Magister Armorum
  • Home
  • My Work
    • Armour
      • Helmets
      • Torso Protection
    • Art Projects
      • Personae Politicae
      • Armoured Collar
      • Steel Orchestra
      • Tattoo Arm Harness
  • The Making of Armour
    • Size and Measurements
    • Forging Videos
    • Work in Progress
  • Historical Sources
  • About
  • Contact
  • Home
  • My Work
    • Armour
      • Helmets
      • Torso Protection
    • Art Projects
      • Personae Politicae
      • Armoured Collar
      • Steel Orchestra
      • Tattoo Arm Harness
  • The Making of Armour
    • Size and Measurements
    • Forging Videos
    • Work in Progress
  • Historical Sources
  • About
  • Contact

Magister Armorum

A squashing sledgehammer, a thick plate and a striker.

27/10/2017

0 Comments

 
Within the armouring community there is an idea that is taking foothold. This idea is that some armour parts, such as helmets and breastplates, were not only raised from a uniform sheet of metal, but also, an maybe more commonly, by forging out a thicker plate to obtain the final product of desired thickness. This is backed by medieval visual sources and documents. Today I tried this technique myself, with the aid of a striker and a specially designed sledgehammer. I started forging from a round slab of steel, 13 mm thick, 17 cm in diameter and 1.7 kg heavy. I started alone, with a simple dishing hammer. After a while I realized that I would need a helper, as dishing 13mm of steel to 2 mm on my own, would be too big of a task. 
So I forged a sledgehammer, 3 kilos heavy with the "beak" 23 cm long, to allow the striker to reach deep parts of a helmet/breastplate. The results were very encouraging. Having a second person helping with the hammering steeply increased the efficiency of the squashing technique, where the material while being forged on the surface of the anvil forces the surrounding material to move, thus making the whole plate deeper and deeper.
The inside of the would-be helm looks remarkably similar to some museum examples, where there are plenty of hammer marks, showing that those examples were indeed forged mainly from the inside, rather than raised from a flat sheet of steel from the very start.
0 Comments

Medieval forge, progress.

11/8/2017

0 Comments

 
I'm finally making some solid progress on the forge I designed this spring. Currently I'm working on the bellows, and today I'm more specifically working on the valve system. The smaller valve at the mouth of the bellow will prevent air to be sucked from the fire pot and also stop any sparks from entering the bellow itself and damaging it. The design of the bellows is taken directly from the "De Re Metallica" by Georgius Agricola, written in the XVIth century. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38015/38015-h/38015-h.htm
0 Comments

A peculiar Italian armet.

16/7/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
Picture
Picture
At the folio 33r of the Getty MS. Ludwig XV 13 Flower of Battle, also know as the Flos Duellatorum by Fiore dei Liberi, a fencing treatise dating around 1410, a peculiar helm can be noticed. Throughout the manuscript, different helmets recognizable as armets and early sallets can be seen, as well as this particular one. It seems that it's some for of armet with very big "cheek plates" that cover completely the face, leaving only a narrow gap as the vision slit. I've been intrigued by this helm for almost a year, and I've been sketching many different interpretation of what the author of the manuscript intended to represent. The skull is being forged from a single sheet of 3 mm and the cheek plates are 4 mm thick at the front tapering to 2 mm where they meet the skull. Right now the project is at a stop, like many other experiments I've been working on, but I hope that I can resume in the next year.
1 Comment

Italy!!

4/6/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
As per title, I'm back in Italy. I will spend all my summer here, in Cividale del Friuli, so I won't be working on armour proper until September. But that doesn't mean that I can't have other projects as well. I will be working on a "portable" forge, inspired from historical sources. I will try to keep it as historical as possible, within the limits of budget and time. it will be used for the upcoming Palio di San Donato, a yearly medieval festival that is held here in Cividale. There I will have my own booth where I will be demonstrating various armour forging techniques, mostly for the entertainment of tourists.
0 Comments

Working on an early XVth century Italian great helm, pt 2

28/5/2017

0 Comments

 
For the helm I'm using a few surviving examples held in various museums in Europe. They are all fairly large and reach down the shoulders, so I'll be modifying my design to make it more suitable to be used on foot. So I'm making it more compact, reducing the height and the width so it rests solely on the head, allowing for more movement. Right now the helm weights a whopping total of 5 kilos, which I think will be reduced to 4.5 as I work more on it.
0 Comments

Working on an early XVth century Italian great helm.

27/5/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Inspired by the effigy of Niccolò Benedetti (1405) I'm working on a great helm, that I personally believe designed to be used on foot. The fact that we can see the edge of the breastplate under the great helm suggests the fact that there is no aventail, and therefore no bascinet under the great helm. Here are some pictures of the helm in progress. The material is mild steel, and the thickness of the skull is 4 mm. The face plate is also 4 mm, with the edges forged down to 2 mm. And finally the backplate is 2 mm thick. Everything has been forged using a coal forge. 
0 Comments

So it begins....

10/5/2017

0 Comments

 
First blog post ever. I will be posting here the various updates regarding my prjects, with pictures and also explanations about the various armouring techniques.

​Here´s a silly picture of me in the meantime.
Picture
0 Comments

    Archives

    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • My Work
    • Armour
      • Helmets
      • Torso Protection
    • Art Projects
      • Personae Politicae
      • Armoured Collar
      • Steel Orchestra
      • Tattoo Arm Harness
  • The Making of Armour
    • Size and Measurements
    • Forging Videos
    • Work in Progress
  • Historical Sources
  • About
  • Contact