visit to a Sainsburys car park

[Mark Griffin]

Not exactly a great afternoon out for the family but I met up with the talented Fred Ryal to collect some vamplates and get an update on a cuirass refurb/augmentation and these are the results....

Its all jousting stuff.

Firstly some nice vamplates...

Then a venerable old cuirass made by the late Roger Brown out his fresh bits of his own making and the scrap pile of Nigel Clough. Its been subject to tons of abuse and neglect and with some unexpected tournaments coming up I need to get something fast whlist my English, Italian and Flemish harnesses are being made. Its been dissasembles, re worked, tidied up, tears and dents mended and polished to a nice patina I would describe as humble.

[Mark Griffin]

next, the insides. I like the fact that even after only a couple of decades its starting to get a lovely 'original' patina. Fred has added a reenforce to the right breast to take an arret.

[Mark Griffin]

Lastly.... a haute piece for the breastplate.

On its own the cuirass will not stand up to decent hits from a lance and being a two-piece construction you might get twisting, compression or even a failed rivet so we are adding an additional plate in 2mm steel to form a 2nd skin, making everything a bit stronger and less flexible. That's a perfectly normal period way of dealing with the problem, I've based this one on an example found in a french moat and now in Zurich museum. There are a fair few other additional beefing up plates around. It will be cut around the chalk lines to fit within the rolls of the cuirass plus having a cut-out for the arret and a slight median ridge for extra strength and a bit of aesthetic nicety.

Starting to look nice and will go very well with a nice new jousting bascinet that's on the go. More on that next....