I´m currently in the making of a new 1450-1500 kit. It´s supposed to be a german mercenary operating in Sweden.

As always I have a limited budget so this is what I´m thinking of sofar.

http://www.museumreplicas.com/museumreplicas/detail.aspx?ID=338

http://www.museumreplicas.com/museumreplicas/detail.aspx?ID=329

http://www.kaufraum.de/leverenz/action-detail...Tirol.html

http://cgi.ebay.com/Leather-Brigandine-Mediev...dZViewItem

With this I´ll use mail, shirt, doublet, hoses and either boots or shoes. Perhaps an armingdoublet with Jackchains instead of the mail.

My weapons will be:
Albion Liechtenauer
Poleaxe
Rondel dagger

It´s suppesed to be used both as an reenactor kit and when we are having HEMA shows.

Any opinions?

oh... i have this Schaller... (as i live in Tirol i thougt it would be nice...) but it is not useable...made for too big Heads, just one size available...indian made... with not good quality...visor not lockable...inner lining just glued in...i can only recomend it for decoration...and to end it all its very far away from being historicaly correct...

Andreas

Hard to find a sallet for around that price but I will have a look.

You may be better off buying a cheaper breastplate than that brig. It does not follow the cut nor design of any 2nd half of the 15th brigs I have seen unless I have missed something big and/or they just modelled it poorly. Besides that the breastplates often can be gotten fairly cheap so might be a way to go. Museums Replica used to offer a decent cheap breastplate but I have not seen it in ages listed.

RPM

1450-1500 is a large time frame with many changes within places. for what you posted I'd do the 2 things from museum reps and no to the lobster tail sallet and the brig. that brig in no way looks like a 15thc brig.

http://www.eskimo.com/~cwn/brig_bob1.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~cwn/brig_proto.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~cwn/brig_craig1.html

see the difference?

Since a limited budget is a facotr you might alos want to check out the suppliers in Sweden who sell the the same low price indian made armour as Museum Replicas. That way you avoid customs dues, transatlantic shipping and having Swedish VAt (Moms) added as a 25% suprprise in the end. On top of that Swedish law provides the mail order customer with much better protection.

http://www.brutalablommor.se/armour.htm or www.spqr.se
The later offers a cheap and for it's price fairly good looking breastplate http://www.spqr.se/armourparts_19.shtml , both have several types of Indian made sallets.

Czech Best Armour http://www.bestarmour.com/ offers several cheaper open sallets that might be of interest, they will be better fitted than the Indian ones as they are made to measure.

That Museum Replicas so called brigandine has no historical biases so I would not buy it; the leather is wrong, the plates are wrong, and the construction is wrong.

If you want to get armour for having a good time with your friends walking around at medieval-fairs then indian-made "armour" will be just fine. But if you want to present a view of a soldier looked in the late 15th century that does some justice to history, or if you are thinking about preforming martial arts in this equipment to get a feel for the period, you are better off getting just well tailored clothes, a simple but well made helmet and gauntlets. Armour that is massproduced can be very dangerous to really "use", falling in a pair of wrongly articulated gauntlets can cost you more then the sum you thought you would save in the first place..

I totally agree with W. Schütz. I would also add that 18 gauge mild steel is too thin. :!: This is about 1,2mm steel, rigth?

I don't know how you guys fight in Sweden, but if you would fight in any full contact battle/fight, then an armour made of 1,2mm mild steel is a trap, not protection.

Go for Merc's Tailor stuff. They make good armour last I heard from guys here.

M.

The gauge is not the issue. How its shaped, hardened/tempered, measurement-tailored and articulated is. Cheap massproduced armour fails on ALL accounts. To me its not armour. Just like a big knife with a hilt is not a sword. If armour does all these points above well you can have 1mm in some places and it will be sufficient.

It depends what the 18 gauge is used and how. As part of an overlapping brig it would be more than sufficient.

As a helmet skull... not my helmet. The bottom edge of the helmet possibly. Historic ones did. The other thing to keep in mind is that the market in the medieval period is similar to ours. You have the bargin helmets which were rushed, shoddily made by perhaps the men that were just OK or apprentices and the master helmets made by experts. We can get some ideas on this. I am working on a helmet for someone right now and the skull is 2mm at the top and 1.6 on the bottom skirt. It came out to about 3 and 3/4 pounds for this type of helmet after the grinding and polish which lowered the top to about 1.98 for the most part and the lower section now varies from 1.6-1.4mm.

Sheet steel varies in thickness. I made a 14 gauge top with 16 gauge skirt and it came out to 5 pounds alone. When I looked at the measurements it was 2.08mm or perhaps a tad more in some places and the 16 gauge was 1.7mm. The one I am doing now was in the same thickness catagory- thought to be fair slightly different dimensions and I ground it down alot to the wishes of the client for less weight. They sell it down so if it is not past their minimum thickness needed it is dropped to the nextthickness down.

Something to also keep in mind. Most indian places actually are selling slightly thicker armour than they state. I just looked and measured a sallet from india. It was almost completely 1.5mm or thicker with only the lames thinner at about 1.2mm or 1.3mm. If you can see them in person bring a gauge.

In gauntlets 18 gauge can be use but depends where. My gauntlets range from 2-1/1.2mm. Every part is different.

RPM

My kit will not be ised for any fighting with real contact. It will be used for showfighting, to demonstrate technics. I will try to make it look as good as my economy can handle. The quality will be in the weapons, because I need them safe. The kit will be for looks.

So for I thinkt I´ll ge for the helmet from museum replicas. Pehaps the gauntlets to. I´ll use the brig since I´ll alreade got it nut I will change it to a breastplate. spqr and nidingsbane got some nice ones.

Guys, I was talking about 18 gauge mild steel. I should have bold it. ;)

Today it is already very late here, almost 1 a.m. and I am really tired. I will write something more tomorrow, OK?

I cannot speak for James but I am including 18 gauge mild in that as well.

If you look at many original gauntlets, backplates, faulds, tassets, sabatones, vambraces, cuisses, even parts of helmets and breastplates, my guess is that you will find a great deal of 1-1.2mm in their thicknesses. The idea is more distribution of where the thin metal is not that is is used. Most roman scale armour was 1mm or less. Much of what compensates is the overlap. Of course having raised helmets you know how it works so I will not go into how metal moves when forming it how they did but I am sure you know how it works. No one is advocating use of all 18 gauge though.

RPM

Is mild steel a poor choice for armour?

M.

I always though tin foil would make rubbish armour.... :lol:

Mild steel is about as close to the lower grade iron/steel as one can get without spending a small fortune on charcoal rolled wrough iron. Until fairly late in the armour game most armour was wrought iron. The Italians were the first to really up the use of low carbon steels in the 15th and later in the century the germans do the same.

Modern materials in some aspects are better. Stainless steel for example is harder and does not rust (as easy) as mild.
The carbon steel availible now is also better even unheat treated than mild.

These both are more expensive.

Just as in period some metals were better than others mild and carbon steel today exist, with much the same cost seperation and benefits weaknesses.

SO depends what factors are important to you. If you want a super suit go with a fair thickness medium/high carbon steel and get it heat treated. Hate rust you could use stainless, though I try avoiding the stuff as LH it just does not seem right to me. Mild steel, for the basic gear it what is most common and I use it most often as well. I have seen some mild helmets go through pretty harsh abuse over the years so I am sure it can do what you wish for armour depending on the factors you place on it.

RPM