Helmet Almost Done!!

Well I really should try to keep this more up to date. I have worked on this helmet a couple times in the last few weeks and have everything roughly fitting now. I need to have Robert over to do a final fit and then rivet the cheek and face pieces on. Maybe one more session and at most two too finish!!

P.S. Don’t mind the workbench clutter. I was cleaning out a couple cupboards and it's usually not this bad.

Helmet update

I worked on Robert’s helmet again tonight. I had miscounted the number of rivets needed to finish the top. Instead of 15 it was actually 24. I am down to 12 left and I did a little shaping on the other parts for the helmet.

Robert's Helmet update

Well I did some more work on Roberts helmet last night. I closed two rivets and then started shaping pieces. All the parts for the top of the helmet are now shaped and either riveted together or bolted waiting to be riveted. 15 bolts will have to be replaced with rivets to finish off the top but I will wait until Robert can attend again before doing those.

Since the top is shaped I decided to continue breaking my rules and started shaping the pieces to attach the back slats and also first cheek plate. I would like to shape and fit the pieces ahead of time so we can concentrate on riveting for our next get together. This way it may be only 2-3 sessions before the helmet is finished.

Worked on Armor

Robert (my household member) stopped by last night at 7pm and we worked on armor and other projects until a bit after 11pm. Much was accomplished and we are talking about getting together weekly again.

It had been long enough since he last dropped in that we needed to review the state of our various projects. We started with Robert’s kit and had him put it on and check everything for fit and completeness. He has an arming cap, gorget, gambeson, athletic supporter, steel legs, aluminum gauntlets, heater shield and sword with cross hilt. He is still borrowing my helmet, steel arms and Balian’s spare breast plate. In addition his sword will need a thrusting tip since that is part of the authorization now.

For projects in process, his new helmet is about 20% finished and his butted chain hauberk about 60%. After our review we indentified that he needed several additional items and made a project list. We will probably stick to one project each and finish up one before we go on the next item. This will work best since we have not been getting together as often and I would rather finish one thing at a time instead of having all of them partially done. In addition the agreement has been that I would work on his helm and other items but only when he was present and that if he came by more often the stuff would get done quicker.

Project List in rough order, new helmet, chain hauberk, sword tip(we may actually do this next week), blue or brown helmet, arm harness, body armor so hauberk can be used, axe, great sword & polearm. So after the review we started working.

Robert split his chain hauberk down the front and began adding in extra rows. The mail was too small to be worn over his gambeson and needed to be expanded. When he made it, he fitted it while wearing a tee shirt. He split the mail, added several rows and ended up running out of chain links. So then he started helping me work on the helmet. He says he will come back next week with enough links to finish off the front and will probably add longer sleeves but will do that on his own now that he knows how to make his own links and expand/contract the mail. He had essentially made a chain poncho and didn’t know how to make the chain grow or contract for necks and arms etc. He spent the last couple sessions making the rounded neck. He ended the night with the chain hauberk about 80% done.

I took the helmet and began riveting in the pieces for the top. Previously I had shaped all but 4 of the top pieces and had held them together with nuts and bolts. By 11pm I had 24 rivets to go on the upper portion of the helmet. 12 are for the top pieces I haven’t shaped yet. For a couple of the last rivets I had to have Robert hold the helmet so I could use a tool with the hammer to be able to reach into the helm. I may cheat a little and shape more pieces before we get together again but will wait for Robert before I rivet anymore parts together. Considering the remaining shaping and the enormous number of rivets needed, I would guess the helmet is now 40% done. If I work on some shaping this week, I may be able to get it closer to 50% before we next meet.

Friday Night at Skalla's Steading

Robert did stop by on Friday but he was later than normal and we did not get as much accomplished as I had hoped.

He was able to finish his Chainmail Hauberk. At the same time, I put a bit more work in his helmet and the main supports are now all in and we have started on some of the X’s and Y’s for the helmet. I hope to finish the top section and be working on the sides after one or perhaps two more sessions.
Before breaking up for the night we decided to take stock in what he had and what he still needed.

Completed so far: Legs, gambeson, arming cap, sword, heater shield, chain hauberk.

Still borrowing: Helmet, Churburg style Breastplate

Still working on: His own helmet, Arms ( He has vambraces but needs elbow cops), Gorget ( We discovered he needs to re-make his gorget, it’s too small to fit his new gambeson) He would also like to switch to round shield from the heater he is currently using. After those are done we will consider what to do to replace the Churburg Style Breastplate

So our schedule is: Gorget first, elbows second, helmet third. I hope to have the Gorget and elbows done in three weeks. If I keep working on the helmet it should be close to being done by then.

Working on Helmet

Measure twice and cut once was something my dad repeatedly reminded me when I was young. I should have remembered. I finished bending all the pieces for Roberts helmet and was in such a rush to make more progress that I installed one of the bands on upside down. I figured it out pretty quickly when the next piece failed to fit. Since I had pre-fitted everything I had an immediate sinking feeling that I had done something wrong. So the rest of my work time tonight was used up cutting off the rivets for the part.
Now that I have the piece off I will put it back on the next time I work on this (correctly since I wrote “this way up” in Black Marker on the inside) …..probably on Friday as Robert tends to drop in then.

Working on Robert's armor

Robert stopped by on Friday and we worked on his kit. He lacks elbows (he’s been borrowing mine) and he needs his own helmet (also borrowing mine). One of the helmet kits will be his as long as he does enough work on it. Friday he repaired his chainmail and we both worked on his vambraces and helmet kit. The chain is repaired and the vambraces are done. Next Friday we will cut out elbow cops and shape them. If we get far enough we can add the elbows but I expect it to be the week after.
I think he needs two more fighting practices with a couple different people to be ready to authorize as a fighter. After the elbows are done it will be time to take our show out on the road and make sure to attend a couple practices. Hopefully this will be accomplished in April and he can get authorized at the next event we can attend.
I will have to remember to take pictures of the progress. I always forget.

Second Helmet

Well I liked the first one so much, I decided to get a second kit and make a Helmet for Daryll. It arrived yesterday and I hope to put some work into it tonight.

New Helmet

I have started a new project. I picked up a helmet kit from Zweihammer Armory for a Valsgarde 6 helmet. I will start working on putting this together for Robert. If this works well I may get one for myself.

Getting Robert in Armor

Robert has been dropping in irregularly this summer and we have been working on getting him armored up. He now has all the armor necessary to practice in!!!! He may need to upgrade his body armor a little and we will lengthen his aventail to make the barrel helm he is wearing legal. Or I should say its “legal” now but I am not happy with the possibility of the current aventail moving up and exposing some of the back of his neck. So our next armory sessions will be to correct that.

To celebrate his armor being ready, we went out into my front yard and had an impromptu practice. We started about ½ speed and I had Robert hit me to get a good idea of how hard he should be hitting. Next I struck him and we worked on what was a good blow for him to receive. Next some basics about sword swings and blocking with the shield. Since he wanted to mix it up a bit more we spent the last ½ of the practice sparing. Robert did quite well but will have to work on thrusting if he is to prepare for his authorization bout.

We discussed the possibility of running a fighting practice each week until he was ready to authorize. So I think we will meet each Tuesday or Thursday to practice until dusk. After that we will work on armor or weapons. I will send a couple e-mails to check if there will be authorizations at the next few upcoming events. These events will be Havoc at Hastings, Procrastinators Brawl and Vikings Come Home and I hope to get Robert to one to authorize.

Working on Armor

Robert stopped by last night (with his armor) and basically said “hey lets work on armor”!!!

So I dropped my homework (I will just have to stay up later to work on it) and we picked up the shop a little to set things up to work on his armor. He would like to get authorized as soon as possible so we are bringing his armor up to snuff (all his equipment is older and could use some TLC). His gorget was too large so we cut down the front and re-hammered the shape so it would fit better. After that was done we glued padding onto the inside of the gorget. We looked over the rest of the armor and decided to strap the legs slightly better and add a row or two to the aventail of the helmet.

He is going to stop by again on Friday and we should be able to get in a little fighting and then finish off the leg straps. I don’t think I will have the aventail lengthened by then but I will get a start on it over the weekend.

Aventail

I am about 2 days behind schedule but I did manage to finish the aventail Sunday. Now I need to attach it to the helmet. Robert should be dropping it off tomorrow, so hopefully by Thursday-Friday it should be done.

Well it’s been a pretty slow week. I should be finishing the Mail aventail today or Friday and will attach it to the loaner helm this weekend. This should make the Helm SCA legal and let me get Robert authorized for heavy weapons.

I liked the Banner and Pennons so much that now I think it’s time to get a Standard. Someone on the Armor Archive makes beautiful Standards and I think I will give them a try. I still need to design the Standard and will work on that this weekend.

Since I seem to be planning out my weekend I might as well look at further out to fill up more weekends. Looking at upcoming events my short list will be:
Havoc in Hastings (Hastings, MI August 30-31 )
Rain of Arrows (New Lothrup, MI Sept. 13 )
Vikings Come Home (Kalkaska, MI Sept 19-21)
If possible I would also like to attend: (not sure if work will co-operate)
Harvest Days & Chivalry Tourney (Camden, OH Sept 5-7 )

This makes for a pretty busy September. I may have to skip at least one of these events between real life and work. I am duty bound to Pentamere and feel I should give preference to events in Michigan so if anything has to slip it will be the Chivalry Tourney.

Missing Pennsic and Chainmail

Erevon dropped by Sunday night and we had an impromptu Pennsic pity party. We both worked on our chainmail projects and generally bemoaned the fact we would not be attending Pennsic. He is not going this year due to a couple family matters and I am not going as this is my off year. My wife hates the camping and we have come to an agreement that we would attend every other year. So my August yearly vacation consists of alternating between Pennsic and somewhere my wife would like to go.

The chainmail project I have started working on is a butted chainmail aventail. Robert (my nephew) has been working with me to get authorized as a Heavy Weapons fighter. He is using several pieces of my old armor. My old barrel helm allows too much exposure to his neck so I am putting together an Aventail. I hope to have it finished this week and attach it to the helm so we can get in a more serious practice. I will get some pictures up when his loaner kit is finished.

I put to together a gorget first and that helped but there is too much gapping when he tips his head forward or back for the helm and gorget to pass an inspection. I believe a nice aventail will take care of this problem and look better than anything we could do to the helm or gorget to get it to pass. I haven’t done chain mail since the early Nineties and it brings back some memories of when the Shire of Stormvale produced a hauberk as a gift for the King nearly twenty years ago .

Skalla's Fighting Goals

Since it will be a couple weeks before I can fight again, while my helmet being repaired, I thought this was a good time to go over the rest of my equipment and make a to do list. So Friday night I took stock and created a “Fighting” goals & projects list. I had more ideas than just fighting and I think I will create similar lists for A&S and other activities. I will review it every couple weeks to check my progress and add new items.

So as presently conceived the list looks like this for fighting and is not prioritized yet:

Skalla’s Fighting Goals and Projects 11-2-2007
1. Fix hinge on Helmet (IN PROGRESS approx. 2-3 weeks to complete)
2. Become Heavy Marshal
3. Become Youth Marshal (IN PROGRESS started at War need 2 more signatures and take the test)
4. Youth Equipment for Alex (my 13 year old son) (IN PROGRESS, have most equipment, need to make tabard to hide modern equipment and get him authorized)
5. Make Great Sword
6. Create exercise plan & Schedule of Pell work
7. Replace Knee/Elbow Pads & Cup
8. Help my Household members Daryl and Robert to construct armor and authorize (this may end up being its own list)
9. Create schedule of fighting practices to attend like Roaring Waste, Cynnabar etc.
10. Polish leg armor
11. Clean up loaner armor
12. Make loaner arm armor
13. Make loaner swords/shields
14. Attach gloves to new Gauntlets, Clean up and use old for loaner
15. Shorten my Brigantine armor by approx. 6 inches
16. Tabard or Surcoat with Coat of Arms and Mantle for Basinet
17. Put together Marshalling kit, Helm, Staff, Tabard etc.
18. Get Combat Archery bow and authorize
19. Look into Siege Engine what it would take to build and authorize

Events to attend!!

Looking forward at the next couple months, I thought I would put together a tentative list of events to attend.

Perhaps I can get household members and Shire friends to attend some of these events with me. Let me know if you are interested in sharing a ride!!!

Tentative Events for the next couple months:
Nov. 10th Fall Harvest Festival
Nov. 17th Toys for Tots
Dec. 1st Christmas Tourney
Jan 5th 12th Night or 12th Fight
Jan 12th Grand Tourney
Feb 9th Val Day

These are my preferences for events to attend. Let me know if you’re interested in going or let me know which events you would rather attend.

Sunday Fighting Practice

Well War was a blast but I was sorely out of shape for the event. I don’t propose to be in the same condition next year!! I have started to exercise again and will be hosting a fighting practice Sundays from 2pm till 5pm. Once a month this will conflict with the local shires Revel and I hope to take the fighting practice to the Revel site if at all possible. I would like to start the practice right away but need to finish a couple extra shields and weapons so I will be kicking this off on August 26th. I will also start looking around for an indoor site for the winter. If a site cannot be found then I think I will switch between Roaring Waste and Cinnabar this winter. They both currently have Sunday fighting practices.

I would like to have a little more organization to this than we have used in the past. Instead of just strapping on armor and going at it, I would like to have a training schedule covering a different weapon each week. Also include melee tactics, shield walls and work together as a small unit. Stormvale has an Artisan Guild which meets weekly and has a guest lecturer covering some craft. I wouldn’t mind having a similar situation for the training sessions. People can volunteer to cover some aspect of fighting and as we grow we may even get guests from outside the group. I envision us all taking turns at some point in the training.

After the lesson portion was over it would be nice to practice the topic and try to refine some of the moves. We could break out groups or run some small melee’s as further practice. This would also allow someone who did not have their armor yet to work through and learn some of the basics. Then we will have our open practice as we have always run them. I would like to see the practices turn into 60 minutes of training and 120 minutes of fighting. This would fluctuate as the mix of attendees changed. If we have a lot of newer people we may train more and if everyone is pretty experienced then we may train less.

I would love to have Fencers show up as well but would need someone else to take charge of that portion of the operation. It will take enough time setting up the heavy weapons that I would rather not be responsible for Fencing. The best solution would be to have a fencing marshal who would like to take over that aspect of the training.

If not enough other people have complete sets of armor it may be necessary to use the first couple sessions to help people work on armor so we can field people to train and fight with. I have enough gear to equip myself and 1 and ¾ fighters. I need to make a set of arms and a couple swords and shields to be able to equip 2 other people at the same time. That will be my next priority and I hope to have it finished before the practice starts on August 26th. I have already committed this armor so it will only be available for loaner armor if they should fail to attend the practice. I need to make or scrounge at least one more set so I can guarantee to have loaner equipment.

Skalla

Pennsic 2007 Report

I attended Pennsic for the first time in a couple years!!! While it was fun and I enjoyed War, this was the worst year weather wise than any Pennsic that I remember. I arrived about 3pm on Sunday the 5th and left at 11:30pm on Friday the 10th. It rained for at least 20 minutes each day I was at War. It was so humid that even when it wasn’t raining if often felt like it was. I did not have a problem with water in my tent, many others in the Stormvale camp did have problems including several inches of water in some of the tents. Next year we will have to trench next to the road to prevent the water running down the road and dumping on that side of our camp.
I fought in a couple of the battles and had a blast!! The resurrection battles really wore me out. When fighting in the resurrection battles I needed the next day to help recuperate. My goal is to be able to fight in all the battles next year. I liked the fact that the battles for heavy weapons all started in the morning and avoided the worst heat of the day.

Sunday's Revel

Sunday’s Revel was fun. Teryll had a houseful and the food was great as usual. Some people worked on finishing off Artisan Guild projects in Teryll’s workshop while others gamed or fought in her yard.

The fighting consisted of Toroshi our GMIT, Ervon, Balian and myself. I thought it was a good practice but I felt slow, or at least slower than normal. It was a little frustrating as I saw what I thought were openings but was not fast enough to be able to take advantage of them. I will need to spend some time working on the fundamentals and pell work to get my speed back up to something reasonable. I did manage to break two swords. One was the hilt of my siloflex sword. I think I carve the handle too small and it is prone to breaking and upon borrowing one of Balian’s swords promptly ripped the thrusting tip off.

We had to cut the fighting off a little early in order to eat and as I said before the food was great. I had made a couple cheese tarts (with no eggs for Teryll ) and during the revel I realized it was the first cheese tart I had made, in 25 years. I will have to get slightly more adventurous in making dishes to pass.

We had our normal meeting after everyone was finished eating. Several topics got discussed but I will defer to Teryll’s minutes for the meeting rather than my memory as I did not take notes. I did ask Gerard to call Balian forth just before the meeting broke off. I made a gift to Balian and his Lady Melisande of two banner poles that I had painted in their Livery colors. It was a gift from my household to his. I thought it would be a nice token of appreciation for the years of service to the local group.
On a side note, My daughter was tickled that she could teach Japanese Chess. She has made my drop her Viking name in favor of a Japanese one. So we will have to retire Kelsey Geirmundrsdottir. She also wants to have some Kimonos made for her. I fear that she has gone over to the dark side. What's a father to do?

A new SCA Household!!

After 25 years in the SCA I have decided to start a household!! Or more precisely not just the close personal household that I have had for years but instead a larger house with an SCA purpose. I have at one time or another tried to interest several friends on some kind of Tourney Company based on medieval examples. This has never quite caught fire for one reason or another. It was awkward trying to determine what direction to go in for a group of equals. With no one in charge there was no real direction. So it’s time to step up and provide some direction if I want to see this actually come to pass.
So now I only have to come up with:
Name
Charter (rules and purpose)
Members
Schedule of House activities
Ceremonies/Duties
Accessories like Banners, Tabards, Badge etc.
Stay tuned for further developments!!