Measuring for Body Defense Armor

As I mentioned in my prior post on the topic, I used the Chapter 12 guide in Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction The 14th Century for measuring. The particular section is Cuirass / Body Defense measurements on pages 145-146. As the text notes, taking body defense measurements is quite similar to those used for a seamstress for typical garments. Measurements should be taken over arming coats, gambesons or other clothing that will be worn underneath the final product.

Given I’m constructing costume quality material for a child, only a thin shirt will be under the leather. He may need a larger coat if the weather is frigid. I’ll leave that up to the parents. For the measurements, my target was Sir Dylan the Skinny. Well into his 6th year, he doffs shirts of size 6-7 when not equipped for battling the local villains.

Sir Dylan the Skinny

Sir Dylan measured out as follows in the key areas using a cloth tape measure.

1. Chest Circumference: 21.5″ at the thickest part of the chest, which is typically around the nipple line.
2. Waist Circumference: 20.5″ taken just above the hips.
3. Neck Hollow to Front Bend: 5.5″ This measurement is from the throat’s hollow down to the point where the armor would bend at the waist. If you are skilled, this is point where the faulds would begin.
4. Arm Opening to Arm Opening: 9″ Used to determine the useful width of the armor between the arms, as taken across the chest at the bottom of the arm/shoulder joint. Roughly, it is the top of the armpit as diagrammed b the text. If too wide in this location, armor will reduce motion.
5. Hip Length: Not taken. Bend in the waist to the bottom of the fauld line. I was working off the diagram in the book and this measurement is not pictured in either of the diagrams.

The text also lists an additional 8 optional measurements.

1. Neck Opening: 6″ Measured at each side of the neck to allow easy head movement.
2. Shoulder Point to Neck Opening: 3″ Taken from the neck opening to the edge of the shoulder. Useful if you are adding pauldrons. If I do, it will be an add-on to the initial build.
3. Back Shoulder Point to Shoulder Point:: 10″ Similar to the arm opening to arm opening measurement above but take on the back to indicate maximum width along the back for arm motion.
4. Cervical Vertebrae to the Small of the Back: 14″ Indicates overall length of the back piece.
5. Arm Opening to Waist Bend: 7″ Used to leave approximately 1/4 of the space below the arm pit for arm motion. Also indicates the length of the cuirass from the fauld line to the arm opening.
6. Small of the Back to Lower Fauld Line: 6″ Measures the length of the rear faulds. Text notes that the rear faulds cover less than the front faulds. Especially important if the armor is for mounted combat. Don’t want your faulds bunch up on your back when pinched against a saddle, do you? I probably didn’t need the measurement.
7. Hip Circumference: 23″ Allows armor to tailor around the hips.
8. Shoulder Blade to Shoulder Blade: Not taken. Measured on the back. Aids in determining the cut of the back plate.

Hopefully, from the descriptions you get the general idea. I was going to include a diagram but my drawing skills are suspect. I considered scanning the drawings from the text but I question if it would be considered fair use. My tact is to always lean on the safe side when utilizing other people’s work. I was hoping to get some pictures while measuring but camera-mom was busy with other things.

Next up, I’ll be cutting some cardboard templates to test fit based on the original shirt I procured and the measurements.

Mom! I’m going to be a knight!

As an Uncle I’m convinced I’m overwhelmed. I just don’t have the defensive skills built up over time the parents do. Being an uncle lucky enough to have the niece and nephew close by, my role has become something mixed between being a role model like the parents, completely spoiling them like a grandparent, and flummoxing in the middle. I’m convinced my brother and sister-in-law are amused by watching me stumble into obligations I never really intended. Maybe they just like watching the uninitiated walk blindly into the obvious kid-traps.

The day started innocently enough. I had an email from Kevin stating one of the oddball queries to the site. His entire email was:

The query was: leather armor for kids 11 and older.
Sounded right up your DIY alley

In the hours preceding that, I’d been poking around trying to find a decent non-fantasy, non-SCA leather armor. Fate? Maybe. Conspiracy between parents to contrive an uncle trap? Unlikely.

I love leather. The smell, the feel, the workability of the material. Even behind the scenes of plate armor, it is the workhorse for strapping. The historical record is less than even spotty. Leather deteriorates quickly and disappears. After a few hours of surfing, I came up with nothing I wanted to use as a template.

Then I came upon a site I didn’t bookmark about working with metal armor. I wish would have bookmarked the site for quoting but essentially his opinion about patterns was to look and discard them. I’ll paraphrase his statements: “Patterns are a starting place. They do not scale over different body types. A big 6′ 6″ set of armor scaled down to fit a skinny 5′ 5″ person doesn’t work. Know the material and how it works.”

I cannot argue with his wisdom. For a child, the obvious starting point would be to make an elongated leather vest. Something in between a fancy jerkin and a gambeson. Templates for a vest are easy. The kid’s section is full of tank-tops at low prices in every discount store. I found them for $2 each on a discount rack. Slightly oversized for the kids. Room for growth.

I could have started crafting. I did not. By some strange coincidence, the night before I’d leafed through my copy of Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction The 14th Century by Brian R. Price. The book has a chapter (12) on measuring people for armor.

Here I was staring at my $2 template laying on a table. Ready to craft. Then I realized it was ugly. Straight sides. It didn’t even make an attempt to dip inward below the chest to fit even slightly. If you have followed this far along, the realization should have been — “Dear Uncle Mark, Fit doesn’t really matter to a kid”.

I’m not a bright uncle. Ugly doesn’t really work. So I loaded up my tape measure and headed over to my brother’s to measure a real kid. When I showed up, both kids were gone down the block playing. My nephew, Dylan, was kind enough to come home.

I put the template shirt on him. Then measured him sixteen different ways. At the end, he pointed over at the armour book and asked “Does that have knight stuff in it?” The book has more “knight stuff” than any other book I know. He was fixated on the armor pictures. He loved every picture of the knights but didn’t care much for the process photos.

When his mom came through around 45 minutes later, he jumped up, exclaimed, “Mom! I’m going to be a knight for Halloween”. Dashing to the door, he stopped, “I have to go tell my friends, what time do I have to come home?”

As an Uncle, he’ll be the best knight I can make him. He might forget between now and then but he’ll have the option.

Where are the maces?

Short answer — in the hands of the same people I sent them too. If you are confused, back on July 1st, I mailed off my reproduction maces as an experiment. I know both maces arrived safely at the intended destinations but the resulting updates are underwhelming.

Kevin has the 4-flanged mace and the cucumber style mace is in New England. Both maces have been in the hands of the participants for nearly two weeks with barely a peep of response. I was hoping for more instantaneous thoughts upon arrival. None were posted. I was also hoping for photos and/or videos. None have arrived.

I will not call the experiment a failure yet but the results are not what I expected. Finding something to do with the mace is challenging. After all, what role does a medieval crushing weapon have in the modern world? Toss in summer activities and the normal life time constraints, and a 1 week window is overly narrow. Hindsight.

Perhaps my expectations are too high. Perhaps I should have shipped them to unsuspecting people. Maybe the original post will light up. I have my doubts.

The one portion of the experiment playing out nicely is the lack of control.

Tinkering with Software & RPG Utilities

I’m a big fan of online RPG aids — the free and open ones. A decade or ago I wrote a Lifepath and Fast & Dirty Expendable Generator for Cyberpunk 2020. CP2020 has since been updated to Version 3. My original utilities still get a used on occasion but CP2020 was a niche system in its day and today its dead rarely used. My original utilities used C/C++ code via the antiquated cgibin capabilities of the web server. I’ve been looking for an excuse to learn PHP for a while but couldn’t come up with a project.

As I was cleaning up my web detritus, it dawned on me I could add Fast Fortress Construction. Having it would pretty much complete the “random table” features of CP2020 other than perhaps a full up character generator. There really isn’t any point of adding it other than to actually have a semi-useful reason for learning PHP. As a language, the syntax is pretty close to C++ with minor deviations. As most programmers know, once you know one language picking up another one isn’t all that difficult. Automatically generating the graphics is going to be tricky mostly due to layout restrictions of code gates, CPUs and memory units. The rest of the process is pretty trivial.

My one gripe about PHP is debugging. Using text based error messages as a debugging process makes me feel like I’m back in the late ’80’s. There has to be a better mechanism. Perhaps I’ve just not found it yet but if its as limited as I’ve experienced, I’ll withdraw my judgemental attitude about PHP based online games being chuck full of bugs. I’m not willing to toss down major dollars for a integrated suite of development tools since its a hobby exercise. Anyone have suggestions?

On the plus side, there are dozens and dozens of open source add-ons for the core language. So many I’ve pretty much been able to either re-use or adapt open sourced items for everything I’ve written thus far. I haven’t successfully found a rock solid random number generator yet but haven’t looked deeply. TRNG isn’t a requirement, I just prefer them over the mock solutions in most languages. For now, I just encapsulated the rand() method in a class that I can replace without impacting the other code.

Developers all over the world have released so much great PHP code, it would be pretty trivial to toss together a MMO with minimal features in a few days. Most of the work would be setup, site layout and a bit of customization. Perhaps not pretty to start. feature rich but do-able. Once I get the general FFC utility complete, I may delay updating the other utilities in favor of a simplistic MMO based on CP2020’s rules so I can fulfill my netrunner desire.

If I’m not that motivated, perhaps just a few utilities for another RPG. I’m sure there are plenty of candidates for automation among those still in print.

Mace In the Mail

Packing Up

My maces are already getting a bit dusty. I cannot allow it to continue so they must move and move they will. As I write, I’m packing them up and sending them on a journey I cannot control. Tomorrow, the first of the two maces will be mailed out to a friend of mine.

My intention was to have both packages ready to mail but I apparently failed to measure the head of the second mace properly so it will not fit in the mailing tube. Alas, it will wait another day or so before it departs. Like most projects, this one is well behind schedule for a variety of reasons.

Once the packages have been sent, I have no idea where they will travel or if they will return. If they do make it back to me, it will be interesting to see what they look like.

Included in the package are instructions as follows:

July 01, 2010

Greetings, friend.

By now, you are staring at an odd looking chunk of metal, wood and leather. Welcome to a mixed media project brought to you by the KORE rpg blog – Mace in the Mail. You have received the mace because the previous recipient believed you would appreciate either the physical object or the experiment in general.

I hope you enjoy your time with the mace and feel open to contributing to the project. Without further ado, I shall list the project instructions below.

Thank you for your participation,

-Mark
—

Mace In The Mail

Upon Arrival

After getting over the shock of a mace arriving in the mail, please visit and comment on original the Mace in the Mail blog post on the KORE rpg blog. Feel free to post anonymously. Initial thoughts and reactions would be wonderful in addition to the general location.

Blog Post Location:

Your Week

You are free to do what you wish with the mace except for destroying it. Additions, modifications, and other alterations are acceptable so long as the mace remains a mace. Smash a watermelon, pound in a nail, or squash something with it. Take photos and video as you do. Blog about it and link back to our site. If you do not blog, feel free to email media or links to the mace’s email address. I’ll post updates on the KORE site with new material as they arrive. Be careful, the mace is not a toy – it is a weapon designed to smash armor and harm others.

Photos and Videos:

Send it Along

After having the mace for 7 days, please send it to someone else you know who would appreciate the project. If sending to a different country, verify the shipping regulations for that country. Some, such as Canada, do not allow shipping of even reproduction weapons. Feel free to include a local trinket to mark the mace’s passing such as a post card or other item. If you cannot think of a recipient, email and I’ll send return instructions.

This should be fun. Who will be the first person to get a mace in the mail? Only I know.

I want to be a Netrunner

CyberPunk 2020 had some pretty interesting net-runner rules. I like them but as part of a group, a single netrunner, just didn’t mesh well in the setting within the group I played. The system overall was decent but tedious. Character construction was lengthy and the combat system seemed overly involved. The lack of instantaneous death made it feel like people could play walking tanks. My players did.

Back to Net Runners. Times have changed quite a bit. The ‘Net isn’t quite as evolved as the game stated but the prediction of attacks, hacking and internetwork connectivity is growing. War is evolving from a front line, metal on flesh situation to network based attacks on infrastructure. If you can win a war by disabling critical infrastructure, why bother with the meat and metal?

Most current penetrations are nothing more than taking over your parent’s computer and adding it to a bot net. Multiply that by thousands and you have massive computational horsepower at your disposal. Not just for sending and receiving messages for a DoS attack but for anything you have in mind. Breaking crypto. Hiding your network identity. What if they get sophisticated and use massively parallel, non centralized algorithms? It may be already happening.

No computer on the ‘Net is safe. I don’t care what operating system, browser, or protection scheme you choose. Everything is exploitable given sufficient effort. Vile sounding isn’t it?

To me, it screams game but not a traditional RPG. The MMOG model fits much better than table based. If the mechanics were codified and published, could you provide a completely defensible node on the Internet? How about a team of experts attempting to do the same? Toss in Zero-Day exploits you cannot overcome is the rest of your network up to the challenge? Would you try? Or hire the service out?

Stitching a Leather Grip on a Medieval Mace

Disregard what Captain Contrary has to say. I’m quite certain my three readers are interested in my metal and leather fetish fixation. Today, my readers become viewers for first time. Kick back with a cold drink on this hot day and watch the second leather grip get stitched onto the mace handle by yours truly.

Stitching Video

This grip is quite different than the first one. The top and bottom edges were folded over to provide a ridge. Nothing fancy, fold over a 1/4 inch or so, apply glue, clamp, and wait for it to dry. I also added horizontal “tooling”. Tooling is a stretch considering it was done with a straight edge and the flat bit of a 90 degree screw driver. The leather is dyed with a dark brown but not treated for resilience. I want wear to quickly show through giving an artificially aged look.

Now that both maces are adorned with leather, I must allow them to venture into the world. Perhaps if I quit experimenting, I can finish my documentation on the howto document explaining all the key steps in building a medieval mace.