8/9/12 - Irish night at the Open Shop

We started out with barley porridge, asparagus in rice brought by Deirdre and spicy pears in wine sauce made by Gunna and Evie.  (Pears in spicy wine sauce?)  Yummy food!  Jacki and Maelgwyn spent some time geeking out over Y Gododdin and parchment and letters from St. Patrick and other cool discussion topics, but then we all got to work.

First-time visitor Seanan (Shaw-non?) already has his armour together, so he helped out with war shield painting and joined in on the pell-work session later in the evening.

Grain'e made custom patterns for her vambraces and I cut them out for her out of roughly 6 oz. oil tanned leather.  (Note:  Grain'e made a donation to the shop fund for the leather and aluminum.  Yeah!)  These would be way too light if we weren't adding some serious aluminum splints to them.  We patterned and cut out some .125" thick 6061 T6 aluminum splints which will make these plenty rigid enough for spearwork.  Speaking of spearwork, Grain'e came out and worked with the spear while the rest of us were beating on the pell.  Seanan, Grain'e, St. Patrick ...was it Irish night and somebody forgot to tell me?

Dierdre (She's Norse-Irish, so that's...not really different at all)  had recently made some great Mongol-style fighting pants for Wolf and also a nice white under-tunic.  She helped a lot with the shield painting, trained at the pell, and then did some more shield painting.

 

But Wolf is a Mongol who would never ever have even visited Ireland!  He worked on stuffing the channels in his helm liner, did some pell work, and may have even snuck in some shield painting when I wasn't looking.  In the background Ben is working on his own helm liner, which is nearly finished.  Ben also come outside for pell work.

Wyllow mac Muiredaig is a Scot.  A descendant of the Dal Riada.  Who were basically an Irish tribe that settled in Caledonia and forgot to go home.  She worked on weaving hand-spun wool to make a test piece for experimenting with fulling methods/recipes, and helped others with their projects.

Jacki carded wool and spun some yarn while Evie watched and rested up from her cooking efforts.  In the background Belle was on her computer researching 12th century French music for her upcoming presentation at Laurel's Prize Tourney.

Gunna browsed through one of Wyllow's books on Roman cooking.  Will she get hooked and start putting garum in everything?  Only time will tell...

Frosti came out to visit with folks, do a little shield paining, enjoy some good food, and discuss next steps for his armour plan.  And that was enough for one night!

Open Shop 5-24-2012

 

Abby got off to a good start by smoothing the edges of the aluminum plates for her gorget using a belt sander.  Later on she curved and slightly dished the plates using a stump and a hammer.

 

 Diedre has finished the top of her helm and is starting on the back slats.

 

Ben re-strapped his shield and did some planning work for his coat of plates.

 

 Evie and Gunna looked through reference materials and planned Evie's next new outfit.

 Helen is such a pro, she can do applique with her eyes closed!  Not really.  Later she worked on some embroidery why loaning her sewing machine to Jovian...

 ...who sewed some leather pouches.

 Wolf kept after his lamellar lacing project.
 

 Nora helped Belle dye the ends of her hair blue.  We are not sure why and we are afraid to ask.

 Diedre also helped Wyllow with fitting the corset layer of a new Elizabethian outfit.  Sometimes fittings can tickle.  Wyllow very consistently says "Elizabethian" rather than "Elizabethan" while I do the opposite, yet somehow we manage to co-exist.

Artorius looks suave and debonair after a hard evening of helping other people with their projects, while still not getting his own shield re-strapped.

Armour night!

We had a great turnout for armouring last night with Kansuke, Chris, Jeanne-Marie, Wolf (right-handed Horde archer, not the left-handed Thunder swordsman) and Nora working on various projects. Jeanne-Marie la Verriere made aluminum splints for her gamboised cuises, Kansuke worked on aluminum gauntlets, Chris cut out and edged a birch plywood shield and Wolf wrote up an armour plan and did most of the dishing on his first elbow cop. Nora is looking at an 11th century personna associated with one of the Celtic monasteries where illuminated manuscripts were produced. I worked on a loaner-armour coat of plates and a shield for somebody who just can't seem to make it to armour shop.  Oh yes, and I also made a double batch of Barley porridge which was enjoyed by all. :)

Armour nights have been happening nearly every Thursday lately.  I'm trying to remember to take pictures and post them, but I'm usually running around like a ringmaster in a 3-ring circus so I often forget.

Do YOU have your armour ready for the fall melee season?

Open Shop Sunday

We had a great open shop day on Sunday. Mary and Gracie drove up from St. Edward's University. Aeddan and Grimolfr (Joe) came over as well.

Aeddan put a last coat of gesso on his curved birch plywood shield and made a steel grip for it. I will post instructions for these grips sometime soon, based on the Dura Europos archaeology evidence. He also cleaned some old paint off of his aluminum oval shield to prepare it for re-painting.

Grimólfr had pre-assembled a set of Tandy leather lamellar plates to see how they would fit. He dis-assembled them, soaked them in my bucket of glue solution, and low-temperature baked them in batches of 12, keeping the oven going all afternoon.











Mary sewed up the second gamboised cuise for her leg armour and began dishing some better elbow cops. She also put edging on an old aluminum shield from the loaner gear so it is ready for her to use.









I helped here and there with several projects, ground down some lumpy welds on a loaner helm, drilled out some old rivits on Mary's vambraces, drilled holes in Mary's current aluminum elbows so they are ready to be tied to the vambraces and rerebraces, and added ties (shoestrings) to Mary's gamboised cuises so they are ready to wear.

Aeddan has loaned his old helm to Mary and offered to bring his old aluminum lamellar out to practice on Tuesday. With that Mary should be able to armour up using only a half-gauntlet and a gorget from the loaner gear. Progress!

Maelgwyn

PS Here is an excellent article on covering ugly armour with good period clothing:
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=97177

Late Roman Shields

By the 5th century nearly all Roman shields appear to have been oval in shape. The earlier ones found at Dura Europos and seen in the mosaics at Piazza Armentaria seem to be a bit larger than the one I use. See also the Wikipedia article on Scutum Shields which I will quote here:

The 5th century writer Vegetius added that scuta helped in identification: "Lest the soldiers in the confusion of battle should be separated from their comrades, every cohort had its shields painted in a manner peculiar to itself. The name of each soldier was also written on his shield, together with the number of the cohort and century to which he belonged."

The surviving shields seem to include both plank and plywood examples with linen facings and rawhide edging. Unit insiginia like those depicted in the Notitia Dignitatum is painted on the front of the shield while the back is painted with more personalized depictions of saints, nude women, or other inspirational images along with floral and geometric design elements.

I have a photocopy of some shield images from the Dura Europos report in my collection if anyone would like to take a closer look. The full citation for that report is:

James, Simon (2004). Excavations at Dura-Europos 1928—1937. Final Report VII. The Arms and Armour and Other Military Equipment. London: British Museum Press. ISBN 0-7141-2248-3.