instead of the usual 90) - hard for me to describe, see if I can dig up what I mean. Let me go look (well, let me hit the gym first, then look)!
Sir Wolf:
ug don't get those. Sir Edward and i both had a set of 14 guage 3/8ths inch rings. it added so much more weight and we couldn't get our arms up high enough
Sir William:
Really? Glad I checked this before I went hunting up that link...how much heavier?
Sir Edward:
--- Quote from: Sir Wolf on 2010-10-21, 17:38:23 ---ug don't get those. Sir Edward and i both had a set of 14 guage 3/8ths inch rings. it added so much more weight and we couldn't get our arms up high enough
--- End quote ---
Yes, they were bad. Like this:
Basically, if you look at how much it would have to pull the side of the body to put your arm straight, and imagine how much more it has to pull to raise your arms above that... well, let's just say it sucked bad. Since the hauberks were 3/4" ID 14g galvanized steel, the whole hauberk weighed about 40 lbs. Then you'd have to lift it all with your arms every time you moved them. Also note how I drew the shoulders. Because the sleeve came in at an angle up high, and then flatted over the shoulder, it put most of the weight right on the tip of the shoulder joint and on the edge of the neck opening, and very little in between. Pain.
Anyone want to buy mine? It's for sale. :) (the good news is it's easy to modify since it's all butted rings, and in fact I did some already)
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