Hi folks!
I think the next winter will be really expensive for me! I just saw Francois L'Archevêque's last pieces he made for another customer. The pieces are inspired by the armour of the archiduke of Austria Sigismund of Tyrol originally made by Lorenz Helmschmied in the late 1480s' .
Take a look.


In my opinion it is just to bad the customer wanted the brass trims like that....

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Impressive.

Ok, I can't see the amount of labor going into the open work being anything less than absolutely crazy... thats downright beautiful! I wonder how the finished proportions of the entire harness will look? It even looks like some of the components are of substantial thickness, maybe good enough for jousting. Are material and heat treatment (if any) specs available for this suit?

he is actualy working on his website.
For those who don't know, Francois L'Archevêque is a 22 yo armourer from Quebec city (Canada). He started learning by himself the making of plates armours around 8 years ago (I think, maybe I'm wrong). All those years he was working (always by himself but inspired by other talented armourer) to perfect his skills on historical armour making ; that means historical processes ( he tries to minimize the use of electric equipment). In 2004 he created the Armurerie du Duché with Eric Dubé wich he left in 2005 to do work of his own. there is a lot of researches in his work, we can easily say that he built a research process in an experimental archeology way.
Now, about those pieces, because they were made for a decorative purpose (even perfectionaly functionnal) they are made of 16 ga cold rolled steel. Most of his helms (essentially sallets) are made from raised heat treatened steel that provides a compound thickness of the steel, very near to what was made in the past. For example, he will start a sallet with a 14ga steel sheet and when raising, the compression of metal allows him to give a thickness around 12ga around the ears and then obtain a thickness around 16ga on the rear neck part.

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