Making "real" knightly armor of the 14-15th century (English "full-plate") is difficult and requires a forge, a lot of time and experience in working with metal. However, everyone can make a beautiful imitation! To do this, you need to abandon hot forging and hardening of metal in favor of cold forging, and make armor not 1.5-2 mm thick, but from thin sheet steel 0.4-0.5 mm. This instruction assumes that you will cope with cold forging yourself and know how to weave chain mail using the 4-in-1 method (there are many descriptions of this technology in runet).
It is necessary
- For forging plates:
- 1) Workbench with vise
- 2) Wooden hammer with rounded corners (kiyaka)
- 3) Brass hammer with rounded head
- 4) Flat wedge-shaped brass hammer
- 5) Punching stump or thick layer of dense rubber
- 6) Scissors for metal
- 7) Sheet metal 0.5mm thick
- For weaving chain mail:
- 1) Two pliers
- 2) A device for winding rings (steel bar with a diameter of 10 mm, bent in the form of a handle, with a through hole at the opposite end for clamping the wire).
- 3) Steel wire 2 mm thick
- To build:
- 1) Narrow leather straps
- 2) Leather straps 1.5-2 cm wide with buckles
- 3) Tight-fitting jacket made of dense cotton fabric (not synthetics)
Instructions
Step 1
Manufacturing of an under-armor jacket. Made from a regular jacket. It should be made of dense cotton fabric, not made of synthetics, and should fit snugly around the body. Re-stitch the jacket so that it does not hinder movement. Cut off the sleeves along the shoulder seam. Finish the edges. Attach the sleeves back on leather straps 1-1.5 cm wide. (1-2 straps on each side, should go over the shoulder, leaving a free cut in the armpits). Replace the zipper / buttons with a set of 4-5 buckled straps. Sew these straps on your chest and abdomen (the lowest one is just below the navel).
Step 2
Attach the chain mail fabric to the jacket at the following locations. Fasten it with lacing through the holes made with an awl in the jacket. 1) full chain mail sleeves from shoulder to wrist or below the elbow (including bracers) 2) chain mail strips 6-8 cm wide. - round in the back (covering the shoulder blades), and in front (covering the chest? along the line covering the nipple). 4) chain collar with lacing at the neck.
Step 3
Forging a cuirass. The semi-cancer lamellar breastplate consists of a chest and dorsal plates, a segmental lumbar / abdominal part and two segmental legguards. Make patterns. The chest plate should be as long as the diaphragm and have wide, semi-circular cutouts on the shoulders - along a line running from the collarbone to the point below the armpits along the nipples. A breastplate with smaller cutouts will restrict hand movement. The dorsal plate should converge with the chest plate on the sides (near the ribs) and on the shoulders. Shoulder cutouts should be smaller - so that the back plate covers the shoulder blades. Cut out the metal plates and forge them into a convex shape, referring to the shape of your body (according to the jacket you are wearing). Make a stiffener in the center of the chest plate. The dorsal plate has less concavity.
Step 4
The segmental abdomen / loin consists of separate abdominal and lumbar parts, each with 3 strips. Make the width of the plates so that the abdominal part, assembled from three overlapping plates, covers the area from the diaphragm to the pubis. Shape the plates with forging. Drill holes in the finished plates 0.5 cm from the edge and connect them on loose rivets (4 rivets for each connection). Make and assemble the lumbar to match the abdominal.
Step 5
The legguards are rectangular in shape, slightly curved along the leg, and cover the thighs to the middle, front and side. Legguards do not cover the groin area and the back of the leg. Each legger consists of 3 rectangular ones, connected with loose rivets. Forge them into a curved shape along the leg.
Step 6
Collect the cuirass. Use furniture hinges to connect the chest and back plates at the shoulders. Connect the chest (dorsal) plate to the abdominal (lumbar) part using loose rivets. Loosely attach the leggings to the lower abdominal plate with a 5-ring wide strip of chain mail. The worn cuirass is pulled together at the waist with a belt.
Step 7
Making leggings / bracers. They should protect the legs below the knee and the arms below the elbow, respectively. The patterns for them should turn out to be narrower at the bottom (at the ankles / wrists) and expand towards the knee / elbow. The length of the leggings is from the point below the knee to the protruding bones at the ankles. Bracer - from the point below the elbow to the wrist. Take measurements according to the jacket you are wearing. Make patterns, cut out metal blanks and give them a curved shape. Bend the leggings more than the bracers (the pattern for the leggings is wider, since they cover almost the entire leg) and make the ribs in the center of the stiffeners. At the bottom of the leggings, make a semicircular cut where the leg meets the foot (taking into account the shoes). Leggings and bracers are held in place by two straps with buckles each.
