Hello everyone, My name is Floyd Baker and its a pleasure to get to join this forum and discuss the glories of arms and armour with you all.

A few things first, I am new here and don't know if i'm posting in the right place. I have been interested in history for as long as i can remember. Especially military history. I am an avid renaissance fair attender, primarily the Ohio fair which is the closest to myself. I am headed to the Tennessee fair this spring/early summer.

I play historical war-games and enjoy terribly inaccurate movies, I also happen to be a star wars fanatic.

This brings me to this forum. I have recently started collecting star wars costumes and replicas and decided to step away from the fantasy of that world and start my next project as a suit of armor. My hope is this forum which i stumbled upon during my research of makers of fines arms, would be very helpful in that goal.

I have been starting to learn fighting techniques as a hobby and studying HEMA.

So now the big reveal. My new goal is to start obtaining a fully functional suit of plate for my own personal use. Like that which is shown in these video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hlIUrd7d1Q

I am primarily interested in the Gothic style. sallet and such. I guess I am asking for resources i should delve into for research as well as who to contact to commission a suit or start to piece one out.

Thanks in advance for your help and input and please if this is in the wrong area let me know and feel free to move it.

Thanks,
Floyd T Baker

Welcome aboard Floyd! Good to have a fellow Ohioan here, especially one that appreciates Gothic armor. I would recommend checking out the links page if you haven't already, as there is a large list of arms and armor manufacturers.

Thanks, I'll check it out right away. I would love to be able to part out a functional set slowly then use it for demonstrations for a friend of mine who teaches history as well as just wear it around. I love the Sallet style helm.

Has anyone here used Illusion armory? Any good? Their prices seem great. I'm looking to buy something functional and SCA worthy at least, and eventually move to a nicer gothic harness over time. Any preferred smiths?

Floyd

Hi Floyd, welcome to the world of wearing armour. There are many people on here who do, but a good resource to look at is http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/, far more harness wearing and using people there. This site has a incredible wealth of knowledge on it, ArmourArchive is more 'player' centric.

Yours,

Griff