Erik Schmidt
Senior Member
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posted 10-19-2001 10:56 PM
  
Finbar, I have an interest in both, and actually build armour myself(easier than building castles!) 
I must warn you however, be prepared for big costs when it comes to armour books.
I only know of one book on how to build armour, which sells for around US$80.00, called Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction, find it here; http://www.chivalrybookshelf.com/
As for books on armour, you're looking at US$15.00 for the basics up to US$1500.00 for the rare ones, but some of them are being reprinted now for around US$100.00 to $200.00.
Personally I only own a couple of the basic books and teach myself how to construct it, with the help of the forums on this site; http://www.armourarchive.org/
You can find out all you need to know about making chainmaille at one or two other sites; http://homepage.ntlworld.com/trevor.barker/farisles/guilds/armour/mail.htm http://www.chainmail.com/chainmall/cteach2.htm
Other than that you just need time and some handcraft ability.
Why do you want to make armour? Do you want to be very authentic? There are clubs around with fellow loonies who do that sort of thing, are you in one? I am in a metal weapons club and we try for maximum authenticity. Most of the people on the armour archive site I linked are SCA, which means they fight with sticks and mostly don't bother too much with authenticity.As for castles, this book is said to be very good;
By Sidney Toy. Castles: Their Construction and History.
Lots of basic castle books have sections on how castles were constructed, but they don't give much detail.
To really know the art you need to learn about stonemasonry. There are many books out there. Two that are good are;
Irish Stone Walls by Pat McAfee
The Art of the Stonemason by Ian Cramb Here's a masonry school working on a castle; http://www.castlepreservation.com/ Also, this site is very intersting, a french group building a castle using old methods; http://www.guedelon.com/
It's the only building project of it's kind that I know of. Any more questions, just ask, but the armour ones should go to the armour archive site forums please. Erik |
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