[Gerald Fa.]

What was the historical thickness on battlefield armor such as Chain-mail, Plate, Gothic plate, the black Landsknecht armor, and the Maximilian armors? Also what was the thinness on the helmets?

I know thickness very from part to part on the armor and on the helmet, but what were they? What mm or gauge?

Thank you so much!


black Landsknecht armor I am talking about:

[Chad Arnow]

Gerald,
This topic has been discussed before, including in this old thread (among others).

[Gerald Fa.]

[Gerald Fa.]

That some on what I want, but I will read more later. It seems they were talking about helmets only, I wont to know about armor as well. But I will look in to it.




Any one can post on here, feel free to do so.

[Chad Arnow]

[Ben P.]

Yes, but then you get thread necromancy

Gerals, I do know that generally the thickest part of plate was the cuirass 1.5-2 mm

[Nathan Robinson]

[Jared Smith]

I have mentioned this before in some previous threads, but you can get a feel for the range of thickness (I would guess near 3:1) by looking at similar coverage suits of harness in the Higgins Armoury. (The display signs give weight, era, and opinion of type of service.) Some of their "light field" or "parade" suits weighed as low as 35 lbs for the harness. Most were closer to 45-65 lbs, and a couple described as "jousting" harness were described as about 95 lbs.

There was obviously a lot more to it than uniform thickness increase; differential thicknesses in areas expected to be projectile targets as firearms and more powerful bows appeared, fluting and roping, etc. But I think we can still get a general feel for "possible historical range" of thickness simply from these variations in weights.

[Dan Howard]

I think I've said this before but keep in mind that the current thickness of extant armours is unlikely to have been the original thickness. Any armour that has come down to us in decent condition is a result of centuries of polishing. Any that have not, have had significant amounts of corrosion removed during restoration. Any discussion of armour thickness needs to be prefaced with this caveat.

[Luka Borscak]

Painted armors were obviously not polished, we can say they have original thickness, right?

[Gerald Fa.]

[Helge B.]

[János Sibinger]

Greetings!

I don't know, If every piece of armour was polished, but as far as I know, before the invention of different polishing compounds they used coal dirt to make metal pieces brighter (I red this in an article about sword making in a lexikon: Révai Nagy lexikon). I don't know, how mouch damage could be caused by this compound.
If bleckened pieces of armour were polished?
As Paul Blackwell writes in the book Basic armouring: "I remember a lovely exhibit in the Tower of London, of 16C armours and portraits of people wearing them. From the portraits it was clear that the armours were originally black, an effect that had long since been polished away!"
About the armour in the very beginning of this topic. The short sleeved versions of these pieces (made for pikemen) weights between 8 and 12 kgs. (Dr Peter Krenn: Harnisch und helm)

And If I may ask a question: How thick were the coats of plates?
I 'm reading the book "Armour from the battle of wisby", it is a great book, but I haven't yet find any clue about the thickness of the plates. I would be pleased, if any of you helped me out!


Thank you!

John