11-10-2011, 05:31 PM
Hi there
A long time ago I made scale armour facing upwards rather than down, you just need to do clever lacing and it holds together all the while the underpinning is strong, its stored well and things are looked after.
Another reason I would think it might be scales would be that if it was as wide as the sculpture has depicted and was solid you might have difficulty moving your arms across your chest. With medieval armour the general rule of thumb is 'point to point' for most cuirass. Scales that wide would let you have movement, solid armour from arm pit to arm pit might restrict you as you have to cross your arms or bring them together? But I don't have much experience with solid armour just across the chest, most of mine has been almost entirely with larger cuirass that extend to the abdomen.
I would suspect that .5mm is as mentioned above close to the originals. I am constantly amazed at how thin many of the original pieces are. Lorica hinges I saw at Kalkreise where so thin I reckon you could have torn them using your fingers. MOst of my armouring experience is with medieval stuff and handling sessions with the armour amazes me how bomb proof we expect kit to be these days compared to originals, it poses a constant problem as people often want the fine tooling of the originals on material 3x their thickness ... although saying that some of the lovely gladiator helms from Pompeii (I am atold) are very thick indeed.
I'll be interested to see what you do with the neck, the sculpture shows a bit of a border round the base of the neck that might be interpretive of a turned edge, leather underpinning or any of a half a dozen guesses. I was told by a couple of very accomplished armourers that stone masons are masters of their craft but they weren't armourers, so often you need to interpret their work, not follow it. They may have simple let it run off under the helmet as the gladiator visors often have a nice kick on them at the bottom that might have been considered protection enough from upward sliding weapon tips?
Looks really good, coming along really well, I am genuinely looking forward to seeing the final piece.
All the best
Graham
A long time ago I made scale armour facing upwards rather than down, you just need to do clever lacing and it holds together all the while the underpinning is strong, its stored well and things are looked after.
Another reason I would think it might be scales would be that if it was as wide as the sculpture has depicted and was solid you might have difficulty moving your arms across your chest. With medieval armour the general rule of thumb is 'point to point' for most cuirass. Scales that wide would let you have movement, solid armour from arm pit to arm pit might restrict you as you have to cross your arms or bring them together? But I don't have much experience with solid armour just across the chest, most of mine has been almost entirely with larger cuirass that extend to the abdomen.
I would suspect that .5mm is as mentioned above close to the originals. I am constantly amazed at how thin many of the original pieces are. Lorica hinges I saw at Kalkreise where so thin I reckon you could have torn them using your fingers. MOst of my armouring experience is with medieval stuff and handling sessions with the armour amazes me how bomb proof we expect kit to be these days compared to originals, it poses a constant problem as people often want the fine tooling of the originals on material 3x their thickness ... although saying that some of the lovely gladiator helms from Pompeii (I am atold) are very thick indeed.
I'll be interested to see what you do with the neck, the sculpture shows a bit of a border round the base of the neck that might be interpretive of a turned edge, leather underpinning or any of a half a dozen guesses. I was told by a couple of very accomplished armourers that stone masons are masters of their craft but they weren't armourers, so often you need to interpret their work, not follow it. They may have simple let it run off under the helmet as the gladiator visors often have a nice kick on them at the bottom that might have been considered protection enough from upward sliding weapon tips?
Looks really good, coming along really well, I am genuinely looking forward to seeing the final piece.
All the best
Graham
