Average armor weight for different designs?

[James Brazas]

Our group is about to do a demo in a few weeks and the issue of armor weight always comes up. I'm well familiar with sword weights for various designs, but I wanted to make sure my facts were straight for armor.

What would be an average weight or weight rang for the following forms of armor?

1. Maille shirt

2. Full coat of maille

3. Milanese Full Plate

4. Gothic Full Plate

5. Maximilian Full Plate

6. 3/4 Plate

7. Half Plate

8. Helmet and Breastplate with backplate

Thank you very much for any and all help!

[Corey Roberts]

Hello Mr. Brazas, I don't know the average weights for all of these, but I will ball-park some of them for you.

I believe a maille shirt typically weighs somewhere in the range of 20-25 lbs. May be heavier depending.

Not sure what exactly you mean by "full coat of maille" do you mean a shirt of maille with sleaves? Do you mean a full suit including coif, shirt, and maille over the legs?

It is my understanding that both Gothic and Milanese battlefield armour generally weighs about the same at about 50-65 lbs. Armor designed for heavy jousting weighs more but is not designed for moving about on foot the same way normal field armors were.

I'm pretty sure Maximilian plate is in the same range as the above.

Can you define better what you mean by 1/2, or 3/4 plate? What types of pieces are we talking about?

Helmet weights vary considerably depending on type of helmet, but something like a barbute or a sallet probably weighs about 5-7 lbs or so.

A breastplate is going to run about 6-8 lbs. I would imagine since a backplate has about the same surface area would probably be in the same range.

If you search around here they have the weights of various pieces:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/hi_arhe.htm

[James Brazas]

OK, thanks!

Sounds like the numbers I have seen before were mostly accurate.

It can sometimes be difficult to get accurate numbers as people like Get Dressed for Battle usually include the stand and rigging as part of the weight (so you get weights listed as 188 lbs. or something ridiculous like that - which is obviously inaccurate.)

By full coat of maille, I was referring the coif, shirt, and maille for legs like you said.

As I understand it, 3/4 plate is generally like full plate but missing the sabatons, graves, and possibly the cuisses. 1/2 plate would be missing the above armor and at least part of the armor for the arms.

Anyway, thanks for giving me those numbers and for referring me to that website!

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Mind that some of the types you've listed don't lend themselves well to averaging. Three-quarters armour at the end of the 15th century would have been a matter of leaving the sabatons and greaves off a full harness, so it would have been lighter than contemporary full harnesses. On the other hand, the three-quarters armour of a late 16th- or early 17th-century cuirassier might have lacked cuisses, but the tassets were extended and articulated to cover the leg all the way down to the knee, and the plates were much thicker to deal with pistol balls -- so on the whole they'd weight significantly more than a full harness from a whole century earlier. The same applies to half-armour -- a 17th-century pikeman's cuirass, tassets, and pot would have been much heavier than a late 15th-century infantryman's half-armour, even if the latter included arm protection in addition to the cuirass and helmet (and it's worth noting that Montluc in the early 16th century already spoke of how much pikemen's armour slowed them down relative to arquebusiers, which might imply that the weight of infantry half-armour rose rather sharply just in the first few decades of the 16th century).

Try looking up this thread for a fairly detailed examination of the weight of armour over the centuries.

[James Brazas]

Wow! Thank you very much! That link is precisely the kind of data treasure trove I've been looking for!

You've made your point well: I will simply have to join the MyArmoury site too so that I can have better access to information like that.

And that makes a lot of sense. The entire point for covering less of the body was to allow for thicker armor to deal with better guns. So it makes sense that 3/4 and 1/2 plate would vary widely in weight.

Still, according to the document in your link, the weight remained on average a little bit less than full plate.

Thanks again!

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Of course, averaged throughout the entire period, less complete suits would have been lighter, and three-quarter suits would have been lighter than full suits from the same period. But it's worth checking the diachronic trends too (i.e. comparing armour made in different decades); that way you could see that three-quarters armour from the end of the studied period (say, the 17th century) was often heavier than full harness from the beginning (say, late 15th century). It should also be noted that full harnesses were rarely worn as such by the end of the 16th century -- in fact, they were often little more than three-quarters armour with greaves and sabatons tacked onto the bottom of the tassets, and these lowermost pieces were almost always left off when the armour was worn into battle in this era. The full head-to-toe sets were thus rarely seen except on parades (and occasionally on monarchs who led from the rear).

[James Brazas]

That makes sense. As firearms increased in power, range, accuracy, and numbers, suits of armor would have to get thicker regardless of whether they are full, 3/4, or 1/2 suits.

I kinda wish he included charts mapping changes in average weight over the centuries for each form of armor. It would be interesting to see how much the average weight had changed.

I suppose I could always just figure it out myself from his data table, though.

By the way, could cuirassiers move their necks in 17th Century closed helms? Most of them appear to offer much less neck mobility than the earlier bevor-and-sallet or barbute helms.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

The mobility of a 17th-century cuirassier's neck probably varied according to the quality of his helmet, although a close helmet would have allowed only a restricted range of motion in any case (with -- presumably -- slightly more freedom in higher-quality helmets). But then the earlier sallet-and-bevor combination didn't allow all that much mobility either -- with a bevor that fits closely enough to sit comfortably under a good sallet, the wearer's chin can't move very far to either side before it runs into the sides of the bevor (or the bevor runs into the interior of the sallet). The only major difference was that the wearer of the sallet would have had the option of foregoing the bevor without ditching the sallet too if he wanted to regain full neck mobility.

[James Brazas]

OK, thank you!

That makes sense. I can definitely see some restriction of neck movement, but I'm glad to hear that 17th Century Closed Helmets still allowed for some neck movement - at least in better-made suits!

And that makes sense about sallet-and-bevor helms as well.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

It all depends on whether the helmet has an integral gorget and how this gorget is constructed. A close helmet with virtually no gorget at all would theoretically allow considerable range of movement, but in reality this mobility would be constrained by the fact that the entire weight of the helmet would have had to be borne upon the head. A substantial gorget constrains the neck movement but allows some of the helmet's weight to be transferred to the cuirass or the collar underneath. And it's worth noting that by the 17th century most close helms seemed to have large gorgets with little or no articulation, so the range of movement for the wearer's head would have been quite constrained if he wasn't rich enough to have the gorget custom-made with more extensive articulations.

[James Brazas]

OK, thanks! That makes sense!