Brigandine Facts For Patreon Thurday! (Patreon)

Hi noble ones and noble guardians. This week, for Patreon Thursday, we are talking brigangines! You are all familiar with my blue Brigandine, but I feel there is still so much more we can say and learn about this armour and from this armour. The armour was made by the Ukranian armour smith Aleksey Perebeynos. The fabric cover is made of hand spun silk velvet. It has over 2000 rivets, all hand made, in brass, as per my request. It's based on the Leeds Brigandine. One thing that some people misunderstand about this specific specimen, is that sure, it's called the Leeds Brigandine, but it's an Italian armour. Let's talk about the paltes now! We used steel plates in a range of thicknesses. The core of the brigandine, in the front, where the pectoral plates are, is the thickest section of the armour, as per historical examples. That's to provide more protection to the centre of mass. As the brigandine plates extend to the sides, bottom and back, the plates become thinner and thinner, with the sides being the thinner part. The effective difference in thickness is between 1.5mm to 0.7mm respectively. This significantly decreased the overall weight of the armour, which is then extremely light and comfortable to wear. 

Of course this was at the expense of protection, but only on the back and sides. One more interesting aspect of the plates, which you can notice if you zoom in the plates, is the fact that they have all been tinned. 

This means that liquid, hot tin was brushed onto the plates. What this achieves is rust protection. The armour needs no oil to preserve the steel from corrosion. Was this historically done in the Middle Ages? Absolutely! It was also done in ancient Rome! In fact, if you are interested in tinning and the Ancient era, leave me a comment here, and I'll make a dedicated video on the main channel about The Romans and the Secrets of Liquid Tin! 

When it comes to the shape, Aleksey did an incredible job. The brigandine tapers at my natural waist, as it should, rendering an already light armour almost insignificantly light. This is achieved with weight distribution in the centre of mass, and it's a historical design or feature. 

The choice of the colour blue is once again my personal choice. Colour prices and difficulty of production vary monumentally through the ages, but blue was widely used among the upper class in Europe, and cheap versions also existed for the populace. This rich and deep almost electric blue I'm using would have been very expensive, but it works well with the upper tier material, the velvet anyways. 

Last but not least, since one of you asked me about this, the leather straps in the front are correct. I have in the past complained about leather straps on gambesons, but this isn't a gambeson, and brigandines did use this exact configuration. It was also possible to place the straps in the back, but I wanted to be able to do it up on my own, without anyone's help. 

This was probably what the original owner of this model had in mind too. A brig with straps in the back would suggest an even richer knight or man at arms, who clearly had squires, but front strapped models were also sometimes used by the upper class, for their ease of use. 

If you have any questions on how it feels, how it handles, please let me know here in the comments! Thanks!