These patterns and instructions are compliments of Patrick Woolery and are used with his permission. Please contact him prior to reproducing these patterns or instructions in any manner or media.
Each pic should be 11" high, since they were drawn on 8.5x11 paper.
This pattern is from Sir Paul of Summerton. It is French. Pronounce it "kootay". The pattern given is for a simple, non-articulated elbow. I attached mine to my vambraces with leather straps and they work well. If I had made a fancy joint with multiple lames and upper arm protection, it would be heavier and probably less flexible. To make this vital part of your armor, all you need to do is cut out the steel versions of the pattern and dish them adequately. Then attach some sort of strap to hold them onto your arm.
Dishing is a fairly simple procedure. You will need a hammer that weighs at least two pounds and has a rounded face. You will also need a proper surface to work on. I use a big log section with a shallow depression carved in it. If I am working on a piece that won't fit onto my stump, I will lay a big sandbag on the floor and use that. The idea is to have support around the area where you are hitting with the hammer, but not directly under the blow. The metal gets stretched as it is pounded and ends up becoming more and more like a lumpy bowl, hence "dishing". Some people have used sections of 3" pipe to give the dishing area. You can use whatever you like, but be sure to hammer over the area that is in the center of the support, not off the side. Start pounding in the center of the piece, then work outward in a spiral. The couter will curve inward as you go, so you may need to bend it out again while you work. Keep beating on it until you are able to use it to cover your elbow reasonably. The curved line on the pattern shows the approximate curvature of my couters at the deepest part. You can dish yours deeper, but don't go any shallower, for fear of not having adequate coverage with the arm bent.
Once you have both elbows in shape, start planishing. To do this, just put a convex stake in your vise or stump and hammer on the outside of the couter, working out the worst of the dents and deformities. A few hammer marks will look good, but a lumpy elbow looks really careless. If you are really lucky, the elbow might need only a little planishing or none at all. Go ahead and sand the steel to a smooth finish, but don't polish it, yet. First you need to figure out how to keep it in place on your arm. I used arming points (ties). I just drilled two holes in each side of the elbow and ran a cord through. I don't like the feel of a 1/2" strap digging into my inner arm when I bend the elbow, but I can't feel the cord at all. It seems to work well for me. If you prefer straps, use those. I would attach them with roofing nails, clipping off the points and peening them down like rivets, the heads holding the leather straps firmly in place. Now you can polish and do whatever other finish work you want to do. Vambrace/couter interaction Dish the shaded area the most. Finished couter from the side Planishing
Just so you know, it is a French word and is pronounced "kweess", not the more logical "kyoos". Those French...
The first thing to do is get out some tagboard. Newspaper is not really good enough because you can't tell if it will bind you up in certain places or not. The lower edge is easy - just make it a curve that matches the template for the knee lame. The rest of it should be made to go around half of the thigh at all points except up near the crotch. The illustrations include a diagram of how to measure the cuisse, but there will be plenty of trimming, as with the breastplate patterns.
Measurement 1 is the distance from just above your knee to about three inches below your crotch. Measurement 2 is half of the distance around the thigh. Total height of the cuisse (measurement 3) is from just above the knee to where your leg bends forward at the hip.
Also illustrated is a backplate for your leg. When the wraps start flying, you will be glad of this plate! Just make it whatever size seems to fit best and still allows you to lean back without mangling your buttocks. Tape the pattern onto your leg and move around in it. Wherever it bends while you move will hurt with steel, so start trimming. When you have the pattern you want, cut out the steel version from 16 gauge sheet. The shaping is a simple gutter shape. Note that it is wider at the top, while the bottom has to fit inside the upper knee lame. Just keep trying it on as you go, then you should get it right easily. Dish the bottom edge and articulate with the knee, as described in the knee section.
Now that you have the whole mess together, attach the backplate. You can use leather as a hinge, but a big metal hinge will transfer some of the blow to the main cuisse and will look much more impressive to your fellow fighters. Just use a 3" hinge from the hardware store and rivet it in with a little space for it to move.
When strapping the legs, I did something different from most people. I hung my legs with nylon cord, rather than leather straps. This gives me a great deal of flexibility and seems to be period (well, not the nylon, but maybe the cord), from the few illustrations I have seen that even come close to showing how the leg armor worked. I also put one strap behind the thigh to close the backplate and hold the cuisse against my leg. The only knee strapping is a pair of cords attached to the demigreave that tie below my knee, so there is no pressure on the back of the knee and nothing that will be uncomfortable when I am kneeling. You can strap yours however you like, and I encourage you to look at the leg harness in use in your area before you make up your mind.
This is a pattern from Sir Paul of Summerton. I will admit to a personal dislike for cup hilts from the start. They do not look medieval, nor do they accurately replicate the weight and balance of a proper medieval sword. I think the worst thing about them is that they cause many fighters (at least in my area) to stay with single-handed swords, rather than learning to use polearms, spears, and great swords. It can get so boring to watch a tourney (and participate in it) when everyone is using sword and board. If more people put a little time into a decent pair of gauntlets, there would be more variety possible on the tourney field. After saying that, I will admit that I am never going to be able to get rid of cup hilts and basket hilts in the SCA, so it is worth including a brief article on how to make a very protective cup hilt that will take a lot of abuse and will work with either hand.
The pattern shown is actually only half of the pattern. The dotted line indicates the point at which you need to extend the pattern, drawing a mirror image of the part I have drawn.
Dish the front plate and the sides of the body of the hilt. This will facilitate sticking your hand into it. Rivet the front plate to one side of the cup hilt, drilling and riveting only one hole at a time. Bend the whole thing until you can rivet the other edge of the front plate to the other side of the cup hilt. Some of this will be tricky to rivet, but all I can say is that it is possible to figure out, so don't despair. Next, you need one of the tabs (shown in the upper left of the pattern template page) riveted to the top of the cup hilt. Rivet the other to the bottom. These provide the anchoring points for your hose clamps to hold the cup hilt to the rattan. I have made two cup hilts of this design. It works well, looks as good as any other, and so on.
These are simply scanned from Sir Paul of Summerton's instruction sheets. I am not going to re-iterate his explanations. -Patrick
This is a pattern from Sir Paul of Summerton , though I have modified it a little bit.
Decide first thing whether you want articulated knees or simple knees. This is really important. For leather or gamboised leg armor, simple knees are fine, though articulated can be used. For steel leg harness, make them articulated for sure. Either way, cut out the knee pattern and a fan for each knee. You can make the fans look like anything you want. I kept mine simple, but you don't have to follow my lead.
If you will want an articulated joint, cut out two lames for each knee. The knees should be of 14 gauge (16 works fine, but you will spend enough time on your knees to flatten out the 16 gauge eventually. The lames can be of 16 gauge. Dish the knees. Just go back to the instructions in the section on elbows. I'm not going to type it all in again.
If these are to be simple knees, attach the fans to the outside (no, it doesn't really matter which side is the outside) and then figure out how to attach it to the rest of the armor.
For the articulated knees,drill the four holes marked on the pattern of the knee cop. Next, dish one of the lames slightly. The long curve should fit the curve of the top of knee cop. Play with it a bit, moving it through the range of motion it will have in the finished knee. Mark a spot for a rivet that will be within the area of steel you see most often through the hole in the knee cop. I start in the upper left corner, so that is the way I will describe it. No real reason, so do it however you are comfortable with it. Play with it some more. If you can move the lame without the mark vanishing from sight behind the hole, that is the right place for it. This hole is not absolutely crucial, anyway, so you can have a bit of slop, if it doesn't fit perfectly. Drill the hole and rivet loosely. It is a very good idea to use screws and nuts in the holes until it is just right. This way you can take the thing apart and get it right without grinding off any rivets. Play with it some more. Find the next hole you will need to drill. Mark it and see if the lame can move through its range of motion without the mark moving. If the only spot where this will happen is placed such that the edge of the lame comes dangerously close to coming out of the knee, beat the edge of the lame so that it will curve toward the knee cop. A single rivet makes this possible. If you waited until both rivets were in, there would be no easy way to do it. About half of an inch is right for the overlap. A little more doesn't hurt, but a little less is coming too close to the edge of the knee cop. When you have the right spot marked for certain, drill it and rivet or bolt it. Does it work? My first try worked perfectly, so yours should, too. Now do the same thing with the second lame. After you have both knees articulated, play with them. Fun, eh? You can oil them at the joint, but a proper job is plenty flexible without the oil. Don't attach the fans until you attach the knee to the demigreave and cuisse. The fan gets in the way. I know it is a bugger to support the whole blasted leg on the anvil in order to pound in two rivets, but it goes easier than if you have to take the fan off to maneuver the thing into position for attaching the bigger pieces. (Maybe it would work for you, but it doesn't for me.) Now, you get to rivet the knees to the cuisse and demi-greave! The real key to making a very flexible joint at this point is to treat the bottom edge of the cuisse and the top of the demi-greave just like you treated the lames in the knee joint. That's right, you dish them a little bit and repeat the irritation of figuring out exactly where to rivet them so they will allow almost as much motion as the lames do. I have included a pattern for a demi-greave, but not for a cuisse, since that should be made to fit the user's leg closely.
The design for this one comes from a little inspiration I got from historical armor. I built one of these after a number of fighters complained of the lack of loaner armor in the barony. I was trying to design a form of body armor that would fit the widest possible range of people. I played with a lot of different ideas before I remembered the middle-eastern armor called a char-aina. I have read that the name means "four mirrors". I was in a hurry and wanted to go cheap, so I dug through my metal until I found a STOP sign. It is about 1/16" thick aluminum and measured 30" from flat face to flat face.
I cut out the parts shown in the illustration, smoothed up the edges, and curved them to fit my body. The small size of the plates means that there is relatively little curving to do on each plate before it will fit the body. I just used the edge of my railroad track anvil and a hammer to get the curve. The bright red and white of the sign went on the inside of the curve.
Next came strapping. Because I wanted to use this piece to demonstrate to other fighters that armor is neither difficult, nor expensive, unless you make it so, I used nylon webbing for the straps. It is ugly, but I would have hidden the aluminum at any rate, so the same surcoat can cover the straps, as well. Each side plate has four straps attached to it. I simply used rivets and washers, but the copper harness rivets most folks use for their coats-of-plates would work just as well. In order to help keep the straps from fraying and pulling loose from the rivets, I made the holes by heating a piece of brass rod in a propane torch flame and melting the holes through the nylon webbing. The straps are configured such that there are two connecting the front plate to the back plate over the shoulders and one at each corner of the side plates, which adjust by means of sliders attached to the front and back plates. These sliders are from the local fabric store and are used to adjust the straps on a backpack or duffel bag.
Since I had a couple of triangular pieces left over, I made them into tiny tassets and hung them from the side plates. They don't give much protection, but there is some.
Overall, the char-aina looks cool, but very modern. I spent about 15 dollars on it, most of that for straps. It I had made it out of steel, with leather straps, it could pass for a reasonable job of middle-eastern armor, though this is no substitute for researching the real thing and doing it right. Field testing at fighter practice showed that it will fit from a 36" girth to a 46" girth and still give adequate protection. For loaner, this is fine. For personal armor, I suggest tailoring the measurements to suit your own body.
This is a pattern I made because I was unhappy with the number of hockey gloves I saw on fighters' shield hands. It protects very well and is not unduly heavy. There are currently a couple in use in my barony and I expect to see more soon. I used 14 gauge for those I built, since it is sturdier and the handle anchors to the walls of the basket. In essence, all you have to do is make a box out of two pieces of steel. The longer piece has a flange protruding to protect the wrist. All of the shaping can be done with simple bends.
Put the piece of steel in a vise and pound it over at the marked line. I drill all the holes before I do any bending, since otherwise it might be hard to get at the edges around the base to drill holes to anchor the basket to the shield. After bending the pieces to the shapes shown, simply rivet them together. Next, you need to insert a handle. I use 1.25" hardwood dowel and shave the sides down to 1". The oblong shape of the handle makes it easier to control in use. Cut the handle to just the distance between the two side walls of the box. Drill guide holes in the ends of the dowel and screw in a long wood screw at each end. The result is a stout and dependable form of protection for your shield hand!
The pattern shown actually is both pieces. One has a convex top edge to protect up to your elbow, the other is cut away to allow the arm to flex. This one goes on the inner arm, if you couldn't guess. In addition, you will need two sets of hinges, some rivets, and a leather strap and buckle. If you wish, you can hinge the vambraces with a strip of leather, using roofing nails for the rivets.
The procedure is pretty simple, but not as easy as I expected. Each piece is curved into a trough by pounding over an anvil horn or a piece of pipe or railroad track. As you work, occasionally lay the piece on a flat surface and be sure that all of the corners are touching the surface. The elbow end will be wider than the wrist end, but the edges need to be on the same plane so they can mate up with the edges of the other half. After you have made one of the pieces, the rest should be pretty easy. Just make sure the top and bottom halves will meet along their entire length.
When it comes time to rivet the hinge, you will be trying to work on the inside of the semi-circular curve. There is not a lot of room to swing a hammer, so you will spend a while with the riveting. If you use a strip of leather, it will go much faster, as the heads of the roofing nails will be inside the armor, while you only need to do a bit of peening on the outside of the vambrace. Clip off the end of the nail about 1/8" - 3/16" above the surface of the vambrace, lay the steel trough along the edge of your anvil or anvil substitute, and carefully peen a head on the rivet until it is nice and tight. Add a strap and buckle to close the vambrace. Closing these can be a chore, as you need the edges to meet or at least come close to meeting once the buckle is through the strap. In order to put a buckle through a strap, though, you need to move it past the point where it will be, once closed! I need to use pliers to pull my strap through its buckle. If you find an easier way, let me know! With a good run and some effort, you should be able to finish these in a day or so. After you are done, decide whether you want to attach them to your couters (elbows). I had my vambraces underlap my couters a bit, then ran a strap between them to make it permanent. I also glued a strip of leather on the inside edge of the couter so it won't ruin the paint job on the vambrace or make too much noise while fighting.