Posts: 142 Location: Pacific Northwest
Mon 21 Apr, 2008 11:42 am
The hows and why.
Thanks Jared,
The Armour reproductions I make are accomplished in an A-typical way. Through my trials, I realized casting was not best the way to capture the detail needed to pull off a museum quality piece. Castings are very heavy and unless the lost wax process is used there is significant loss of detail. Electroforming was used by Elkington to reproduce important pieces for the Royal Family and Museums throughout Europe as there is virtually
zero loss of detail, and it is possible to create reproductions that weight in very close to the originals.
I Electroformed this
shield onto a wax mandrel. There is really no added structure or is any needed. Electroforming is the process of electrochemically growing metal onto a base or mandrel using acid and electricity. I use phosphorized copper as my base metal and then heavy plate the nickel silver to a thickness double that of marine specs. After several process changes we have landed on brazing the entire back of the copper armours to add additional strength and to facilitate accurate weights for the pieces. All of the shape and finish is done by hand. I have about 12 hours just into the finishing/patina on this shield.
I do work from original armours, as well as Museum Copies purchased from institutions like the Higgins Armoury.
There are many more museum quality pieces we will reproduce in this manner over the next few years.
Here are the projects we have wax ready for at this time.
http://www.goantiques.com/detail,16th-century-shield,1558209.html
http://www.goantiques.com/detail,16th-century-shield,1558213.html
http://www.goantiques.com/detail,milton-shiel...58163.html
Also, we are working on an affordable line of custom scabbard fittings and details. Contact Russ at Tritonworks if you would like to include some of our pieces into one of his scabbards.
Thanks for your interest.
Sam
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Viking/Celtic Scabbard parts [ Download ]
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Custom Chape [ Download ]
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Custom Locket [ Download ]