"Easy" armor suspension for armor stands

[Sir James A]

I had an interesting idea for my armor stands. Some of the armor comes on/off the stands frequently enough that I hate to tie/adjust/re-tie the lacing over and over, especially for things like making the arms/legs hang at the same height (yay, OCD). I found these "no tie" shoelace things online - http://tie-x.com/shop/ (UPDATE: Get the push-clips from walmart in the camping section; 4 for $0.58 instead of $9.99!!) - and ordered a couple. Oddly enough, there's even a set on the jacket I got for Christmas and I never noticed. They work much better than I hoped! Here they are in action, holding up my MRL gothic legs:



The laces they come with are elastic-ish and stretch under load, so I ended up buying some cheap $2 for 4 shoe laces at Wal-Mart and stashing the stretchy laces for some unknown use later. I put 6 "points" on the stands; 2 for the legs, and 4 at the neck; 2 for arms, and 2 for pauldrons/spaulders. The laces are 54" long, so I cut them in half, using 1 1/2 "sets" of laces per stand. The no-tie plastic things are $6 for a set of 4; most stands used 6, and one only used 4 (since the arms & spaulders are one assembly). So it worked out to about $11 per stand - not bad. Leather lacing alone was about $5 per stand, and I only had 3 stands done before, so it's a nominal cost difference.

Getting things on/off is so much easier and faster! Greaves on, slip the laces through the legs, put the cuirass on, laces through the arms, laces through the spaulders, helmet, done. I need to find something to do with the "frayed" end of the laces from cutting them in half, but that's minor. The pics of the armor in the "finished" man-cave / office in my other thread, all of the armor on the stands is using them.

My last "engineering issue" is a way to connect/hang gauntlets; I'm thinking about using Sir Brian's crest/mask attachment idea with the rare earth magnets, and attaching a magnet to the wooden frame at the end of the "arm", and have the magnet hold the gauntlets. Crazy enough to work, or just crazy?

[Sir Patrick]

Great solution!

[Sir James A]

Update on this; I never used the stretchy lace that came with the push-clips. Obviously stretchy things doesn't work well for holding up armor. I bought the really cheap shoe laces from wal-mart, though if I were *really* hardcore I'd have braided some proper points; maybe later? Anyway, I was shopping for unrelated items at, perhaps of no surprise, Wal-Mart. The push-clips that slide on over the laces were there in the camping section ... 4 for $0.58!

Could have saved me around $75 if I had bought just the push-clips from there... I'm updating the first post with this info too.

Edit: Ah, I also have a solution for the frayed ends of the laces. I bought some very thin brass wire, coated in black, from JoAnn fabrics. Take about half a foot, and wrap it tightly around the frayed end, then cut the frayed bit down close to the wire. Works great as long as you don't tug on the wire itself, which will slide right off.

[Sir William]

The pic's gone, Sir James.

[Sir Brian]

Edit: Ah, I also have a solution for the frayed ends of the laces. I bought some very thin brass wire, coated in black, from JoAnn fabrics. Take about half a foot, and wrap it tightly around the frayed end, then cut the frayed bit down close to the wire. Works great as long as you don't tug on the wire itself, which will slide right off.

I'll try and explain a solution to this without pictures... 

Prior to wrapping the wire around the frayed end of the laces you should place a loop of wire on the end you intend to stop the wrap then bring the bitter end of the wire to the opposite end of the lace and leave a pull tail. Begin tightly wrapping the wire then when at the end of the where the loop is at, pass the wire through the loop and wrap it twice around the loop itself then pull the tail on the other end to pull the bitter end of the wire into the wraps to secure the wire and hide the bitter end.

Does any of  that make sense? 

[Sir James A]

The pic's gone, Sir James.

Internet gnomes. Seems I lost track of it when I moved most of my stuff off photobucket to my own hosting. I'll get some fresh ones.

[Ian]

HE stocks good brass chapes for affixing to the ends of your laces and points if you prefer.  They're about $1 a piece but they really look the part.  I used them on my arming points and they're not hard to work with.  You just insert the bitter end of your lacing in to the chape with a little glue, pinch it closed with a pliers and wipe off any squeeze-out.

http://historicenterprises.com/reenactment-goods-c-102/dress-accessories-c-102_165/chapes-lace-pkg-of-12-p-1116.html

[Sir William]

I actually picked up a pack of 12 of those sometime last year I think.  Good looking stuff.

[Sir James A]

HE stocks good brass chapes for affixing to the ends of your laces and points if you prefer.  They're about $1 a piece but they really look the part.  I used them on my arming points and they're not hard to work with.  You just insert the bitter end of your lacing in to the chape with a little glue, pinch it closed with a pliers and wipe off any squeeze-out.

http://historicenterprises.com/reenactment-goods-c-102/dress-accessories-c-102_165/chapes-lace-pkg-of-12-p-1116.html

Great minds think alike, I used the same on the arming points for my pourpoint, gambeson and arming coat. The points on my armor stands are stapled to the stand itself, so I went with something cheap (and that I wouldn't have to braid). Those HE chapes work very well, I've only had 1 pull off, and the point was too short. The "secret" is to pull the chape through, but when pulling the points to raise the leg / arm harness to where it's comfortable, pull by the point and not the chape.

[Sir Martyn]

Sir James -

Thanks for this.  Were you able to come up with a workable solution for affixing the gauntlets?  Did you end up using the rare earth magnets, or do something else?

When I got my armor, my friends in Novi Sad suprised me by also giving me a very nice stand to go with it   The only difficulty with it I've had since has been in figuring out a way to hang the gauntlets.  At the official unveiling they had temporarily suspended them with fishing line, but that was a one-off solution for that one event.

[Sir James A]

Were you able to come up with a workable solution for affixing the gauntlets?  Did you end up using the rare earth magnets, or do something else?

Your armor stand looks great. Yes, and no, to my gauntlets issue.

I ended up putting hooks over closet doors, and hanging them up there. Works fine, looks okay. After that, I talked to Wade Allen at the Baltimore Arms convention, and he said that he saw/read/heard from somewhere else about using hooks over the vambraces and under the gauntlet. I'm going to rig up something like a "Y" hook:

(single hook) ------- (line) ----< (split) ====== (two hooks)

Single hook on the vambrace/elbow, two hooks at opposite sides of the gauntlet cuff, to keep it sitting straight.

What I did for now, on the only harness with gauntlets, is on each side, I have a simple hook, screwed into a little piece of board, and fishing line (4 strands). The hook goes in the back of the elbow articulation, the line is tied around the hook - the wood keeps it from sliding off - then passed outside the vambrace, through the cuff of the gauntlet, through the palm strap, and tied to the crossguard on the sword. It only took about 5 mins to do, and it's a hack for now, but from a couple feet away you can't tell. It's far from perfect, and barely good, but I'm happy with how it looks for now.



More pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/56030817@N02/sets/72157634708928006/

[Sir Martyn]

Excellent idea (nice flamberge two-hander by the way).  We'll have to see if I'm skilled enough to rig up something similar once all our stuff has arrived in VA.

My wife has already warned me that the armor will not be displayed in the living room, but rahter in the basement

[Sir Wolf]

a friend of mine made 1x arms. he used a larger bolt screw on the shoulders, but had 2 washers so they could pivot if moved. then he used a bolt n nut w/ washers at the elbow. then where the hand was it was larger to hold the gauntlet in place.