Armoured Fist

[Jeffrey Hull]

Ahhh...what a soothing phrase.

But seriously, I was curious about just how much of a true fist one could reasonably expect to be able to make with a pair of well-fitted, finger-articulated gauntlets as per Gothic plate-armour. Could anyone give me first-hand observations?

(heh-heh, a little pun there)

I would assume better than standard clumsy-thumb boxing-gloves (which do not allow for a true fist anyway), but maybe not so well as JKD gloves. The obvious concern was that the gauntlets allow a man to grab his weaponry, but such would seem de-facto to affect the fist-making allowance of the hand as well.

I was trying to find an answer to this for a friend interested in purchase of same, who would like advice from plate-armour experienced practitioners.

Thank you,

JH

[Brian Hunt]

A good pair of gauntlets will allow you to close your fist as far as a good pair of leather work gloves.

hope this helps.

Brian Hunt.
GFS

[SzabolcsWaldmann]

I can tell you about the gloves you may obtain from our armourer in Hungary, Bánsághi Máté. Here's a Pic: http://www.sword.sg18.net/gallery/G01/images/DSCF0394.jpg
The armour is NOT made by him, and was only borrowed for that fight, for mine was still in progress.

Anyway.

It's unbelievable! It works fine, you may do almost everything in such a well-articulated gothic glove. Even the small movements of your palm are transferred to the mechanism, and whatever you do, whowever you move your hand, there is no place it does not protect.
And I tell you, the feeling, the feeling! It's like becomming a semi-god of battle! The gauntlets you see on the picture are made of 1.5 mm steel, that means, you can but defend smaller strikes of swords up to the longsword with it (I never tried to deflect a true twohander with my hands, but that would probably be out of the defending ragne... <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" /> ).
And when you hit somebody with such a glove in the face or whereever else, that would cause a flesh-wound for it has LOTS of edges made of steel. And from what I've seen in Vienna, there were gothic and pre-renaissance gloves especially fitted with spikes and edges for striking.


byez,

Szabolcs Waldmann

[Matthew_Anderson]

What Brian said! My gauntlets are loosely based on the 14th C. "hourglass" style with scaled fingers and I can make a fist just as well as I can without them, it's just heavier and hurts more (the other guy, I mean). 15th C Gothic gauntlets generally had superb articulation in the fingers and the wrist and move really well. As Brain said, any correctly made gauntlet will restrict your movement no more than a leather glove would.

[Jeffrey Hull]

Oaky, so one should have high expectations of the articulation of such gauntlets.

Thanks for the advice!

JH

[Shane Smith]

As Matt said, my gauntlets allow a very firm fist as well. That said, the leather glove insert may be a little stiff at first so be sure there is no other form of binding in the articulations before you declare them too restricting.