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Adding schynbalds (front greaves) to an existing leg harness

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Sir James A:
Didn't put this in the workshop area since it's not so much a tutorial, mostly just pictures of what I worked on the last couple days.

http://james-anderson-iii.com/tutorials/pages/adding-schynbalds-to-cuisses

I have some armor that I purchased used, that was made for somebody else. Somebody with much smaller calves. The cased (two piece) greaves, even after I dished them out a couple inches, were still too small. Since I already mangled one by dishing it out and they were nowhere near matching, I decided to scrap the rears, and use them as simple schynbalds (one piece greaves).

First thing I did was remove the hinges. Since they were inset on the rear, the front plate wasn't notched at all. This was as easy as just removing the rivets. Nice to have something easy. :) After that, I double-checked the shaping; surprisingly, they actually are *left* and *right* greaves. It has the proper curvature for each leg. I was going to trim off the ankle plates (still might!) and swap them around so that the straps and buckles would be on the proper side (straps outside, buckles inside) but since they are made for a specific side, I had to leave them "mismatched", with the straps and buckles on the wrong side.

Now, that's an issue because the greaves originally closed on spring pins. The spring pins are over 1/4" thick, and regular armor rivets are 3/16" for strapping. Even with a washer, it's barely wide enough to cover the hole - this doesn't matter on the outside since the strap is wide, but does for the inside since I was worried the washer might not hold. I changed my strategy, and used the buckles with steel mounts; one side of the mount inside, one outside. Doing this covers up the larger hole without a problem, and was easy to rivet over. If I can get some steel to cut oversized washers from so that I can move the straps and buckles to the proper sides, I might go back and revisit this in the future - but it's workable for now.

I'm a little OCD with things sometimes, and as such, I didn't like the way that the demi-greave was so much wider on one side of the armor than the other. Making things worse, it's on the fan side (outside), so that just won't do! I used my trusty dremel and cutoff wheels to trim it down close to the cuisse. This was also helpful because I had to make a new hole for the outer articulation on the demi greaves. I removed the strapping from the demi greaves, and the inner side lined up correctly for articulation, which meant only two new holes (and cutting off two holes).

The only thing I don't like is that the hinges had 4 rivets, so I had extra holes. I stuck decorative dome head rivets in there, and most people probably won't notice. Overall, repurposing some armor that sat in a box as unusable for the last 18 months was kinda cool. :)

Some random pictures:

Starting as separate pieces


The buckles directly on steel mounts


New hole made, both sides riveted on, marked and cutting


Side by side greaves -  note the slant on the ridge, easy to see the right/left leg


Trimming (outside view)


Finished assembly (side view)


Finished assembly (front view)

Ian:
Looks great Sir James!  You should consider a Crecy era kit for those bad boys.

Sir Brian:
Awesome job Sir James! They look great! :)

Sir Gerard de Rodes:

--- Quote from: Ian on 2013-03-25, 00:05:32 ---Looks great Sir James!  You should consider a Crecy era kit for those bad boys.

--- End quote ---

My sentiments exactly.
G.

Sir Wolf:
but shouldnt they be cased greaves by that point?

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