Recently I got in contact with John Gruber about making me a spring steel 15th century gothic cuirass. I'd seen his work on the Armour Archives, and I've heard nothing but good things about his customer service, so I began my commission with him about a month ago.

I talked with him about what I wanted, and he said he was taking a lot of inspiration from a piece from Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight, page 104 (if someone could scan the image, that would be fantastic).

He just sent me the unfinished piece without fluting to make sure it fits, and it feels great. Most of all is how amazingly light it is! I just sent it back today, but thought I'd post pics. Gruber has been great, exceptionally responsive, and ironically it's been me who's been the one who's been hard to contact lately (which is sometimes very backwards for some custom armorers), but he's been trying anyway ;). I can't wait to see the finished product, because in it's unfinished rough state I'm already impressed.

(Selfishly, I almost hate to post such praise because I want to keep Gruber and Alaric's wait list short for myself! They're destined to have quite a following with the fantastic work they're doing, both in armoring as well as customer service!)

http://www.myArmoury.com/albums/photo/6781.html

http://www.myArmoury.com/albums/photo/6782.html

Looks good so far Bill!

That reminds me, I should probably drag my harness out for some maintenance. I haven't used it in years but you never know!

Do these guys have a website?

Not exactly, no, just a brief page to show a couple pieces of their work. I get the feeling from they aren't the most tech savvy when it comes to the internet.

http://www.geocities.com/gruber6162000/garmour.html

I originally discovered their work on www.armourarchive.org, and I contacted Gruber through their PM system, and we've been in touch through there and by phone. If you're interested in anything, feel free to shoot me a PM. John's a great guy to deal with, and he's been lightening fast so far, too.

Thank you for the kind words Bill :D I just got home from the shop working on those 14th C. finger gaunts..... There HAS to be an easier way to do finger lame knuckles than raising them. Anybody????
You are spot on with the 'tech savvy' stuff. We were thinking about holding off on the website until we knew we had a solid turnaround time table to quote our customers. I guess that step is comming up quicker than we had anticipated :)
By the way... cool site you guys have here. I can't wait to start learning more about the people here.
john Gruber

Welcome to myArmoury John.

We need some more armor guys around here to round things out :D

Hey John! I'm really glad you showed up around here! This is a fantastic site, and in addition to the excellent people on the forums, you'll probably also be quite fond of the photo albums here for inspiration.

Hey Patrick,
You should post some pics of what armor you've got. Most of us on these forums tend to be very sword-oriented, and those with armor tend not to bothing taking pictures of it for some reason.

Gruber,
Same goes to you! Post some pics, man, especially of those gauntlets which you keep complaining about! :)

Thank you for the welcome Patrick....
That's part of our non-techiness; no digital camera. :\ :cry:
I've been looking around at what this forum is about; you guys are going to get me in trouble with these blades flying around. I'm a recovering sword-aholic.

Bill nice looking start to your harness . The responsiveness and service you've been getting sounds great . Maybe theres a trend afoot ( James Brynes had an equally good experience with Mr.Thaden from the sounds of it ) for custom armour work . When we got into this years ago the biggest gripe we heard was the missed deadlines , lack of communication ect.
or in other words poor customer service . Its why we opted to be a production shoppe . I'd love to see the finished pics when the stuffs done .

Patrick couldn't agree with you more . Theres something like a dozen and a half guys from different shoppes around the world on the member listes here and almost none of them post .

John , great looking stuff on your site ! Seriously very nice work . We do knuckles with about a 50/50 sinking/dishing and then raise for the second half or in other words the detail is brought out in the second phase with the raising while the
basic shape is done in the first by dishing ( we have a small block of steel that was for some other purpose picked out of Albions scrap bin that we ground out the the dish shape we needed and then took a piece of tool steel and ground that
into the shape to dish with in effect creating a little press and die and then we have several more peices of steel ground out to make the little stakes to raise in the second half with ) .

Looks very nice.

[shakes head]

Nope... Sorry, Bill... That'll never fit ya. Looks like it'll fit me fine, though... :D

No kidding Bill!!! I was ALMOST able to build your kit from our scrap ;)

Just received my 15 c. gothic cuirass from Gruber and Aleric! Man, this puppy is SWEET. The fluting is beautiful, and the lines are clean. And best of all, it's nice and light. I have full range of motion, and can even sit comfortably in it (I'm wearing it now as I type).

Gruber was a pleasure to deal with. Very communicative (even at times when I was the one who was hard to reach!), and very responsive to anything I had to say. There were a few minor setbacks in production, all of which he was very upfront about, and made sure I was clued in along the way with how the production was going. Gruber, folks, is a shining example of how you're supposed to treat customers.

To get the fitting right, Gruber had me send him a plaster cast of my torso, and now I need to complete another one for him to start on my sallet and bevor that I'm commissioning. Before he'd started any of the fluting, he'd sent me the pieces to confirm that they fit.

Everyone, I can't recommend Gruber and Aleric enough for high quality, great looking spring steel armor, and at a very reasonable price. The only reason I wouldn't recommend them is because I selfishly want to keep their load down so I can keep commissioning them.

Here are a couple basic pics, that aren't very good. I'll try to take more later.

http://www.myArmoury.com/albums/photo/7450.html

http://www.myArmoury.com/albums/photo/7451.html

Gorgeous!