[Boris Bedrosov]

And these are the tools, required for this work:



- drill press;
- 2 anvils;
- steel hammer and rubber mallet;
- aviation snips;
- pliers;
- center punch;
- medium-sized screw-driver;
- F- and M-sized permanent stencils;
- 2.0, 2.50, 3.0 and 4.0 mm drill-bits;
- and files ........ a lot of files.

Not shown - the ruler, vice and may be the most important tool - my coffee-mug

[Aleksei Sosnovski]

Boris, I envy and admire you. Though cutout work is pretty simple, it takes so much elbow grease that I will probably never make anything similar to your creations. I was about to curse myself several times when I was making a visor similar to this one http://historyshop.piratemerch.com/images/300...helmet.jpg.

Have you ever tried to use jeweller's saw for cutout work? I do not own one so I cannot really recommend trying it, but it is made for sawing silver and gold sheets so theoretically should work pretty well on thin brass like you use.

[Romulus Stoica]

Boris, your armor will be awesome! An armor fit for a sultan ... I'm looking forward to see it finished and maybe some day We will invite you in Romania to one of our events.

[Boris Bedrosov]

To Aleksei

I have never tried to use jeweller's saw. Although I have some knowledge about its great potential, I have not acquired one yet.
So, I still do this in somewhat old-fashion style - with drill-bits and files.



To Romulus

[Sander Alsters]

Wow Boris looks really awesome! I am re-anacting a Mamluk and was thinking of having my own Yushman one day. If I can save the money that is. What are your costs if I may ask?

Kind Regards,

Sander.

[Justin Davis]

Boris, I am long time lurker and must make my first post on your thread. Your workmanship is inspiring, especially since you are not a metal worker by trade!
Do you use a sand bag to form the cups or the curve on the side of your rail anvil?

Even if you are drilling out all the brass to start, a Jeweler saw will take hours of time off your projects and they are cheap. I am sure you can find a local supplier, but here is an online example of the price.

http://www.micromark.com/JEWELERS-SAW,6747.html

My experience with a Jeweler saw is mostly in silver and with small pieces that can turn inside the saw frame, but to cut out the major windows in your brass would be very easy with a twisted or abrasive blade(I dont know the correct name) because that type of blade can saw forward, backward and sideways. The regular blades only saw forward and the blade must be turned in the clamps to cut back on the same side of large pieces. Still would take file work to finish the lines and details, but the big parts would come out with saw.

Thanks for sharing our work!

[Boris Bedrosov]

To Sander

You have PM. Check it out!



To Justin

To form the cups I use so called "dishing stump" - simple tree log with cut-in depression on it, where I dish the plate in several "passes". The anvil is needed to smooth the wrinkles on the plate after every pass. Believe me - it only sounds very difficult, but actually is not so difficult

Next time when I work cut-out designs, I really must consider the idea of acquiring a jeweler's saw

[Boris Bedrosov]

After many hours (not exaggarated) of hard work, the decoration plates for the bazubands are ready



The next step is to rivet them on the bazuband plates

[Jean Thibodeau]

Impressive work on the whole project but the decorative plates are really attractive.

Did you mention how these are secured to the steel bazubands ? I'm assuming some form of soft soldering or if pinned in place there would have to be a lot of pins so that the decoration would not catch a blade easily and be bent or damaged by a glancing blow lifting a part of the decoration off that would be a problem when fighting ? I would imagine that damage to decorations would be an accepted risk in heavy fighting if hit by a solid blow but that one would expect some scratches or nicks in normal use.

[Romulus Stoica]

As I see in the picture, the decorations will be riveted to the steel bazubands with a lot of small (brass) rivets. If this is done properly (and I don't doubt that it will), they will stay in place even in a heavy fight, but I think I would be ashamed to strike a blow to such a fine piece of art .

[Jan J. Gahy]

Hi
Beautiful armorpiece, this topic inspired me into making my own orientalish lamellar armor so i decided to make brekheter i ordered many pieces of metal sheets and i already have some chains at home from my previous maille works but im little bit confused, because of patterns of lammels you use: lamells opening are upward. Shouldnt they be covered from upper side like on this picture?

i dont know much about historical accuracy of this pattern of lamellar row, i dont know even how it is effective because i never wear such an armor (i prefer plates) but many of slashing weapons goes from up to down.

i would be grateful for any help about efficiency of this kind of armor

[Sander Alsters]

Hi Jan,
I believe the lammelar has this patern for the following reason. And I do believe this.is historically acurate.

This typ of armor was often wore by heavy cavalry. Because the soldiers are on horseback the might more easily be hit by a spear or some identicall weapon. because the opening of the lammelar is on the top side the spearpoint has much more difficulty finding his way through a opening. Arrows just the same. Slashing weapons dont have that much affect because the metal lammelar function as a plate armor.

I believe this because there are also lammelar armors found that are indeed what you reffer to, with the opening on the underside. I believe these came from Byzantium. These were speciffically meant for infantry while the cav wore them as I discriped above.

Offcourse this is jist my point of view.
Kind regards,
Sander

[Romulus Stoica]

This is the most common explication, but also, this arrangement of plates is more confortable to the wearer since when you bend down the plates will slide easier and won't catch the clothes beneath.

[Boris Bedrosov]

Hi everyone!

Romulus is correct.
I will rivet the decoration plates (actually almost completely done) with rivets - 332 is their precise number.
But in fact, the rivets are not from brass. I use an copper electric cable with appropriate diameter; in this case - 1.6 mm. After stripping the insulation, I cut the rivets with desire length - here they are:



Now they are 7 mm long (you can compare them with the match-stick), but I can cut them 5, or 6, or 10 mm if it's needed. This - I mean use of copper wire, combined with careful choice of diameter - gives me great flexibility in my work. I am able to do a lot of things with relatively limited resources.
And as you will see tommorrow, the combination "copper rivets / brass plates" looks quite cool.


To Jan
The plates of all the yushmans I've seen are arranged upwards.
The only armours I know with arrangement as you have shown are the scale armour, lorica segmentata, some European brigandines (actually - I'm not quite sure) and somewhat disputed Korean so called "reversed lamellar".
The upward arrangement can be found everywhere around the Eurasia - from Japanese o-yoroy and okegawa armours, through Siberian tribesmen (usually made from whale-bone), Tibet, India, Persia, Arabia, North Africa, Byzantium, Balkans, Russia, Poland. And the pattern always is the same - the lower plate overlaps the upper one.
And I can assure you that this arrangement provides very good protection - we have tested some lammellars against swords, combat arrowhead arrows, battle-hammers, spears - and they performed very well.

This - a deformed plate from my former lamellar armour:



is may be the most catastrophic result from all the tests - lamellar vs battle-hammer. The plate itself took the blow.
And contrary to Sander's opinion it was used not only by cavalry, but widely from infantry also. In my opinion, this construction was so widespread because:
1. Its general good protection capabilities
2. Its flexibility - Romulus already mentioned this
3. High performance in close combat. Believe me - in this case it is extremely difficult to exploit the gaps between the plates if they are arranged upwards. Even with dagger it is not easy to make a good and precise up-to-down strike, intended to enter between the plates. But if they are arranged downwards (for example - the scale armour) it is easy, sometimes very easy, to stab the opponent with down-to-up strike.

[Aleksei Sosnovski]

Boris,

My tests with lamellar and war bow show that plates are very difficult to penetrate. Actually more difficult than breast plate of same thickness, because lammellar is flexible. However thongs that connect individual plates together get torn, opening pretty large gaps for other arrows to come through. Blows with one-handed swords however do not tear the thongs. Did you have similar results in your tests?

I use brass nails with domed heads as rivets when I need something other than steel. They should be annealed to become softer, but otherwise are relatively cheap and easy to use and and look really good. Have you ever tried them? If no than you should try them some time.

[Boris Bedrosov]

Aleksei,

We have tested two lamellar constructions:
1. Plates over leather belt (there is such reconstruction in Timothy Dawson's "Byzantin Armies") vs. arrows, spear, one-hand sword. The result was always only deformed plates in the impact zones

and

2. Somewhat more trivial construction (let me call it "laced plates laced in raws") vs. battle-hammer, spear, one-hand sword. Except for the spear, every time we've got torn thongs, but the blows were very strong and precise. In real battle, when the conditions are different, it is quite possible such lamellar to withstand the impact without thongs get torn .

[Boris Bedrosov]

Let me show two things today.

First are the maille gauntlets:



Left one is partially sewn over an old glove to ease me counting the number of raws and rings.
The authentic bazubands typically use mittens, but I decided to make fingered ones for the sake of my own comfort. Strictly speaking, this will be one of the greatest derivations of my project from the originals.

And second (get ready for surpice):





Riveting is finished and the bazubands are ready for final assembly and oxidation. Now, you can see what is the appearance of copper rivet over brass.

Guys, I am very proud with this and the pride is MORTAL SIN. I must be very careful.

[Nathan Robinson]

Man, that darkened steel, brass, and copper look great together.

[Boris Bedrosov]

Actually, the steel is not darkened yet. I will do this on Sunday.
Now it has smooth satin appearance, and what seems like darkening is in fact someking of visual effects of reflection.

[Nathan Robinson]