Hello everyone! Thought I would share with you my progress of my early 15th century harness, dated at 1415 during the time of Agincourt :D

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76868227@N08/sets/72157631698439185/

I made most of it myself with the help of others in my group. The bluing was achieved with gun bluing chemicals (Super Blue(, but am working towards a more period solution. Also plan to take some take some fake gold leaf and apply it to the couters (elbows) and poleyn (knees). There is still of lot of tweaking needing to be done with both the harness, but I'm overall very happy with how it turned out :D :cool:

Will be using this for both living history as well as HEMA, for harnessfechten ;)

---

 Attachment: 243.94 KB
Me posing with my freinds during our demo :) [ Download ]

Wow! I love it! So different than most of the other kits from that period!

That is so awesome! And the bluing looks incredible! What brand of bluing chemical did you use?
EDIT: Durrr, I just saw that you mentioned the brand of bluing! :p
Did you encounter any problems during the process? (splotching, etc?)

I've really enjoyed watching this come together on Facebook! Beautiful work!

Thanks for the comments everyone :) Took me about 2 years to put together. I wanted to choose something that was commonly seen in the art and not often produced ;) The great thing about the early 15th century is that there is a lot of variety of styles. Everything iv done iv documented off of historical art and surviving examples :)

The next step is to make a scale fauld of my own, get my own, mail shirt and either making a helm or ordering one. The helm shown in the pictures was a loaner and the eye slits weren't lining up to my eyes correctly :/

Also plan to tweak my prosthetic leg too, to make it look more like a peg leg ;) Much more to do!

Here is a short video of the demo we put on at the Kansas City Renaissance Fair. You'll see the harness in action (as well as me getting my butt kicked :P)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT-Vz9k-Vgw

Not your period, of course, but still interesting to see a Landsknecht in the field with a prosthesis!

---

 Attachment: 51.28 KB

Looks great, Reese! Although when you were bouting, seeing the greave vs the bare prosthetic I was having an evil Karate Kid moment. "Sweep the Leg". On the serious side, I love that the prosthetic is in no way a barrier to your building kit and going out there to fight with poleaxes - I can't wait to see what you do to tweak it!

Thanks Greg :) Yeah, I plan to add a piston within the leg so that it will allow me to have some spring to my step. All my advancing is coming from the right leg, so it puts me at a great disadvantage when fighting :/ Also I need to line the socket with something more comfortable...the socket creates several pressure points on my stump and waist. I'll have to experiment with it more, but when I'm done I should have a more comfortable, more historically accurate leg :)

Nice kit! Just something I recalled with regards to making a prosthetic - I knew a guy who made his prosthetic leg using parts from a motorcycle front fork, so it was already sealed and sprung - I expect that some motorcycle suspension springs may be rather heavy for this use, but perhaps some from a lighter motorcycle would work. I recall him stating it as a big improvement over a rigid peg-leg style prosthetic. Just a thought!

Really great looking kit. Do you know of any other people that use that type of scale fauld? What kind of construction method did you use?

However, it looks like the fauld sits too low. There's a big gap over your stomach where the breastplate ends and before the fauld begins.

Hi, Raman.

The scale fauld was actually not mine, nor was it made for me. We had a demo over the weekend and we had to put everything together in a short amount of time. I'll be making my own scale fauld here shortly that will actually tie into my arming doublet, rather then fasten by straps. Im debating whether to add brass edging on the scales or not...it would make it pop really well and I'v documented it :)

-Reece

Your armor has some of the best floating articulation I've seen. Your harness looks great!

You sir are awesome! And that is a very nice kit. Are you planning on making the scales leather or steel? Do you plan on leaving the scales flat on the version of the scale skirt you plan on making? You might find slight curve to the top will make them fit much better around you.

Good luck!

RPM

I will be making the scales out of spring steel and they'll be based off of this image below (look at the guy on the far left) They will have some curvature to them to give them strength and allow to roll with my body as I rotate my cuirass. What will be nice too, is that the scales will start from underneath the cuirass, so that it wont catch on anything while fighting.

Thanks for so many cool compliments everyone :) Will keep you updated with the new changes as they come.

-Reece

---

 Attachment: 122.06 KB
[ Download ]

That's really impressive. Impressive in outcome so far. Impressive ingenuity that you're doing it yourself and getting so much of it to work so very well. Impressive in your ability to focus on the goal and keep to it over time. Great work!

Very awesome kit! Love the mix of colors especially. Definitely an inspiration to get off my lazy bum and get to work on my own stuff - thanks for sharing!