[Andrew Pribor]

Greetings,

Well I have just purchased a pair of stainless steel maille voiders and I need to attach them to my arming doublet. Now before I go & start poking holes in my doublet for pointing the voiders on, I thought it would be wise to see how some of you have attached yours.

Hard to find any pictures or "how to" subjects out there. Is it best to lace the whole voider on through multiple eyelets using 1 or 2 pieces of lace? Or use multiple arming points. What works best?

Looking for ideas & hopefully pictures of how people have done this.

Thank you,

Andrew

[Scott Hrouda]

I’ll share what's worked for while me fighting rattan combat for many years. I can’t say it’s historically accurate, or the best method, only that it’s worked for me.

I have mail sleeves, not voiders, but the method should work the same.
- Run a cord through the outermost rings along the entire perimeter of the voider and tie the two ends together (in back where it’s less noticeable).
- Fit the voider over your arming coat while wearing it (a friend or squire helps a lot).
- Mark locations on your coat to place pairs of button holes spaced every 2 to 4 inches apart or so.
- Once the button holes have been sewn, thread short leather thongs through each pair.
- Tie on your voider going “behind” the cord and ring at each location.
- Enjoy

In the overview photograph you can see the tie placement for my missing sleeve as well as my mail skirt.

[Scott Hrouda]

I forgot to add that I've placed copper rings at all the tie locations for ease of assembly.

Coat with the rest of the mail bits attached, and

with the hard bits attached.

[Daniel Sullivan]

Hi Andrew,

By a unique coincidence, I am working on the very same thing, except I am replacing the old set. The old: Rawhide lacing was strung the rings and terminated by knotting at the corners (as per Scott). The doublet was then laid out flat on the floor and the mail was placed in the appropriate areas and marked with chalk. Placement may be a bit difficult, as I believe the voiders you have are not symmetrical. Stitched lightly only at the corners and then with assistance tried on, fitting the armor on to make certain I had covered the right areas. Wasn't fun, took a couple of tries. When satisfied stitched all in place using heavy thread, stitched around lacing and did not pass thread though rings. This method looks Ok and is less bulky, but difficult to remove for repair or cleaning.

For the new: After placement, easy as new voiders are symmetrical, and marking; punched though using a pair closely spaced small brass eyelets about every 2-3 inches for short points. Not done yet ... The perimeter of the maile will again be laced with rawhide as before, but will not be stitched in place, am anticipating some sagging. The points tie around the lacing and not though any rings.

Keep in contact...

Cheers,
Dan

[Mark Griffin]

no hard or fast rules, there are examples of many sorts of attachment. The inventorio illuminado pic here seems to suggest no points so I'd suggest they were sewn on. A lot of us jousters are now going over to a mail shrug type affair that floats independently over the toop of the doublet.

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

There was a discussion on this over on the Armour Archive. After looking at the Inventorio Illuminado, and reconsidering the other pictorial data, we found, to our surprise, that the 'shrug' seems to have been normal for the 16th c. and for at least the second half of the 15th.