I would be appreciative of anyone who could aid me in understanding the role of the thick and/or thin gambesons in the era of 1090-1200. It has been difficult for me to find information on non-mail armor during this period. This is frustrating as I eventually would like to build up to a historical retinue of this era. Aquiring authentic mail is beyond my budget. What would have protected the arms and legs? Is Albion's brigandine appropriate? Many questions. . . Thanks, Jeremy

Theres not a tremendous amount avaliable as far as sources go on this but I would assume that the same sort of quilted
fabric cover would have been worn under the maille chaussetts . Maille will get driven into the flesh by the blunt trauma
force of a blow without some kind of barrier like the arming coat for the torso so one would think the same would apply
for the legs . Wheres the brigandine you mentioned on Albions site I can't find it ?

Allan (Sorry about misplelling it Allen on previous posts: i always seem to see my typos a Nanosecond after I press submit.)

There isn't a brigantine on the Albion site, I think what I think Jeremy V. Krause was reffering to is the ring mail shirt by Mercenary Taylors.
Personnally I would like it better if the pattern of rings was a little denser.

I'm assuming that they are using a historically accurate method of securing the rings to the leather backing?

If I was designing it I would use some sort of metal to attach the rings so that they could not be easily cut off: Some form of heavy wire securing the rings at every 90 degrees, maybee something like GIANT heavy gage staples.(Mail quality wire?)
I might supplement this with a crisscrossing of heavy leather weaved through or over the rings for extra blunt force impact resistance & because I like the look . (No idea if this is historically accurate.)

So my version would look a lot like the one from Mercenary Taylors with an backup method of attachement.

(Any build your own ring mail ideas out there?)

Oh alright , well in that case our ringmaille coat is based on a combination of some period illustrations and verbal descriptions . There are actually several theories about what was meant by the term ringmaille . On alot of period illustrations and alot of funery effigies what appears to be maille is shown as what looks like alternating rows of washers
( i believe this to be artistic license to portray maille ) in Stones Guide To The Decoration And Use Of Arms In All Times And All Places whats put forward is that this represents ringmaille and what your seeing is rows of thick rings overlapping in the same direction stiched to a fabric or leather backing . Another theory is that it is actual maille with leather thong
run through every other row of rings ( maille is flexible because of the open space in the rings . fill this in to much and you have a very ridged defense tha doesn't move to awful much with you so every row would have stiffened it up to much )
to stiffen the defense . Another, the one we've chosen to use is a thick leather garment with rings either sewn on or held in place by a laticework of straps . Since no actually hard examples survive ( only literary references to Ringmaille ) of any
of these theories it leaves room for artistic license as to which theory one wishes to create as "ringmaille "

Brigandine is usually refering to a garment of fabric ( the best made from velvet ) with a large number of small iron or steel plates riveted to the inside in such a way that the rivet heads are on the outside of the cloth usually to create a decorative effect . Think of it as a coat of plates made from alot of little plates instead of a few dozen larger ones . Very popular in the 15th century .

Yes, I was mistakenly called the ringmaile shirt a brigandine. It seems like you guys are saying that this would not fit into the 1100-1200 period. Is this correct? Plus going back to arm and leg protection of this period WITHOUT mail- is anyone aware of any evidence of extremity protection? Perhaps a gambeson would have sufficed for the arms. What about bracers? Are there any illustrations of leather leg protection from these earlier times? Sorry to pound the thread with questions but I must appeal to the collective vat of brain matter. Thanks

Allan,

Reading your last post I just realised that I was explaining your own product to you in my previous post ( OOPS... and suggesting "improvements". Absolutely NO disrespect intented.)

(Note to ALL the name on the Albion site is MERCENARY'S TAYLOR not mercenary taylors, my error!)

I am still curious about using metal harware to secure the rings to the leather backing as an option.

I had another look at the ring mail on the Albion site & It does look that the strapping holding the rings in place would have to be cut at four places before they would be lost in battle, I would assume that this would be repared after a fight!

To get back to Jeremy's question: Brigantine was very popular in the 15th but I don't think this means that it wasn't used in some form earlier.

I think that ring mail would be appropriate for the dark ages and the early medieval period.

Arm protection could be ring mail bracers or splinted bracers.

Leg protection might be leather strips wrapped around the lower legs or splint armour.
There seemed to be less use of arm or leg armour in the earlier centuries. ( I think the Roman used little leg armor for mobility reasons and to help keep the body cool. (Overheating seems to be a major problem when fighting in armor.)

Celts, Franks & Goths would fight naked or almost naked relying on speed & skill to survive: I guess this was in part a macho show of courage combined with the expence of armour. The leaders would be more likely to be armored.

Bottom line, as to historical accuracy I think we are often going with a best guess.
We are also influenced by decades of Hollywood costume design & 19th century ideas of what ancient warriors looked like: Remember the Horns on helmets in Viking movies that have NO historical basis!

Here's a site that appears to provide reasonably well researched answers to some of these questions:

http://users.wpi.edu/~dev_alac/iqp/indepth/historyofarmor.html

The avaliable illustrations and church sculpture from your period of interest are for the most part devoid of any coverage for the limbs beyond the odd representation of quilted material . Goliath is shown wearing greaves in The Majoweski(i can never spell that right ) Bible but this is a notable exception . That being said in written records from the period the are
references made to greaves and occasionally bracers . Splinted forms of both were in use by the Vikings and well the tendency is to localize the use of something based on where the evidence was found thats not entierly logical given the
scacety of surviving materials . One can pretty safely assume that at that period use was widespread . Ringmaille would
be accurate for the period .


Brigandine as well as other small plate armours ( lamellar, scale , jazerante an eastern european form of maille and plate
where the entire shirt is made from small plates afixed by maille ) were in use earlier in some cases much earlier than the 15th century however the sort of " quintecential " period of brigandines depiction in period art is of the 15th century
as are most surviving examples .

The strapping is pretty quick to replace if it were to get cut . Rather than having to replace the whole strap just the damaged portion would be replaced as the rest would still be secured . Theres a really good depiction of the thick rings
(almost fender washers ) sewn to leather in alternating rows ringmaille concept and the version we do in the movie
"Robin And Marion " oddly enough .

Suggestions and reports from the field are always welcome . Customer/user feedback is part of how to kepp improving ones products .

Has any one purchased mail from Armor Class? http://www.armourclass.com/Data/Pages/Chainmail-Main.htm
The prices are reasonable, and the complete product does not look bad at all! I contacted them for more info, but it is always good to hear outside opinions.

Alexi

Hi Elling (and everyone else),

I find it very interesting that your are making/sewing your gambesons yourself as I will have to do it - Unfortunately I am under 160 cm tall and therefore can't buy ready-made armour. What are you going to use for padding, now that wool has proven to hot?

Hi Jessica , I don't know what Elling used but we use cotton batting . It breathes better than poly-fiberfill so its more comfortable to wear .

For my first gambeson, I used second hand curtains. :)
The wollen one is my arming coat, wich I am planing to replace. First I need to make leg pieces, though...

There are basically two ways to make cloth armour; Stuffing, and layering.

My gambesons so far have been stuffed. Each piece (Front, back, arms) are made from two layers of cloth. You then stitch vertical channels (Or whatever one should call them) about 3 to 5 cm wide.These are in turn stuffed with any handy material. (wool is hot, though...) This method is best suited for arming coats, since it provides better padding but less protection vs piercing.
Stuffing can take a long time, unless you develop a cunning way to do it. Peronaly I use 5-10 ribbons of cloth the same lenght as the channel, stich them together at the end, and use a long stick to push the entire thing through in one go. Its a lot faster.

Stitching is less complicated, but requires A LOT of cloth. It consists of merely stitching together a large number of cloth layers. somewhere between 15 to 30 woul d be historicaly corect for a jack or gambeson intended to be armour in its own right. I have never done this myself, but it's not that complicated.

The matterials I would recomend as padding is linnen, because its historical and breathes better than synthetics.
Cotton was known, but very uncommon outside the mediteranean. But since noone is going to see what your gambeson is stuffed with anyhow, feel free to use it.
I have ten meters of a cotton fabric so ugly it was discontinued by IKEA (wich says a lot... :eek: ) wich I'm going to use for my next project.

Yours
Elling