What am I missing?

Ya gets what ya paid for..... I for one am never stinting on harness again - to do so is to practise false economy if in the end it must be replaced.

True, but until I can afford tempered armour, I will be replacing pieces. I already know the answer, but how many times have you fallen off a horse in full plate? Take someone like Glen K who does it all the time. Every time you get hit or come off the horse, things get scratched, dented etc... Now supposing you did this like him, (Glen) how many seasons would any harness last? I "fool around" with jousting, never have broken a lance with someone, only quintain or sword-work on horseback, but I come off at least once a season. Now lets assume:
1) We are talking about your period - War of the Roses
2) You have Jeff H.'s finest armour untempered (if it is tempered this is irrelevant, and I chose him so he can respond with authority, rather than conjecture on someone else's skill levels)
3) You are going to engage in live steel combat, on the ground and on horseback
Now, examples:
Merlin freaked on my new high polished IA Italian breast/back/faulds & tassets the first time I got on him after polishing it. He took off in a gallop & tossed me head-first into a telephone pole. The damage: (none to me-I was wearing armour!) 2 deep scratches in the bascinet skull from the fence nails in the pole. Right shoulder pauldron flattened. Bicept smashed in. Faulds (from impact-pressing) bent out like venetian blinds. Left greave caught saddle (from me clutching on for dear life when I saw what he was up to!) and peeled out like a banana. Multiple strap/rivet blow-outs. All of this was 16 guage cold rolled mild steel SCA-type munitions armour. Granted, those form-fitted greaves would not have caught on the saddle, but what about the rest of the damage? How would better made or higher quality armour survived the same situation? Comments, anyone?
The other example is failure of helms from multiple mace and axe strikes, "metal fatigue". In both situations, having someone to beat out metal, and heat it to stop the fatigue would be more valuable than the armour itself.
Now if you are talking about a reenactment of more of a show/display, where you are not going to tear anything up, you are correct. And I have thought about ditching the whole collection, (currently 4 complete harnesses, 13th, 14th 15th & 16th C., worth maybe 7 - 8 grand) and getting 1 Italian harness 1450-1500 with all the pieces of exchange including 2 helms, all in tempered steel. I'm guessing all four harnesses would probably make the down payment!

This is my last reply on this thread as I do not wish to detract from Pieters Question (if someone can answer it).

Armour is, and was designed to be an expendable (eventually) object. It is designed to defend the wearer in mortal combat - not to be indestructable.

Any armour - to include carbon steel tempered armour - can be dented and smashed - it just takes more effort to do so. A lighter guage hardened piece will behave as a thicker guage mild piece - which is the primary advantage gained by having a tempered suit - it can be as thin as a real one.

What I do is to present as authentic an appearance of an armoured man at arms/knight as I can to an audience. My stuff is seen close up, and to have a lesser quality reproduction would be to perpetrate a fraud on the audience. The combat we participate in for the audience is a carefully staged demonstration illustrating various sequences from Fiori or Talhoffer, and the gear as a result is less likely to recieve severe damage. Re-enactment combat is also a little less strenous on gear than SCA or Jousting combat. Obviously I can and will fall of my horse in harness.

Regardless of this, I feel better about my appearance doing what I am doing if I have an authentic harness in every degree possible. Armour can be (and has been through the ages) repaired, and I think it makes a more authentic appearance to have a field harness that is to the highest degree of authenticity, that looks like it has been lovingly maintainted, used, and even repaired , than to have a number of components of lesser authenticity in pristine condition. If repair is impossible, then replace I must - with a piece again of the highest authenticity I can obtain.

I feel strongly enough about it that I am in process of replacing my entire torso & arm harness at this moment with more authentic armour.

I respectfully submit that you, as a Moderator, move Bascot's post and your reply to its own thread, calling it something like "The maintenance and / or expendability of equipment". In that way Pieter's thread could go on without interuption and others may comment as they see fit.

You don’t want much, do you??

This is a topic you could write a book on, seriously.

I believe there are several considerations when determining how different types of armour may have been combined. The ultimate answer to your question is, of course -- we don’t know. We have no real way of knowing how armours were composited in the 15th C, and we certainly don’t know how well currently displayed armours portray composites of the 15th C. We can only speculate. Given what we know of museum curators, bequest stipulations, poor Victorian scholarship, etc. it’s best to study individual PIECES of armours on display, not harnesses as a whole, unless documented as homogenous. And we all know just how FEW homogenous armours there really are from the late 1400’s......don’t we......

I believe that wealthy combatants were more likely to have had an armour made specifically for them all at once. Also, as pieces wore out, I feel it is likely that the same people may have purchased replacements from different workshops, but functionality and compatibility with remaining harness was always considered. I don’t think German and Italian elements were combined regularly, for various reasons.

My speculation is that Germans and Italians had divergent philosphies, in armour, in combat, and in life, which may have rendered the two armour styles incompatible functionally. Also, the greater portion of Italian and German armour manufacturing prominence doesn’t seem to have occurred at the same time. Italians appear to have been prominent earlier, beginning as early as 1350, where the Germans really came into their own perhaps as late as the 1470’s and shone brightly well into the 1600’s. This unfortunately limits the period of overlap to about 1450-1480. If this is the concise period we are discussing, then within that, it’s often difficult or impossible to tell the difference between German, Flemish, Italian and “export” armour. Opportunities for German and Italian armor elements to be combined would seem to be limited by chronology as well as geography.

Another primary factor to consider is simply how armor was configured; Italian arm harnesses and pauldrons are configured rather differently from German ones, as are cuirasses (though this difference shouldn’t lead them to be incompatible with other armour pieces). German arm harnesses are often made using “floating” couters leathered (or pointed) to vambrace below and a pauldron with integral upper cannon above, the entire arm harness composing an ‘armoured sleeve’ from shoulder to wrist. Italians seem to have preferred rivet articulated elbow joints connected to full upper and lower cannons. The pauldrons were a separate unit and overlapped the arm harness’ upper cannon. Italian pauldrons are most often much larger and encompassing than German. Flemish armours shared some German characteristics, but also adopted many Italian aspects, especially considering that many “flemish” armours are that in location of manufacture only. They were very often made by Italians working in Flanders, hence the adoption of the particular stylistic details favored by their clients.

On cuirasses, Germans seem to have preferred them with shorter faulds and culets without tassets. The upper portion of their cuisses served most of the function of tassets, while Italians favored deeper faulds often with tassets. This difference of configuration would likely effect compatibility of cuirasses with leg armour. One likely wouldn’t use a deep fauld cuirass with very high cuisses. Conversely, it would seem unwise to wear a short fauld German style cuirass with lower Italian cuisses. But perhaps a mail skirt could bridge the obvious gap here, where the deep fauld and high cuisses could bind on each other hindering mounting your horse or bending over.

Sorry to go on so long. As I said, you could write a book.

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Cheers,

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VERITAS IN INTIMO
VIRES IN LACERTU
SIMPLICITAS IN EXPRESSO