Quinn, there are a number of English and Flemish effigies that show the dual strap on the plackart. Fitzherbert for example in Norbury church. I could have sworn Beauchamp's did as well but I looked it up this morning and it doesn't (but maybe I have it mixed up and there is an example in the Beauchamp chronicles of said strapping). Having said that I don't know that I can show an example prior to 1470 though........ and I love my great basinet! tr

Here's an updated photograph of my kit. I've made several improvements since I posted many, many pages ago. Obviously I have a long way to go, but it's the journey that's important not the destination. ;) I'll post some photos of kit in action once the weather cooperates in Minnesota. Standing on an armour rack in the basement is not where a kit wants to be. :)

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No at the moment but I can tell you why we do it ( its our plackard shown ). So it will stay put. A plackard with faulds and tassets weight a fair bit more than one without, and a simple waist belt was insufficient to keep it in place. Way back when we designed it closer to ten years ago than not I found several period artistic reference to it. Cross strapping was common on stand alone breast plates, is it really that odd to concieve of a plackard with faulds and tassets using the same system?

Something just dawned on me, it may perhaps have been thought by some that Thom's set up is something its not. It is not a two piece breast plate but a seperate plackard, and a seperate breast plate, thus rather than a single center buckle on the plackard and a belt at the neck line of the top half of the breast plate there is the cross straps of the plackard as it is strapped for wear as a stand alone piece of armour and is strapped over a breast plate. This may have led to some confusion on my part as well as I think I initial misundertood what Quin and Josh were asking, and i'm not sure they knew what they were looking at in Thom's pic, so ignor my previous post its deals with the strapping of the plackard as a stand alone piece of gear.

While a bit off the subject of this thread, I was just struck by how much something simple, like a period haircut makes such a huge difference in the appearence of the kit. In a post on the previous page, one fellow in soft kit has his hair cut short which stricks me as being fairly authentic and practical at a time when, er, lice and such were common and carriers of such diseases as Typhus, etc. At any rate, something that mundane just makes everything look better.

I'm sorry, what I meant was that the strapping of the plackard was unfamiliar to me, where the straps come from the top of the plackard and go over either side of the neck to form a "v" shape. The examples I have seen are usually just a single strap, like on this Milanese example here:
http://www.wassonartistry.com/images/armor/milanese/dscf2944.jpg
But perhaps, like Allan mentioned, I am confusing the two-piece breastplate with the single breastplate plus a plackard.

This is my 100 Years War kit. The armor is from Steel Mastery.

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18th century

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Commanding the Army of Canada, 2010

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With my daughter, Bea

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That last is on day four of an eight day trek in the Adirondacks. No dry cleaning, and it's interesting to know how dirty we are--and how little the camera shows of it. Make the kit right....

Some pictures taken from my kit of a performance during the Rotterdam museumnight. Though part of the kit is borrowed.





Don't take notice of the tierap on the left shoulder. One of the points broke.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask or joke about this by any means, but did you try jousting?

Indeed, you are not the first, nor will you be the last ;-). And no, I haven't tried jousting on them. They were rentals.

To bad I missed that.. Never knew that the Museumnight was such a happening in Rotterdam!

Great pics! Next time on a segway though, you should try jousting. And attaching spikes to the wheels!