2004-10-18 - 10:40 a.m.

Well, I finally made it back into the shop Friday night to do more than just keep my armor from falling apart. Finally finished the second basket hilt so I'm back to a mostly matched set. OK, so I'm picky and there are variations between the two, but you'd have to look real close....

Then Sat and Sun were spent working on the Arm Harness that is taking me forever.... I had to reshape the outside near the elbow area since I better know how they were in period over what my pattern had. I also had to reshape the closing plates to fit in properly and run the roll on the elbow-side of the closing plates. The left closing plate required some significant reshaping, as I'd apparently gotten it nowhere close when I was down at Eldreds way back before Pennsic. Much to my irritation, I cracked the roll on both arms on the outer canons near the elbow. I'd stretched things too thin and didn't think to hold work the roll until after the cracks formed. Had to weld over them, which will annoy me as the weld material is different than the spring steel of the rest so will blue differently....Sigh.

I also got most of the way on the hinges done. Just need to do clean up and add the pins, and then they'll be ready for mounting. But first, I'm going to need to sand the bejeebers out of the arms up to 400 grit. I also need to finish cleaning up the elbow cops, since I felt they needed to be deeper and was hot raising them more, undoing a bunch of planishing I'd already done on them. wee.... My sweetie finished her part of the new gambeson. I just need to open up the button holes and add the shoulder points to try it out this evening at practice. Being sent off to Montreal for a week and a half is going to totally mess things up. Besides messing up my Crown prep, it is making it real tight to get the new arms done in time to actually try them before Crown. I so don't want to be using new equipment for the first time there, nor do I want to risk injury to myself by practicing late in the week. Gerbils on the wheel go round and round.....

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