Segmentata, tinned finish

[Hibernicus]

burnished steel?
forge black?
tinned?

All of the new segs coming off the LEG IX HSPA workbenches are hammered
- most have been forge blackened
- none of the new ones are burnished steel
-- we've been converting, repairing upgrading and improving all club loaner segs (threw away 18 of them last year.. too much work to repair and make them re-enactor quality.. salvaged usable fittings!)

But.... I've been playing about with tinning. We now have 4 ways to tin .... a hot pot for dipping, an electroplating unit, a commercial flux containing tin and tin barstock to rub on the surface to be tinned.

Some years ago Mike Bishop stated that a seg plate with trace bits of tinning was found.. in Germany I think...


So far the tinned plates look great... "shiny".... in fact the tinning sticks better to the hammered plates than to the smooth burnished plates... (haven't electroplated any of them yet)

Comments about tinning segmentatas?
Facts or new info?

[John M McDermott]

Makes sense to me. Ancient iron won't stand much rusting and tin will readily cover a base metal like iron.

[Martin Moser]

It will certainly be interesting to hear how well the tinning stands up to continued use of the segmentata. There are places where I would expect it to stay on indefinitely, OTOH I know from my own (untinned) that there are places where the plates necessarily are chafing each other during wear - I would expect the tinning to wear off there rather quickly.

As a side note, I did wear my segmentata on a 2 week march daily for 8-10 hours, some of it in the rain and found that the biggest enemy was the sweat on the inside. However, wiping it dry daily right after wearing it through the day kept it practically free of any rust ...

[Hibernicus]

A brief follow up.

It's almost two years and we have many tinned segmentatas. Planning on having all tinned segmentatas by July 2008. The dozen+ loaner segs in the San Diego chapter are all taken apart and are in line for tinning.

Most of our segmentatas have been tinned using Oateys #95, several are hand dipped, more and more are being tinned using historic methods.

We tin lots of stuff now: belt plates, umbos, danglium discs, scabbards, helmets, the inside of brass, bronze and copper pots, etc....

So far the tinned segmentatas are holding up very very well. I have a tinned umbo out in the weather, about 2 years now and it shows minimal rust.

Shiny? You bet. Easy enough to polish with a dry cloth. No oil or wax required, just elbow grease!!

So shiny that a fellow from Leg X Fret in San Fransisco recently posted a pic of one of our segmentatas in an album on their tenthlegion yahoo group page and described it as "silvered"!

I used to argue for forge black segs as the preferred finish. No longer. In fact, forge black iron tins very well!

Tinned pilum shaft?

[Magnus]

Sean, given my crap luck at tinning a mere plate of brass, is it harder or the same to do plate steel? I had wanted to do my seggie plates as well.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I have a tinned one on order.... hope it still fits when I get it!

[Peroni]

Ancient iron won't stand much rusting

Won't it?

see this.. :wink: It hasn't rusted at all in 1600 years!! I've seen it up close.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I guess it depends on the phospherous content of the wrougt iron. Interesting that our high tech steel required the removal of an element that allowed iron to protect it self without resorting to a whole industry trying to perfect the same thing.....go figure! :roll:

[Hibernicus]

Sean, given my crap luck at tinning a mere plate of brass, is it harder or the same to do plate steel? I had wanted to do my seggie plates as well

Harder? No. Just different as you are doing a larger piece.

The photo of the sheet you did is OK, but it's in phase one, just needs a reheat and a wipe. The "trick" is a clean surface, very mild abrasion and a reclean. I understand that some folk have had excellent luck with a dry wipe but give a damp wipe a try.