friend of mine's sca kit

[Sir Wolf]

(Sir Edward this is Kivian aka James)

has a bassinet with aventail, riveted hauberk that is tailored to fit. coat of plates, tabbard of barony colors, spring steel arms and gauntlets, padded chausis with hidden splints, spring steel soup can knees, leather gutter greaves.

i think it looks pretty cool. the bar grill is a necessary evil of course.

i like the style. although I am liking then shown and hidden (alternating) splinted chausis and full greaves too.

[Sir Brian]

Excellent harness! I especially liked the dagged hem on his surcoat hem and sleeves. 

[Sir Edward]

Yeah, its looking really good! I was thinking of doing something similar for the jupon/overtunic, perhaps embattled or with triangular dags.

Which event was this?

[Sir Wolf]

i am thinking that was his battle of the thirty at pensic

[Sir Ulrich]

I like the dagged coif/aventail. Wonder where I could get one.

[Sir Wolf]

it was a forth armoury coif. i know this cause i owned it at some point. he cut off the top and dagged the bottom. i too am thinking of doing this to a GDFB coif. i don't like the riveted aventails out on the market right now. it will take some work, (and faith in the first cut) but it can be done.

[Sir William]

Where'd he get the tailored hauberk from?  I'm REALLY wanting one of those, as some of the knights on here can tell you, mine is ill-fitting as far as I'm concerned.  The arms...why must they always be like bellows?

[Sir Brian]

Regrettably I think it is the price we all must pay to walk that fine line of cost/fit. Of course we have a few various methods to adjust that but it can’t be nearly as satisfying as having a fitted Haubergeon/Hauberk. 

[Sir Wolf]

oh he got the rings rivets and tools and tailored it himself.

i have to agree, i love the way my butted mail fits after i tailored the long sleeves

[Sir William]

Sir Wolf, can you give me an idea of how you went about doing it?  Been flirting with the idea of altering mine...or buying it outright if I could.

[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]

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

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)