How Medieval Armour is Forged!

get a 60-day free trial from today's sponsor at shipstation.com forward slash Forge welcome back to the workshop we are joined with Matt and his team from Lancaster Armory it's me Malik so what is it that Lancaster Armory does so Lancaster Armory uh for the last uh 40 years has been making armor for reenactors in addition to armor we do swords weapons pole arms Macy's anything really that belongs to the bespoke metal work but focusing on medieval metal work and this is all your work this is all the work and the team's work yep and this is utterly unbelievable what do we have on the table thank you uh so this is a breastplate and this is in the German style called a cast and brust which means box breast very different to the earlier one or similar time period the fashion comes and starts to change it but it's very much globular and we see the flutes not only do they add decoration but they add the rigidity to the peace and deflection and a lot of plate armor development it was really to allow deflection that's the best way to transfer the energy and keep you out of danger this is absolutely gorgeous and so the plan today is for us to hammer out a breastplate in this Workshop so this component on that finished blackened piece yeah this is one that's kind of in progress that you'd want to show us it goes right here what material are we going to use in it how on Earth do we get started yes uh so this is going to make us a 1385 14th century star breastplate and we're going to start with a three millimeter mild steel sheet and we're going to draw out the edges open on the power hammer so we want to keep thickness in the center here and then the sides it can start to thin out maybe to one half or one mil even awesome well let's get to it we'll get the forge going and start tapering the edges of some steel so you you guys are sketch this out and so how do we cut this out what's the way so historically we'd use a nice big Shear yeah you could even use chisels to cold cut but I think for today we probably just use an angle grinder right all right let's get this thing cut yeah [Music] foreign all right I've got this cut out Dan is also going to be helping us you're going to be running the power hammer getting the edges tapered is this about as close as you need it yes so what we're going to do is we're going to keep the original thickness here you want it thicker on the side where you're gonna be stripped from the most which is your left side you know for people who are right-handed that's wild so what we're going to do now we're going to get the edges hot and we're going to draw these out to about one mil 1.2 sweet [Applause] I'm so happy you actually like those tongs it's the first time they've actually been used well I'm gonna have a crack [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right how do you like to look at that I think this is going to be perfect for what we need so now what we're going to do is we have to Dish it and so this is fortunately a tool that I made like two years ago and it looks like crap but it's actually going to be useful you think that is going to be perfect for what we need so we're going to start off from the outer edge and slowly work our way inwards so why the Hammers that you're going to be using to dome this so for the dishing technique where we're going to be stretching the metal working on the inside pushing it downwards we're going to be using what I'd refer to as a domain Hammer so we've got just a nice large head it's quite a good heavy weight and it's just nicely rounded off a lot of arboring hammers you want to keep a soft Edge to it because we don't want to scar the metal work because we're working with sheet metal because it's just going to start to make it fracture tear or split later on it's got a nice smooth edges on it even our anvils you'll be probably shocked to have them if you had it because all the corners have just dolled off you know you can't do any of your traditional smithing techniques on a lot of it everything gets a radius on it pretty much in our Workshop quick introduction to thank today's sponsor which is ship station it's web-based software designed to make you exceptionally efficient at processing fulfilling and shipping your orders so that you can help your customers and you can save money no matter where you sell your products whether Amazon eBay Etsy Squarespace shipstation will integrate with your online store and sync all your orders into your main dashboard from which you can create powerful automations to turn shipping into an effortless one-click operation but you also have the ability to customize the exact shipping option for the particular product and speaking of which when you're a shipstation member you get access to the type of shipping rates that usually only Fortune 500 companies can get I'm talking up to 84 off of USPS or UPS rates and you'll never have to waste time on a trip to the post office again because you can schedule a USPS pickup from inside your shipstation account no matter how your business scales they've got Enterprise solutions to scale with you and it's so good that 98 of companies that stick ship station for a year stick with them for life so please go and try it out it takes barely any time to get set up and you'll get a 60-day free trial when you go to shipstation.com forge the link is down below we've been using ship station for years and we love it and I'm sure that you will too let's get back to the video all right I'll warm it up yeah it's moment so you don't even need to heat these edges they're so thin you can just go for it yeah that's the good thing about sheet metal work is you can do a lot of it quite cold uh it's only this Center thickness that you can feel well we're going to really need the heat yeah definitely so you guys have got the outside edges bent up what is happening now right so now it's got a bit of a curve to it which makes it a bit easier to set onto a Ball State we're going to do what we call raising a really fundamental technique of Armory and it works best when the metal is nice and hot and essentially we have to offset the metal at a slight angle on the ball State and in the area it's not being supported by the ball a hammer with an oblong face is going to strike they're going to use the pin yeah yeah so it needs to have again very soft curved off the edges so we don't leave any scarring and we're going to strike on the offset because we're pushing it down at an angle so if your Metal's on here yeah you're not hitting over top of where it's contacting on the bottom no you're always offset yeah where it's contacted in the aim of pushing the metal down to almost touch that if it's done correctly we actually thicken the piece so we actually gain height uh without losing thickness of the parent metal whereas dishing we were going to gain height on the piece but by stretching the metal guard and so you can only do that so far to gain a certain height so if you need to do a very tall object raising is the answer got it oh wow so you're like two or three inches off of the bowl that's cool [Music] that's so cool you can see the form of the ball and exactly where he's hitting off of the ball so are you just gonna progressively widen out the Bulge that you're making around the form yeah we have to do it in steps uh which we call passes yeah and it will take several passes to get the completed shape we want because you can't jump the steel too quickly down so you're going to go around it and then make it a little wider then wider than a little wider exactly so but in if you're getting wider it's actually getting deeper as we do our raising pass we can continue to hit here and then I can skip to the side of it hitting there leaving a middle section untouched so when we have that raised area once this is cooled off a little bit we can put all the heat into that then tap that down and it will upset and thicken into there that is so cool allowing us to control thickness quite accurately and so that's exactly what you're doing now you're hitting that triangle eh yeah just that spot just get it posted a bit of a wrinkle development there with a bit of a Twist so we're going to now get that bit hot hammer it out a lot of armoring does become about controlling warpage and wrinkles because sheets just doesn't support itself maybe like firework does yeah so yeah battling warps is a constant thing [Music] so we're starting to get our depth that we'd want for the best play and then a bit deeper going around again and then we'd like step back like an inch and then just go in again there we go so then maybe we put a bit more heat onto it now yeah so we just get this bulge here a little bit hot and then we do that again [Music] this thing's really starting to look like a bit of armor it is yeah once it starts to go it really starts to go so here's where we're at this thing has been wrapped in with the shape you can see the profile of it is really starting to approximate the final thing so what is the next step all right so once this is cooled down we're going to start looking at measuring it up it needs some of the edges to cut back a bit so it's going to fit yourself and at that stage we can give look at giving it a planish so I think what we'll do then is put you in soft kit and get them dressed up and I can actually do the actual measurements I want and I can trim this so you're saying I need to dress up properly you do we need to get you in a arming tablet and some mail get dressed for battle thank you for supplying us with this kit for this video oh yes that is so cool I must say Alec you actually look quite ridiculous you look wait I look ridiculous hang on a second very stylish get up today Jamie all right let's get measured up [Music] so with the measurements from me you can now make this the final size yeah I'm putting back in the center line and then trying to decide basically where I'm going to trim away from so obviously I'm going to cut it down here that'll get rid of some of this wrinkling and then give me a clean Edge to roll back so while this is getting cut there's a piece that you want me to make yeah that's right we've got the stock rib which goes onto the front of the breastplate and that helps stop anything glancing up towards the fruit and so this is I mean how thick should that be off the surface 10 mil it's probably pretty close to about 10 mil yeah okay [Music] yeah this now is to start punishing the very rough bumps I'm just going to take out the bigger Hammer but then we will switch over to a lighter one just a bit more control sweet so all you're doing is you've got a round surface up top yep on the hammer flat on the bottom exactly that's planishing yep you're pinching it not too hard uh just to level out for the surface and getting a smooth surface from the punish makes it so much easier to file to level it and then like the sand and then get your finished polish 20 minutes spent doing good planishing save you an hour of grinding almost oh yeah if you get it right [Music] foreign [Music] Hammer here gives me a little bit more control we get a much more defined ledge or like step that we're going to start pushing down and this is where I can yeah just have a lot more control really to do minute adjustments in the steel to get it to the shape I want yeah if you ever use kind of sheet metal working machinery like car body people might use to do any of this work uh not with the handmade high-end stuff we try and do that approach it as best we can but with the budget of the customer it's doing its historically accurate as we could you missed the main Jeeps we might take are welding a helmet so a very tricky piece to make from One Piece we'd weld them down the center right there is the stock rib look at that it's coming together what is the purpose of the rolled Edge so the rolled Edge provides comfort so you're not sitting a bit of having a quite sharp edge against your throat potentially or any of the other party Parts it also stops weapons glancing up thirdly it does add a lot of rigidity and strength to a piece it really can reinforce so certainly a spring steel item which can maybe move out the wild Edge a little bit springy when you're closing on the armor but that rolled Edge goes in it you know you're trying to crush it in that way it's just not good not really going to move no [Music] thank you so in every pass you're just asking a little bit more of the metal with how much it needs to bend okay so you're not just trying to bend it but also that it bends and hits this surface yeah we want a very slight pinch on it okay it's kind of got a push down oh that is so satisfying [Music] [Music] that looks so good so now I'm going to start turning it back on itself uh hopefully your horn all right here we go the rolled Edge looks just like a bit of forged round bar that is so cool this thing looks so cool this is going to attach on there we'll need to just do ever so little bits of tweaking make up a few rivets and the next steps for this to be finished are what so we've got a tiny bit of planishing to go and we're going to finish some rolled edges together and then it's going to be going into the grinding room for a bit of a weight reduction and then it'll be polished and Alec has decided to be very fancy and go for a blue finish so that will be very fun to do oh no have I made life difficult for us with the blue to finish you've made life fun because it's my favorite thing to do I love doing it good as I've showed off earlier today well thank you all so much for coming I'm very very grateful where can people find out about the work that it is that you guys make right we are Lancaster Armory we are on just Lancaster Army dot Co dot UK and Lancaster Army on Facebook and Instagram and the plan is that we are going to go and see your Workshop to finish off this breastplate can't wait to do that thank you so much pleasure to have you there thank you Olek see you soon thank you guys for coming as well [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Alec Steele

Views: 345,585

Keywords: alec steele, alex steele, steel, alec, damascus, blacksmith, make, forge, anvil, mill, lathe, weld, tig, mig, engineering, blacksmithing, blade, bladesmithing, knife, knifemaking, sword, handmade, diy, craft, woodworking, forged in fire, axe, fabrication, art, making, how to, maker, lord of the rings, game of thrones, restoring, restoration, forging, dagger, replica, prop, grinding, bevel, bevels

Id: qcrjIrl-TqA

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023