[Mart Shearer]

Separate sleeves and skirts (pans, paunces) of mail start appearing in inventories in the mid-14th century beneath pairs of plate, so there is little reason not to use them for a 15th century portrayal. If you're only wearing a breastplate, an haubergeon/mail shirt would be a better choice. The easiest way to keep the armpit from pulling out from beneath the breast and back is to sew the mail sleeves to the arming doublet.

[Scott Hrouda]

[Mart Shearer]

Roland Thomas Richardson, The medieval inventories of the Tower armouries 1320–1410
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3919/1/Thom_Ri..._final.pdf

Randall and I have been bandying about several of the pieces of information from this thesis for over a month on Armour Archive, and we've only scratched the surface.


Enjoy!

[Henrik Granlid]

This style of voider-ish garb is part of my future plans for my butted maille as a quick way to repurpose it from erroneous 13th century design (non-tailored, elbow-length arms) to proper 15th century use, great way to get some extra rings out of it as well to make, well, something out of it.

[Scott Hrouda]

[Mart Shearer]

I think you'll find most of the discussion in the Historical Research forum. So far we've been on the mail items for the most part: tournament hauberks, musekins, aventails and pisanes, and of course the question of haubergeons or sleeves and skirt beneath the plates.

[Jonathan Fletcher]

I have been trying to figure out voiders to work with a c.1415 white harness based loosely on the John Fitzwaryn brass from Wantage, as found on p.40 of the Campaign series booklet Agincourt, published by Osprey.

I use a Historic Enterprises arming coat with the $100 extra voider eyelets that are incidentally sewn in the wrong place, covering the lower gutter of the arm and not including the all important inside of the elbow joint.

The arms' canons are fully enclosing and, as with the waist of the cuirass, quite neat - no room for an off the shelf baggy sleeved and baggy bodied maille shirt underneath.

The 6mm voiders bought from GDFB didn't work: Not enough body coverage, far too baggy in the sleeves. They have to be sewn up around the sleeve diagonally and I didn't like the way this affected elbow flexion, kind of binds the sleeve up a bit. These are the standard 6mm maille voiders you will see advertised by several vendors. After a bit of tailoring (using the body section as the sleeve and the sleeve as the body, to give the latter more depth and bringing a section up to cover the inside of the elbow) I am still not convinced and the weight just pulls uncomfortably on the arming coat.

As a result I made a short jacket, laced up the front. It is easy to take on and off, not much more weight than voiders or sleeves. It was made from a 9mm flat ring wedge riveted hauberk that I had tapered the sleeves on a few years ago and put aside.

The finished jacket is shown below, albeit in these photo's fastened up with string and without the maille standard. There isn't much weight in it, the weight easily carried on the shoulders without any pulling on the arming coat as with sewn on voiders. There are no gaps appearing under the spaulders when the arms are raised, as can occur with voiders. The close fitted and tapered arms fit under the upper and lower canons of the arms whilst the off cut body will make a skirt with plenty to spare, possibly even some for behind the thighs and knees.

This seems to work well. I can see it working with Reece's arms as long as the body is covered front and back by something solid. It would be a weight saver for any 14th century harness that uses a breast and back plate or even a coat-of-plates, just needing a belted skirt to finish off.