Showing off

These are the bayonettes all done, and in the display box. Didn't turn out too bad. (as ususal, click on the images to enlarge.)

I think this project has got to be the most difficult, complex, and successful project I have ever done! They don't know they are getting the display box. Should be a nice surprise. This was Brenda's contribution to the cause. I discovered an interesting product..."noodle boards". They are like flat versions of the common "pool noodles", closed cell foam which kids would normally play with in a backyard pool. It cuts like a dream with the razor knife, and Brenda cut a couple of them in the shape of the box, then tucked a sheet of black velvet in around it. They nestle neatly into the cutouts, forming a sort of cushion. The top and sides were just cardboard with the velvet glued on with spray adhesive. Worked a treat!

I cut my trip short so I could deliver these scabbards today. Unfortunately, they are needed.

More ride

Here are a few more pics from Canada Day. The pipe band, the cute little dancers, the dogs...and remember all this is completely separate from the "ride" itself. I tried to get pictures of the musical ride, however the light failed by the time they rode out! All that fancy dressage being done in the twilight!

We all sang "Oh Canada" as the flag was coming down. There are two main versions of that song...an English one and a French one, and every musical director and stage manager makes his own "artistic" jumble of English and French lines. As a consequence, Canada is the only country in the world that the citizens cannot sing along with impressario with the microphone on centre ice.....grumble...

I got my "mountie" shot. I suddendly realized that here I have lived in Ottawa for what...twenty years, and never got the typical tourist shot of the mountie in uniform! Well, here he is, my kind of guy! Tired. Been a long day. Too many screaming kids, fat folks dripping hot sauce on his shoes...Wondering if those bulges in her shirt might be contraband....

click on images to enlarge

This weekend...Toronto Trek....the Star Trek convention. Though lately, it has turned into the "transformers", "anime", "stargate", and whatever convention. Regardless...it is nice to be able to have a place to sell my armour. Afterwards, a little tour through the Niagara Wine region. We are all packed up, and ready to head out as soon as I hit "publish post". See you on Wednesday...

Musical Ride

My Canada Day included a full days work in the shop, a steak barbeque, a visit to my friend Myrna's place on the motorcycle, a surprisingly lovely ride home in the rain, a tip to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police barracks to watch the sunset ceremony, and of course, fireworks on Parliament Hill afterwards. Wild Day!!

The musical ride is entirely an RCMP production. The ride itself is a fancy cottillion of lines of horses going in fancy circles, charges, and needle threading. They are world famous for the horsemanship, and many of the horses were presents from the Queen. The horses are all black, and trained to handle noise, gunshots, bands playing and so forth. Considering how spooky most horses are, this is amazing.

Posted here are a few pics of the sunset ceremony. The Musical Ride is only a small part of the sunset ceremony, which includes police dog demos, ring lancing, pistol shooting from horseback, and sword work. (click on images to enlarge)

From the top down....Constable Macy going for the ring with his lance at full gallop

Constable Macy stabbing the bad guy (the straw filled sack) with a sword

Minister and his wife being escorted in the carriage.

The largest number of red coats I have seen outside of the set of "Zulu".
(Kind of like that pic...there are several uniforms on display)

The bottom pic is Constable LeClaire holding a pistol, which he will be shooting balloons with during the jump. I believe they use wax bullets.

These action shots are a little blurry, but they are kind of exciting. They also do "tent pegging" with their lances. I could not get any good pics of that because they were tent pegging in front of the dias across the way!

Personally, I find the stuff these guys do for fun to be more interesting that the musical ride itself.

Happy Canada Day!

Canadian Trivia.

What animal is on the Canadian Nickel? The beaver, the buffalo, or the elk?
What animal is on the Canadian Quarter? The Elk, the Caribou, or the Whitetail Deer?
What animal is on the Loonie? The Tern (seagull!) , the Blue Jay, the Loon?
What famous stuffed bear is named after a Canadian City? Panda? Winnie? Paddington?
What is a Perogie?
What are bear paws? (in addition to the obvious...)
Which harbour vanished in an explosion?
Where in Europe is the Sheldt Estuary and why is it important?
Why do we have thousands of tulips in Ottawa every spring?
What are beaver tails (aside from the obvious...)
What are "square tires" and why?
What is that plug in you see coming out from under every Canadian car's hood?
How many provinces and territories are there?
George Etienne Cartier worked with what Canadian Prime Minister?
What was the result of their collaboration?
Canada's official game is: Lacrosse, Soccer, Hockey?

Finished! Well, almost!

After great labour, I created a "chrome" polished bayonette. I built a scabbard out of brass, and plated it. I cast and finished pewter handles for it. They are not plated yet, but I was doing a test fit, and figured I would take a picture. Not too shabby! When the pewter comes back from the plater, it will be as shiney as the rest of the unit! I am even getting the screws which join the two halves together plated! This might get interesting if the nickel messes up the threads on the screws! But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

As usual, it is hard to photograph a mirror! You can see the reflections of the yellow curtains in the scabbard! Yup...its shiny all right!

Click on the pictures to enlarge...

Cleaning up the castings

These two pics are of the same items...the blue painted one eventually got filed into the one in the middle in the top picture.

Now the real work starts! I sit down at the bench with my little triangular jeweler's files, and clean up the whole casting. It needed every single point to be re-freshed, and all the flat surfaces to be cleaned up with files, sandpaper, and eventually, a high speed buffer. The above picture shows the original black plastic handle, a handle which is well into the process of filing it clean, and the one on the right is what it looked like when it came out of the mould. I spray on blue ink so that I can remember which parts I have done...it all reflects light and is hard to focus on. I was well aware that one sloppy stroke of the file could ruin hours of work!


I understand the proper name for such a casting is called a "finding". That is...something which is actually produced in a "foundry".

I got complacent. I did one perfectly in what....14 hours or so, and the next one went a little faster, only 12 hours. I figured I knew what I was doing, so I cut off the sprues with the hacksaw, and carved the saw into the casting, ruining 12 hours of work in two saw cuts! Doooh!
The third one came along quite well, but because I had already used the two best findings for the job, it took a lot longer, about 18 hours, to finally clean up the "checkering" on the sides, cut the sprues and drill them out, and generally decide I was satisfied with the job.

The second picture up there shows the original, a casting, and my finished filed handle half. This pic was actually taken before I had done the final buffing, and I note that the usual problems of photographing mirrors is coming into play! The bottom edge looks rough, but actually, what it doing is reflecting the rough surface of the cloth it is sitting on!

Bayonette finishing

The first part of making a handle out of metal is to make the mould. I used a two part material called ATV325. It mixes like epoxy, and forms a rubber like compound which surprisingly enough, is quite resistant to heat. Useful since I would be pouring molten pewter into it! I used the existing handle halves to form the mould. Those are the black handle halves you see in the above pictures. Unfortunately, I didn't know how "rubbery" it really was, and its jello like consistency caused some problems due to distorted moulds. Well, that is the learning process I guess! I tried a couple of ways to pour....through the side, through the top. The top picture is of the mould wrapped up with a leather thong ready to use, with some of the cute little handle halves I made. I eventually made about 12 of them, of which 3 were good enough castings to actually use, and another six which simply got tossed back into the frying pan to melt.

There are things about pewter I never realized. For one thing, there is the "fizz" which comes out of it when it is poured. Like bubbles in soda pop, they seem to come from nowhere, and the bubbles come up the "sprues", making the sprues really porous. Ruins the surface of the casting as well...you can see how rough it makes the casting in some of the pictures above.

The end result of a couple of days trial and error (its not like I ever did anything like this before!) I got a nice bunch of nice hard shiney pewter handles, covered in pits from bubbles, oxodized from overheating, several little blisters on my hands, and a warm feeling. No wait, that was from the hot plate I forgot to turn off!

Click on images to enlarge.

Big project...Bayonettes!

The challenge was to take the standard issue bayonette and chrome plate it. The purpose of a chrome bayonette is to fancy up the funeral party for the re-patriation ceremony for our fallen soldiers. This seemed like a job I could respect! The ones they had been using up until now were from the old Belgian "Fabrique National Canadian Model One", the famous FNC1 which had been in use for most of the last half of the 20th century...but enough people were wondering why the funeral party wasn't using the modern bayonette...after all, they were using the modern sidearm! Well, the answer is simple. Plastic scabbard. Plastic handles. Impossible to plate!
Or is it? There seem to be a LOT of chrome plated plastic out there...my motorcycle seems covered with it. Well, it seems there are plastics which can be plated and plastics which cannot be plated. Nobody was sure if the C7 bayonette plastic bits were actually of a type which could be plated, and nobody cared for an order under a thousand units! So, I jumped up and said...hell yes! I can make a scabbard out of brass which will be impossible to distinguish from the plastic one. No really! I can do that! And I can cast the handles out of pewter, and plate those too!

Imagine my surprise when they took me up on it. So, I made them. I figure I am making less than a buck an hour on this job, but hey....its worth the effort! For these guys, I wish I could do more!

First step was get the brass. Cut it out, and roll the edges up and around a metal blank. Then roll the half scabbard in the english wheel in order to flatten it. Then make the button for the "frog"...a little cylinder of leather with a slot in it which holds the bayonette onto the uniform belt.

The tricky job was to solder the brass halves together. I use a solder which is about 30% silver, and 60% tin, with some other metals mixed in to lower the melting point. The picture shows the bayonette after I had polished and nickeled it (on the right), and the progression from left to right of the soldering.

This took me about 26 hours. Per scabbard. Counting the half dozen that failed and ended up on the scap heap!

Tomorrow, I'll take pictures of the bayonette itself. All polished up...looks fantastic!

successful project

Brenda hates having her picture taken. Too bad. Because actually, this was HER project. It was a set of shields covered in felt that the kids visiting Rideau Hall could build up as part of the "Children's Activities". Brenda did the whole thing...I only made the shields and some stands that they shields would sit upon during the activity. The lady in the picture is Camille....the co-ordinator for children's activities at Rideau Hall. And I was looking as cleaned up as I ever get...after all, we were visiting the residence of the highest political rank in Canada, the Governor General. The project was in honour of the new Governor General Michaëlle Jean , originally from Haiti, and so her coat of arms is a crown (for the monarchy) and a sand dollar (for Haiti). A very simple coat of arms. The red one is the shield for the last Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson. She was of Chinese origin, hence the red, she had made a new life in Canada as a broadcaster, hence the phoenix and the lightning bolt. All in all, a very complicated coat of arms. The new one is much more sedate.

This was quite a prestigious contract, albeit a very small one. Gets me out of the house. Don't get to meet the mucky mucks though. In fact, I doubt she even knows there children's activities at her house....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_General_of_Canada

The war goes on!

Overshadowed by the big terrorism bust in Toronto, is this little item, about a joint Canadian Military, RCMP, and others regarding the biggest drug bust I have ever heard of! Even bigger than the ones we monitored from the Trackers back in '95! 20 tonnes of hash! A metric tonne is about 25% bigger than a US ton. Wow! And the repercussions are no doubt still falling out! I can imagine a whole bunch of drug lords in Pakistan are going to be looking for safe havens. Lets not bring them to Canada eh! And I am betting this will spell a serious blow to the "West End Gang". (Oh well, I expect they will just raise the price of table dances to cover the loss...)

(Wonder if they will burn it. I may have to find that smokestack!)

So why am I putting this on this blog? Well, it seems most news agencies don't want to report the good stuff, the successes! So I will. So, "WAY TO GO" Commander Courtourier!

cut and past from the hero's site...
Frigate part of high-seas drug sting
Last updated Jun 6 2006 09:03 AM ADTCBC News
A navy frigate helped RCMP seize 20 tonnes of hashish off the coast of Africa, which investigators say was destined for a Canadian market.
RCMP announced the drug bust on Monday, three weeks after it occurred.
The team spent 43 days at sea, according to RCMP, with HMCS Fredericton assisting in the investigation.
"We do have sensors that are unique to the navy that no other maritime platform can provide, which allow us to see what's happening and listen without actually being close by," said Cmdr. Gilles Coutourier, who is in charge of the frigate.
The hash was processed in Pakistan, put on a boat, and transferred to another one off the coast of Angola, said RCMP spokesman André Potvin.
But RCMP officers were crewing that boat.
"We were simply given a location off the coast of Angola to meet up with the tugboat and then to receive the 989 bails of cannabis resin from their ship onto ours. And from that point on, obviously, control all of those drugs to come into Canada," Potvin told reporters.
The shipment was destined for the Montreal market, said Sylvain l'Heureux of the RCMP.
Officers transported the hash into Canada, according to RCMP, even loading some of it onto a truck and delivering it to an unnamed location in the Montéregie area.
RCMP deliberately waited till the illegal drugs hit land before making any arrests.
Three Quebecers were arrested last week, including a father and son, who investigators say are connected to Montreal's West End Gang. More arrests are expected in the coming days.
RCMP say more than 250 officers from six provinces, including Nova Scotia, and close to 200 navy personnel took part in the investigation.

June

(click on the image to see it in all its glory!)

It is harvest time; scantily clad peasants wearing hats mow the wide meadow in unison. Every detail of the operation is carefully observed and rendered. The freshly mown area stands out brightly against the untouched grass, and the already fading shocked hay is still different in color. In the foreground two women rake and stack the hay. The grace, one might even say the elegance, imparted by the fragility and flexibility of these simply dressed reapers is typical of the mixture of perception and charm that characterizes the Limbourgs' genius.The view, from the Hôtel de Nesle (the Duc de Berry's Paris residence and the present site of the right wing of the Institut de France which now houses the Bibliothèque Mazarine) encompasses the fields on either side of the Seine and the inner facade of the Palais de la Citè.The slate roofs of the Palais rise against a blue sky, providing a large dignified background for this rustic scene; the minutely recorded details of this interior facade are particularly precious.We find ourselves before the buildings whose roofs were represented in the month of May: the corner pavilion, the Conciergerie towers, the Tour de I'Horloge, the double nave of the Grand Salle, the Tour Montgomery, and the Sainte-Chapelle in all its refined splendor.Before this facade, we glimpse trees in a garden partially hidden by the enceinte. These walls terminate at the left in a curious door opening onto the Seine. A boat on the river bank completes this scene of the month of June, to which the artists imparted both rustic grace and grandeur.

Copyright Christus Rex et Redemptor Mundi and Michael Olteanu, MS,
The whole site can be viewed here....http://www.christusrex.org/www2/berry/berry1.html

The Hotel du Nesle is famous. A story about it and the three young ladies you saw in the previous month of May is here. Be advised, all stories about the Hotel du Nesle are a little risque, and almost always revolve arount the tower, the famous Tour du Nesle.
http://www.paris.org/Kiosque/feb00/nesle.html
A print of the clock tower is found here.....which shows how it looked in 1852. http://www.relewis.com/meryonclocktower.html
And of course, the history of the Montgomery Tower is diverse and remarkable... http://www.ca-paris.justice.fr/cour/fr/visite/uk/page/c_histoire_royal.html


Have a nice June!

Basic Training

There are so many stories about Basic Training. Unfortunately, most of them are tragic. We lost a few. For instance, there was "Fat-Fuck Frank" who always trailed behind on the route runs. We didn't seem to march anywhere, we "doubled it" everywhere! When Frank would fall quit running because, well, he was just so out of shape, the Corporal would get a bit ahead, wheel the whole troupe back around to pick him back up. We called it "bringing the bus around". This added quite a few extra steps to our day, and we resented it. Hence the horrid nick name we applied to Frank. I remember him grinning at the nick name....he told me nobody had ever given him a nick name before, and it made him feel like he belonged. I felt it was cruel, but he told me that it kicked in that little extra anger to enable him to overcome his natural lethargy. He had a good heart, but it wasn't strong enough to drive his body as hard as his tremendous will did. It gave out on him during the downhill part of the 3 miler. We were just too far away from the MIR (Medical Inspection Room) at that point to get him help. Made us all feel like shit for a long time.
We lost another in the pool. I don't even remember his name...he was some French fellow in 4 squad, upstairs from me. It was what, the second time we all ended up in the pool, and we were drown-proofing. This is a process where you take a deep breath, put our face in the water, and float for a bit, then blow out the air underwater, lift your head, take another deep breath, and float some more. The idea is to calm you down so that you don't thrash around and panic...which will kill you quick! Its almost like meditation! And it works. Unless you get it wrong, and breath in under water instead of breathe out. He died without a struggle, just floating in the pool along the rest of us. The lifeguards only moved when we were all ordered out of the pool and he didn't respond. I think this one ended sort of well...the lifeguards got the water out of his lungs, and breathed for him. We heard that he was in the hospital, and would not be completing training with us.
Another trainee just couldn't take it, and suicided on us. This was his last chance, I guess, and he just couldn't take it. That was back in 1975, and of course, depression was part of growing up. Don't believe me? Just listen to a "Donovan" album. The less said about this incident the better. I got a lot of brownie points because I volunteered to clean up the mess. I didn't have to though....some "Personnel Awaiting Training", that is to say, people who had been temporarily taken out of the stream for mostly medical reasons got that un-enviable task. We came back from a day's lesson in how to use atropine or some similar military type training to find the whole bed space totally cleaned out, no lockers or beds or anything. His name was Chris, and he was my friend, and he was gay. The Sergeant got me a letter sometime later on in the course, from Chris's boyfriend. It was pretty incoherent.
Jim was a acne covered kid from Cape Breton Island. His girlfriend was like him...not a great looker, and definitely country folks. I stop short of calling them hillbillies, but Jim had a lot of trouble reading. His girl showed up around week 6, and discovered about a thousand government inspected horny 18 year olds. Seeing her chance to break a record, she proceeded to screw as many of of them as possible. When she had nailed most of 4 platoon, Jim just lost it. I mean, 4 platoon is our rival platoon! The ones we competed against in sports, in drill competitions and now apparently, in nailing Jim's girlfriend. He kept punching his locker, kicking at it, and smashing it with his fists. He reduced the locker to almost half its size, and broke every bone in his hands. The military police arrived about the time I was wrapping bandages onto his hands, and they took him away. I saw him marching with PAT platoon and had a drink with him at the Green and Gold on graduation day. I don't know if he ever got re-coursed and graduated....I hope so. He was a basically decent guy. I can't figure her though....I think she had just discovered that guys found her attractive, and took it to extremes in a two weeks period of her life she will NEVER forget! Some of the discussions she and Jim and I had in the G and G are even now, too surreal for me to process properly!
There were cool ones too! Frenchy Dorion who spoke up when we were asked if anybody played a musical instrument. "I can play drums" he said. Well, he played a 5 piece set with 2 high hats in a rock and roll garage band in Miramichi, and they gave him a snare drum. Normally he would just beat time for us on the march, but every once in a while, when he would get bored, he would deliver what I can only describe as a "riff". The corporal would yell at him, and he would go back to "da dum. da dum" . One is reminded of a slave galley with Ringo trying to do fancy bits from the Beatles as the drummer up in front! And there was GF Currie...the GF stood for, well, never mind. Tremendous drive. Tremendous resilience. Tremendous incompetence.
So, we were 9 platoon. We started with 123 raw long haired "alises" and ended up with 78 flat bellied, steely eyed twits who thought they knew everything. It was a real sea change for a lot of us long haired hippies who had to put their bodies where their mouths were.

International cooking

Its funny, so many countries, so much bad cooking! I knew that I was in trouble when I got to Malta and discovered that instead of Italian Cooking, Mediterranian weather, and English speaking, I got Semetic speaking, Newfoundland weather, and English cooking. This WAS unfortunate. Fortunately, I like the weather, the cooking, and semetic language reminded me of downtown Ottawa. (Little Beireut...) I found out that it really IS possible to get a bad wine....and Maltese wine is pretty bad. It was good to cut the grease in the sink, but tasted awful. Heck, the plonk in the boxes at the train station convenience store in Rome was twenty times better!
The idea of eating my way through Europe sounds seductive, and not such a bad way to spend a summer vacation. So, I got some reviews of European cooking. This was one of the best....http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1783596,00.html#article_continue

You have your pick of Iceland shark, Lithanian potato sausages, and Dutch double fried chips with Mayonaisse. Though we have plenty of questionable cooking right here in North America! I am sure some of my blogger buddies can tell stories of Winnepeg Perogies and Prarie Oysters, Baltimore soft shelled crab, Alabama deep fried pork fat nuggets, and New Brunswick Dried Seaweed.

Feeling lonely. Depressed? Tired? This should pick you up.

http://www.kaicurry.com/patontheback/

How the company works...

Here is the new paradigm of operation of the South Tower Armouring Guild.

http://members.shaw.ca/mickee/blog_images/computer/inside.htm

Archaeology

Just in case you have a few days to do nothing but surf...a hospital stay for instance, each of these sites will be good for at least 2 hours.


http://www.nakedscience.org/ The Naked Science Society, founded in 1989, is a privately funded organization devoted to the development of a philosophy that evaluates human culture from a scientific perspective. Humans are part of a scientific civilization, and knowledge and its integrity are crucial for the survival of our species. Science is only the Latin word for knowledge, and for our culture to survive, the pursuit of knowledge must be our destiny.

http://intarch.ac.uk/index.html Internet Archaeology is the first fully refereed e-journal for archaeology and publishes articles of a high academic standing which utilise the potential of electronic publication. Internet Archaeology is published by the Council for British Archaeology and hosted by the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. (Stag's note....they have come a long way from when they were using the local hospital's cat scan to chart out the coppergate helm!)

http://www.archaeology.co.uk/ This is the website of Current Archaeology, Britain’s leading archaeological magazine. Or rather, two magazines, for Current Archaeology, which deals with British archaeology, has now been joined by Current World Archaeology. Here you can explore both magazines, and the articles they contain.
There is also the listings section, based on the Archaeology Handbook, which tells you how you can go on an excavations, and lists the many organisation of all sorts that make up British archaeology. And there is also a mass of other miscellaneous information. Good reading! (Stag's note....nice casual reading...what you should have under your belt if you plan to write a book about Roman Britain)

http://www.antiquityofman.com/ (Stag's note.....a real attempt to place archaeology into its place as history. With all the difficulties that we as 21st century mortals have with history! Even history which we have a thorough knowledge of. How then do you interpret pre-historic artifacts? The author, Mikey Brass, believes there are universal constants....motherhood, drunkenness, competition for resources and so forth which make good tools with which to do the interpretation.)
The copyrighted provision of summaries of past and current academic thinking, research projects and debates available here illustrate that our past is not reconstructed by archaeologists and historians, but rather constructed. Archaeological facts cannot speak for themselves. Rather, the material remains are marshalled, compared and manipulated by scholars who are active participants operating within their own social contexts to support mutually inclusive and exclusive hypotheses of past behavioural patterns.

http://archaeology.about.com/cs/newandusedbooks/fr/feder2.htm (Stag's note... perhaps the above is a little deep for a beginner. Thats fine... this site will provide you with the terminology, and might even a direction if you wanted to go into the field!) Linking to the Past is an interesting experiment in the use of web-based instructional materials. It is, first and foremost, an introduction to archaeology, in standard format, with chapters (called Units) on various topics in archaeology, such as laws supporting archaeological research, survey methods, dating, predictive models, stone tools, paleobotany, economic and social aspects. The breadth alone is pretty unusual for your basic text. But what Feder does is include a CDRom version of the book, with additional information.

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/kevin.greene/wintro3/ (Stag's note....another guide. But this one is for second year students!)

There, that should be some good reading! Better than trying to figure out the DaVinci code.

News

This may become one of the new ways we access the internet. Or maybe not.

http://www.jeroenwijering.com/whatsup/

Its a clever concept.

And I don't know if this will be the "next great thing", but again, this attracted my interest. Its a product called "sphere", and does all the web surfing for you. Sort of like Google on steroids, but different...

http://www.sphere.com/tools

Of course you have to load firefox to make it work. Ah well. Can't have everything.

Texas Bix Bender's Guide to Life

This is culled from my archives..... and it is still as good as it ever wuz....grin! Now if only I could follow the last one!!!

> Don't name a pig you plan to eat.>

> Your fences need to be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong.>

> Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.>

> Keep skunks and bankers and Lawyers at a distance.>

> Life is simpler when you plough around the stump.>

> A bumblebee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.>

> Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.>

> Meanness don't jest happen overnight.>

> Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads!>

> Don't sell your mule to buy a plow.>

> Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.>

> It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.>

> You cannot unsay a cruel word.>

> Every path has a few puddles.>

> When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.>

> The best sermons are lived, not preached.>

> Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.>

> Don't squat down with your spurs on.>

> Don't judge people by their relatives.>

> Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.>

> Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.>

> Don't interfere with something that ain't bothering' you none.>

> It's better to be a has-been than a never-was.>

> The easiest way to eat crow is while it's still warm. The colder it gets, the harder it is to swaller.>

> If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.>

> If it don't seem like it's worth the effort, it probably ain't.>

> It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.>

> Sometimes you get and sometimes you get got.>

> The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with watches you shave his face in the mirror every morning.>

> If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.>

> Don't worry about bitin' off more'n you can chew; your mouth is probably a whole lot bigger'n you think.>

> Only cows know why they stampede.>

> Always drink upstream from the herd.>

> If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there with ya.>

> Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.>

> Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.>

> You can't tell how good a man or a watermelon is 'till they get thumped'.>

> Never, never, miss a good opportunity to shut up!>

Basic Training

Today is the 31st anniversary of me arriving in Camp Cornwallis on Basic Training. There is no other three month period in my life which was as memorable. Yet it really wasn't that great a lifestyle change...I was in Cadets and the Militia before I went off to the Regs, so I should have known what to expect.
I don't think it was really all that hard. Physically it was no more difficult than a hockey camp. Mentally, it was a "sea change". Becoming a soldier (or a sailor or an airman) means leaving behind all the "comfort things" of being a high school kid. Clearly some kids had more trouble than others.
When you watch movies about basic training, they focus on the things like obstacle courses, and teams of soldiers stripping and assembling exotic ordinance. The reality is that it is a series of soul deadening jobs like spit polishing boots, station jobs, parade ground drill and long distance running. Memorizing the names of Commadants is considered more important than being able to shoot (say) downhill at dusk. The obstacle course is welcomed as a welcome break in the routine.
The other thing that happens is that you get the mother of all colds, and everything you do during your time in Basic is punctuated by hacking, sneezing and coughing. It is the inevitable result of lowered bodily resistance brought on by lack of sleep, too many innoculations in too short a time, way more PT than us fat kids were used to, and too many people from all over Canada in the same room. This results in a generally slimmer waistlines , and lowered body fat levels. This lower body fat levels....this can lead to problems.
Trouble was....I was SUCH a bad boy when I was in school. Early '70s, lots of drug use. I had spent most of 3 years stoned out of my mind! When I decided to clean up my act, I went the whole way....got my hair cut, quit drinking, quit smoking dope, quit dropping acid. PCPs, LSD, and the rest of the alphabet were definitly part of my life. Not that I have anything against a nice pot rush, but thats just it...it was TOO nice. I was watching my life disappear in a haze of pot smoke. Darned if I can remember grade ten! Even large chunks of grade eleven are gone for good....and this scared me a little. So, I joined up and in May of 1975, I was on the plane to Camp Cornwallis. (and incidently, it worked....I never did recreational drugs again! Well, aside from Red Rock Lager and Woods Dark Rum. )
The loss of body fat was unexpected, and it had really unexpected side effects. All those chemicals in my body fat started coming out, and so not only was I sick, miserable, tired, but I was also stoned out of my feakin' skull the whole time I was in Basic Training. This may be one reason why I remember the time with a certain fondness. However, the mother of all "bad trips" is when you focus in on that pretty halo of light and discover it is a really a drill sergeant screaming at you to (multiple explitives and suggestions about parentage and anatomical impossiblilties deleted)
They knew about it of course...I mean, you don't, can't and should't keep that sort of past secret. Which lead to a memorable afternoon. We were wearing out our shoe leather on the parade square and the usual hacking, coughing and visual hallucinations were happening. The trees that day were bright pink. Nothing else was. And they were staying that way. This was disturbing. So at the break, the DS calls me over and asks me how I am doing. He was a little concerned about one of his "troopies" and I told him that it seemed to be a lot worse today. He asked me "How so?" And so I explained my difficulty. He looked at me. He looked at the trees. He looked back at me. Then he put his face in his hands and shook his head. "Stag, you idiot! This is the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia in May. Those are cherry and apple trees. OF COURSE they are pink! Those are cherry and apple blossoms!!!". Hey I grew up in Manitoba, we don't have cherry trees there, like, how was I to know!


Picture courtesy of http://www.fotosearch.com/BDX428/bxp65754/

250th Anniversary of the Forgotten War

The French-Indian war is the forgotten war. A time when Canada pretty much covered everything from Michilimacinac to St. Louis, larger than life characters like Cadillac (a fat grasping pig who alienated everybody!) and Pontiac (a war chief with a taste for the sauce) were carving out empires in the woods, and the First American Ranger's were created. A British Regiment of course! (I love the stories of the first commander, a charismatic leader called Colonel Rogers. His rules became the way the British fought in the Americas for the next 150 years! Example...Rule #1....Don't Forget Nothing! Hey, he was a soldier, not a grammar teacher! ) Picture is an AP Photo by Jim McKnight.

Remarkable characters like Washington, Arnold, and others learned to fight during that period of history....most of which, all though well known, is pretty much glossed over, or forgotten, and much of what is "Known fer sure" is actually myth. As much as I love history, I find that the French Indian Wars were very complex, and suffer from a great deal of bowlderiztion and politically motivated historical re-writing.


http://travel.canoe.ca/Travel/USA/NortheasternUSA/2006/05/12/1577075-ap.html

(quoted from the above web site...) "A series of events featuring 18th-century military encampments and battle re-enactments are scheduled at various state, national and local historic sites from western New York to the eastern Adirondacks through 2010.
And this spring and summer, events will take place at French and Indian War-era forts and other locations in Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Tennessee in addition to upstate New York. " "The visibility of anniversaries raises the public's awareness and brings people to the site," said Robert Emerson, executive director of Old Fort Niagara, a state historic site located where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario. "Once they get to the site, we can teach them history."
"During last year's Grand Encampment of the French and Indian War, an annual three-day event at Old Fort Niagara, a near-record 9,500 visitors passed through the gates", Emerson said."

That was the event I was too busy taking my buildings down to get to! I won't be too busy this year though!

" Another national historic site in upstate New York is Fort Johnson, where, in 1749, William Johnson and 250 Indians set out to fight the Battle of Lake George. A commemoration of the battle was held at Lake George last year; it was the first in a series of signature events marking the war's anniversary. Other major events will take place in Oswego this summer (Aug. 11-13), Lake George (2007), Fort Ticonderoga (2008), Old Fort Niagara (2009) and Ogdensburg (2010). "

I'm looking forward to the Ogdensburg event...its only, what, 45 minutes from my house! I presume it will be a re-enactment of the "Battle of the Windmill". Now THAT was a fiasco!

Yeah, I can take that...a summer booting all around Ontario and New York State going to weekend buckskinner events!

High Class Photo Shoot

A couple of pics that Dmitri Moiseev did of me last Monday. (Yeah, thats me in the top pic!)

More pics at http://www.southtower.on.ca/Dmitri/Dmitri.shtml

(Cor, I luv my job!)(click to enlarge)

Ain't no Cure for the Summerside Blues

The following story involves blood and gore...and is not for children.

One of the people I will remember the rest of my life is Roger J. Can't call HIM a poser...what you saw was pretty much what you got. Trouble was, you never quite knew what you saw. A son of a fisherman, he grew up hating fish farmers and seals. Fish farms because they raised "weak" fish who were prone to disease, and were the competition. Seals because they destroy fish wholesale. A seal will dive down, find a fish, take a bite out of it, throw away the fish to die, and then hunt down another fish. A lot of fish in his nets had seal bites in them. Fishermen like Roger and his kin would, and DID happily shoot seals who were hovering around their nets looking for a cheap dinner.
Fishing is like farming...you accept death as part of life, and inevitable. It was Roger who used the phrase "Well, you know, you ain't a gonna get outa this life alive y'know". He used to chuckle at people who didn't want to kill a trapped mouse, and would be the one you call if you want to drown unwanted kittens, or kill a fresh caught fish or chicken for your supper. He raised his own rabbits for the table, (along with another feller I'll tell about in a bit), and had an old boat he and his dad had fiberglassed to make seaworthy that he lived on during the summer months.
And it was Spring, about May, and the birds were nestin something awful. Now there is nothing that goes together worse than airplanes and birds! Little avian buggers will have a nest built in the nooks and crannys of your airplane in 4 hours! Which I wouldn't mind so much but the nests tend to interfear with the operation of control surfaces, and can be life threatening. Oh sure, we check, check, and check again, hang stuffed owls up, play high pitched sounds, but the only thing which really works is the poisoned grain. Every airport in the world has trays of poisoned grain out for the varmints which can bring down an airplane.
So the Warrant Officer and Roger were walking around the hanger, Roger with the clipboard, writing down all the things which need to make the hangar Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion. And they found a pigeon which had partaken of the grain, and was dying horribly on the tarmac. The Warrant Officer was an ex Navy "fish head" , and showing a hitherto unsuspected streak of compassion, he asked Roger to put the "poor wee think out a' its misery". I had to dash off at that point to deal with some disaster in the making, and I was no more than 20 yards off when I heard the Warrant screaming awful things about Roger's parentage, his upbringing, and his mental health! Roger looked like he had been into the paint locker, and so later on, I asked him what happened. As best as I can remember it, these were his words.
"Well, you were in on the first part of it. The Warrant asked me if I had ever killed chickens back on the farm. I told him, Of course. You take the neck in between your fingers, and break their necks just behind the head with a little twist. No big deal. Never did a pigeon though. Their necks are really tiny, almost like a string, instead of that big solid neck a chicken has. So when I wrung its neck, the head just came off in my hand! Well THAT was a surprise! The Warrant was looking at me kind of funny, and I held up the head, and discovered that when you sqeeze the sides, the beak will open and close. So I guess out of nervousness, I made like it was a puppet, held it up, and making the beak open and close, said "Hello Warrant, nice to meet you"! Then he went ballistic!
I am still not sure if Roger J. was in fact a poser, but he was really good at giving the impression that he was "something". Just exactly WHAT that something was....I am not sure. But for the rest of my life, I'll remember Roger standing there with blood splashed all over his uniform and holding up a pigeon's head like it was a sock puppet.

May

(click on image to enlarge)

May. A time of play. A time of wearing new clothes. A time of re-birth.

In his youth the Duc de Berry liked to take part in this festivity, and at court the King would distribute garments made of cloth vert gai in color and known as livrée de mai.This garb is worn by the three girls riding horses caparisoned in a refined soft green, a color obtained from the crushed crystalline stone, malachite. The sumptuous dress lined with blue and ornamented with gold flowerwork identifies the girls as princesses. One, wearing a white headdress decorated with green leaves, dominates the middle of the scene.Turning to contemplate her is a rider dressed half in red, half in black and white, the royal livery of France at that time; he is probably a prince of the blood. At the girl's left rides a man dressed in a rich blue brocaded coat strewn with golden flowers: could it be the Duc de Berry?In front, musicians lead the gay group of amiable riders to the sound of their trumpet, flute, and trombone. They are accompanied by the Duke's small dogs which frisk about the horse's hoofs.

This pretty scene must have been set in the woods bordering the rue du Pré-aux-Clercs, near what is now the rue de Bellechasse.


The whole article is here....http://www.christusrex.org/www2/berry/f5v.html

Kitty Vitti III, another Poser.

(another story of the characters I met while on Detached Duty..."on Det" in Torbay sometime in the late '90s.)
A poser, technically speaking, is somebody who is attempting to be something they are not. In particular, something they percieve their peer group expects them to be. When they suceed, they get promoted, when they fail, they get branded a "Poser". Military people meet them all the time....the foul mouth drill sergeant who raises flowers, and has to psych himself up to stand there and shout at the troopies. The pay accounts clerk who drops her paycheck into the G-string of the male stripper on"Ladies Night"and leaves him in the parking lot well out of site of her girfriends. All the folks who sow their wild oats all week, and go to church on Sunday to pray for a crop failure.
Guys have this bad, and military guys even more so. The stories and rumours of infidelities among military guys is statistically unlikely, and surprisingly enough (especially to our wives) are mostly not true. Which brings us to the biggest Poser I ever knew, Pierre C. (Name is changed to protect the damned guilty!) A Man's Man, big, tough, works out in a gym he actually pays for, talks big. According to Pierre, he has laid with every woman in St. John, Summerside, Halifax, Trenton and as far as I know, Tim Buc Tu. He used to say with great emphasis and meaning "What Happens on Det STAYS on Det". Which I suspect means something like "I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me." Yeah, fine, whatever. I worked with his wife, and just decided that the less I dealt with this guy, the better me, my career and my mental health would stay. But on this occasion, he was the Master Corporal 2 i c of the Detached Duty team in Torbay Newfoundland.

So one fine evening as the fog finally grounded the airplanes after a bee-och of 13 hour shift, yet again, we were sittin' around the common room in the barracks. Frying sausages, shooting the breeze, swapping lies. We were all pretty tired...it had been a long day, and some had ducked over to George Street to listen to the music and have a few brewskies before bedding down. There was a 6AM launch, so by ten, most of us had made it back home and were watching Hockey Night In Canada. Just like in a movie, the door opens, and in comes Pierre, all quiet like. Not like him at all! So he brings us a bottle of Woods Dark Rum and says "hey guys, I got a girl here, stay out of my room for the next hour or so eh!". So I sez to Pierre....Well, bring her in here for a drink Pete, we won't bite! Pierre gets kind of evasive, and says he has to go, she's waitin in his room for him. "Enjoy the bottle, and I'll see you all in the morning" .
Why was this odd? Well, we were a really small det, and we each had rooms to ourselves that trip. Privacy is something we had, and jealously guarded when we managed to get it. So, like , Pierre didn't have to tell us to not bother him, in fact there was no reason other than bragging to inform us of his situation.
Clever guy this Pierre. He knew the first thing we would do as soon as we heard his door close is creep real silent like down the hallway, and put a glass to the door. (Oh come on, you'd a done the same!) So heres the three of us, listening at the door. We can hear a man's voice, the sound of shoes hitting the floor. Four shoes...good sign. Then the squeak of the iron army bed. A pause, and another squeek, then another. Then a nice rythymic squeeking! "Ah" said I, "The game is afoot". (Or slurred words to that effect). We went back to the common room, the guys were all buzzing about what kind of a guy this Pierre is, and what would we tell his wife, or should we, and maybe there was just a tiny touch of envy.

Then, I had an idea.

Many ideas I had in those days I blame on the skinfull of Red Rock Lager, causes me to do things I shouldn't. ....so I suggested that perhaps we should get a look at this cutie. He is on the ground floor, right? Uh huh. We could see the light under the door so the light is on right? Uh huh. Maybe he didn't pull his curtains? You could almost see the lights come on behind their eyes as they suddenly got it. So, we turned the TV up a little louder, and snuck outside, tramping through the snow to peek into Pete's window.

What we saw was Lucky Pierre, the Man's Man, the guy who cheated on his wife by his own admission every chance he got, sitting on his bed, all by himself, bouncing up and down on the mattress, making the springs squeek. "Right," we all agreed later. "This guy really IS a devoted family man, and a good father, a hard worker, who wants us to believe that he is this drunken cheatin' bastard. His secret is out...he's a good man after all! All that cheating stuff! Thats bogus! What a Poser!"

But oh damn....we can't tell anybody. Because what happens on Det STAYS on det.

Kitty Vitti II, the Poser!

There were so many. Posers that is. Dexter S. had to be the worst of 'em. He was a guy who married some Newfie girl every year. A handsome young tearaway of 35 years who looked every bit of 50 used to promise the women the moon, the stars, the ring, and a chance to get away from "all this". Since "all this" was pretty much snow, freezing rain, rain, fog, then bad weather, and of course, that job gutting fish, most anything looked good by comparison. I began to recognize the predatory gaze of these lasses fairly early on, and Dex just used let them chase him until he caught 'em.

He used to find his way up to the lookout point of signal hill with his latest conquest, and in the faint light of the cucumber greenhouse on the hill opposite, would allow himself to be taken advantage of. That is to say, he would allow the lass to pour enough rum down his throat to get him to propose marriage. Then it was a frantic round of parents, uncles, aunts, priests, Christian brothers and military personel who set up an honest to gawd wedding before his two weeks detached duty in Torbay ended. Dexter was a clever one though. He was careful to stay drunk enough to maintain his (and by extension her) dubious virtue, and was extremely careful to not consumate anything after the vows.

I asked him once "Is there sex after marriage". He answered with a shrug, "beats me". This enabled him to get the annulment after 3 months on the grounds of non-consumation and her reasonably understandable resultant infidelity. Oh, he still chased skirts like crazy in the Summerside Junior Ranks Mess, and in "Anthony's" downtown. Of course, that was part of his cunning plan to be a perpetual groom. And in Newfoundland, a groom is treated like, well like a bride! They tell me that some places have the problem of brides who are so in love with the idea of being a bride that they will pull stunts like this over and over. Dexter was the first man I ever met who had "Marriage Addiction".

Things always worked out for the best. The lasses usually trolled the bars back home in PEI (the Garden of the Gulf, and home of Anne of Green Gargoyles, er, Gables) along side Dex, looking for a better prospect, and you know, on at least three occasions that I can testify to, it worked out...the lasses got another young government inspected Corporal to "take her away from all this" and they got happily posted away into the sunset. I kept in contact with one couple, and still, after what, 12 years, they are still happily married and living in Moose Jaw. I hear the fact that there is very little fog and freezing rain in Saskatchewan, and no hip breaking 30 degree ice covered roads goes a long way to keep their marriage solid.

Funny, never heard from Dex again though.

(the top pic of from Signal Hill lookin' over th' harbour. In daytime, the sun burns the fog off the water, but you can see it waiting at the entrance to come in like a socially disadvantaged relative. The bottom pic is Battery Road. thought I was just usin' hypberbole when I was describin' the 30 degree roads eh!)

KittyVitti part 1

This time of year brings to mind stories of raw and rough dets in Kitty Vitti. Well, actually "detached duty" in Newfoundland, the barracks are in a suburb of St John's called Quidi Vidi, over behind the little lake, t'other side of the graveyard. QuidiVidi, thats Latin for "where he hell am I". Well you may ask that b'y, for once the duty fog bank rolls in, you are lucky to see your hand in front of your face. I was up there supporting the Tracker squadron which hunted drug and people smugglers with 40 year old twin engine prop job airplanes. My job was to fix and gas 'em. Thats one of mine in the pic...click on it to enlarge it.

Well, this one April day, everything was fogged in, and so we got permission to go to town. St John's has one street which is zoned for drinking establishments...we had to leave our barracks, cut through the graveyard and try and see if we could get some "action". If there is action in Newfyjohn, it is on George Street! I noticed on the way over that our well worn path was interupted by some construction work, but visions of bright lights, flowing beer taps and willing maidens made me forget all that, so me and my buddy Tim hit the Ship Inn, the Farthing, the Sailor's Rest, and a few even more disreputable spots.

Tim and I met an even dozen women that night. All good ol' newfies, lookin to hook up to a beau who could take 'em off the rock. Good drinking, smoking, swearing beer kegs with missing teeth and rubber boots. I decided after about 7 or 8 "hot spots" that there isn't enough beer in Canada to drink these girls pretty, and so I told Tim that I was going to head on home. He ignored me, and continued to swap spit with this lass who would be pretty but for the moustache. Though actually, judging by the sound of her laugh, she may have been a seal, but hey..she was a very cute seal...

So, I see the moon is out, the fog is in rags, and very close to the earth. Lots of light to see by, but there were clouds that looked kind of squall-like to me. I didn't want to get caught in a rain squall in April, so I decided to take the short way home, the short cut through the graveyard. I completely forgot about the construction (a skinfull of Red Rock Lager can do that) and then the rain squall hit. I stumbled and fell into a hole. As far as I could see, it was a grave which had been prepared for use the next day. All the fresh earth was scattered loosely about and as I tried to climb out, it turned to mud under my hands and try as I might, I was just stuck there.
Struggling is hard work and I decided to just sit down and rest a bit. (a skinfull of Red Rock Lager can do that) and was just dozing off when suddenly somebody started stepping on my legs, my feet, and so forth. It was my buddy Tim, who had struck out with the seal, and decided to head home as well, and fell into the same trap as I did! There he was, cussin a streak, and jumping up for all he was worth trying to get some purchase on the mud, and having the same luck as I did. He don't even know I am there!
So I stood up, all covered in mud, and taps him on the shoulder. "You'll never get out you know" I said.

But he did!



epilogue......Tim heard me shouting, and came back and using our belts, he managed to drag me out of there. We went back to the barracks with a helluva story.

The poppy coloured tulip

Mowing lawns, cleaning and posting birdhouses, yelling at the kids to stop picking my daffodils. Trying to avoid the tulips which are just starting this week. They are going to bloom by this weekend, which of course, is the Ottawa Tulip Festival.
Ottawa groans under the weight of thousands of tulips every year at this time. These gorgeous blooms (20 thousand!) are an annual reminder from the Dutch government that they remember not only the sacrifice of Canadian soldiers who had it really rough when liberating Holland during WWII, but also that the Dutch Royal Family was living out the occupation right here in Ottawa. In fact, Queen Julianna gave birth to princess Margriet right here in the Ottawa Civic Hospital in a room which was made Dutch soil for one day by an act of parliament.
The picture is of a very rare tulip called the "Bell Irving", named after the Canadian General Bell-Irving who lost Seventy Six Hundred men in Holland in 1944 and '45. They almost went extinct, mostly because for some reason, the local squirrels seem to particularly favor the bulbs. At one point, it was thought that it WAS extinct, but those Dutch are a canny lot, and a specialst collector in Holland had a couple hundred he was willing to propogate. He sent half of them to Canada for the 50th anniverary and they died enroute. Next year he sent another couple of hundred, and the squirrels got most of them. But they kept trying, and now the flower beds of Dow's lake and Bell Irvings's home town in British Columbia are awash with them. Not quite so rare now!
There is something uniquely Canadian that would make a flower be the memorial to a good general. A flower symbolic of the country he liberated, and one that is the colour of the poppy...the universal flower of the soldier.

Museum Originals

(click to enlarge those pictures)
This backplate provided an inspiration to see if I could make a backplate as pretty as this one. It was made for a prince, or at least, a Knight of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in the great armour shops of Milan sometime in the late 16th century. Stylistically, it makes my efforts look pretty amaturish! On the other hand, I think I have the shape of the steel figured out. In the bottom picture, I have just finished cleaning the piece of all its rust and crud from years of benign neglect. Mr. Stroud, the curator of the Palace Museum in Malta is explaining the results of a recent metalurgical survey on his precious armours. The job took about three hours, and a labour of love. It was not particularly dirty after all, and I did not have to go into the chiseled decoration at all. Thank goodness for that! I was not looking forward to two weeks with dental picks!

The piece is remarkable in that the edges are not just rolled, but roped as well, and there are some embossed parts...that is parts that are raised up and away from the metal....the roped decorative strip an inch or so from the edge of the arm holes, and the embossed medallions at the back. There were several of these backplates there, all had the medallions and embossed lines which seemed to be standard. The roping and engraving on the medalions are all added on later, and of course are all different. The patterns on the three big wide stripes are made with hammer and punches in a process called (paradoxically enough) raising. The pattern is fairly common, the curators call it "pots and pans". The metal was probably backed up with lead during the raising process, and neillo was burned into the depressions. Special bricks were used to polish the surface after that. The broken rivets near the bottom are all that remains of the steel buckle mounts. I have no idea how they managed to raise the pattern near the bottom....I can only think that the roping was pushed up after the decoration was all done. I like it! No doubt in a few years, I will be doing work just as good. (sure.....I believe that!)

Leathering

For some reason it takes a long time to strap and "leather" an armour. I am getting quicker at it, but I still have to tweak and fit the plates so that they all work together.

I use two part solid copper leather rivets for this job. Nothing else will hold well enough, and yet be easy enough to chisel off when I have to replace the leather down the road, say, in 3 to 5 years. Often armour comes back to me rusty, with the leather stiff from dried sweat, and full of dents from the experiences it has gone through. Such a repair will usually take most of the day, because I have to remove all the leather, and bash out any dents. And there will be lots! I try not to make it look brand new though....those dents all tell a story. Worn, old, heavily used, but properly re-furbished armour is VERY beautiful.

There has to be tongues of leather under the shoulder tabs just to protect the skin. Often, I rivet leather lining to supplement the rolled edges. And the leather straps which hold it all together have to be installed. The bottom edge has to have a nice flare so it does not cut into the buttocks. The length has to be quite precise, and on repair jobs, changes in girth must be accomodated. I have been known to lengthen horizontal measurements of the bottom plates to accodate a few years of high living, and to occasionally increase the chest size as this sport does tend to change your somatype. Once in a while, an armour comes in which was bought by a new owner, and I am required to make it fit the new guy! The vast majority of these changes are accomodated by changing the leather.
Lots of things can be done to fancy up the armour at this point! Picadills can be cut from suede leather , and riveted onto overlapping plates so that they don't scratch the underlying plates. These picadills are often brightly coloured, and may reflect the livery of the household, or the coat of arms. Brass highlights may also be added, as well as steel hinges, lance rests and so forth. These are finishing parts of the armour maker's craft, and were done in town, close to the client.
Back in the old days, the armour would have been made as mostly finished plates close to the power machinery which made the steel. The more you finish them, the lighter the load you have to send by pack mule from Sheffield to London, or from Turin to Milan over those horrid medieval roads! However, the client didn't want to travel all the way to Sheffield to get fitted to the armour, so districts would grow up in Medieval and Renaissance cities which specialized in one thing or another...books, coats, woodwork, that sort of thing. The armourers had a street as well, maintained by the guilds. Since all the noisy, dirty and smelly work had been done outside the city, the street of armourers would concentrate on fitting, leathering, and picadilling the stock armours for wealthy clients. The street of the armourers in London is called Picadilly Circus for that reason.
Once the armour was properly fitted, it was disassembled, sent out for etching or engraving over at Tower Hill, then sent back to Picadilly circus to be picadilled and the final leather installed, ready for delivery. Every three to five years, the amour would go back to have the picadills re-newed, the armour properly buffed and cleaned, and re-leathered. It might also be niello'd and gilded. Niello is a silver-sulphur mix which is burned into depressions punched into the armour. It makes a lovely tough black surface which is much less likely to chip off than fired on enamel. Gilding is a process that mixes mercury with gold, and again, is fired so that the mercury is driven off, leaving the gold highlighted. The black neillo and gold look awfully good together! In the top picture, I have shown a closeup of an armour Jean made in my shop showing the prettiness of mixing brass with black steel. Notice the lack of scapula ridges...I think that armour looked better without the sculpuring. I also think I could have done a better job of planishing on the sculpted one! Ah well, its the harsh oblique light. Thats my story and I'm sticking to it!

Curve to fit the body

Piece of cake at this point! The armour now has to be curved around the horn of the anvil to help it to fit the body. The backplate normally fits under the breastplate, and the upper part of the backplate (the part we have been working on) will fit neatly over the bottom parts. I like the look of the three part armours, though of course, backplates were made as single and two piece plates as well.
Wipe the pieces down with lacquer thinner to take off markings from your sharpie pen, and to take off fingerprints. A quick coat of high gloss spray lacquer at this point will dry in 5 minutes, and will protect the finish against fingerprints. I often give it a good sanding with a succession of grits from 8o on up to 120 grit with a palm sander, but a lot of people prefer the look of the planished steel. So do I actually, so I often don't try very hard to get all the hammer marks out. People who complaing about hammer marks on armour would complain about brush strokes on a painting! A lot of people decide to like the hammer marks when they discover they have to pay me 20 bucks an hour to sand them all out.
As you can see in the picture, the hammer marks are not really all that intrusive. You have to watch people who skip the planishing stage and then brag about how "handmade" their armour looks. Thats just bad workmanship. Your armour should be smooth enough after planishing that you would take no more than one gauge number off when sanding all the marks out. Real medievel armour was heavily sanded! They often took off two or even three gauge sizes off the steel in the process of sanding it. I'm not sure why this is....but I have a suspicion that sanding is a job which can be done by a slave, or an apprentice, whereas planishing would need the expensive services of a trained craftsman. That is not the only answer of course...perhaps they had water powered wheels which did the job really fast...so it would take less time to sand it than to planish it smooth. Hard to say, both speculations can be supported in literature.

The shoulders

Most people are surprised to discover how much more material goes into the back of their shirt as opposed to their chest. That is one reason why the back plate is so much more interesting to make than a breastplate...there is more space to work with, and more scope to make it look pretty.
You have to prepare the piece by laying it onto the anvil, and pushing out the ridge. A body has very little ridge between the shoulder blades. Then, when you are happy with the way it looks between the shoulder blades, you flip it over so the inside is now laying over the curve of the horn of the anvil. Working with the rubber mallet, you curve the arm opening until it starts to look good. Some gentle work with the mallet and anvil will bring the space beween the arm holes more three dimentional. I sometimes make the triangle above the shoulder blades a little more three dimentional....it helps to cover that bump you can feel on your back just at the base of your neck.
Eight out of ten people who read this have just felt for that bump. That bump is half inch long piece of bone that sticks out of your spine at that point, and it would really really hurt to break it!

shaping the bottom edge

Rubber hammer and anvil horn . Fold the armour over the horn until it gets the right shape, then reverse curve to show off the spinae erectae muscles. Often I'll shape the intermediate piece of armour at the same time to ensure a good fit. When you finish, you want the suggestion of a curve. A common mistake is to leave a bump which will dig into the spine.
Observe the obsessive use of duct tape to keep from scarring the surface!

I do a lot of pushing the metal around by hand at this point, and discover where the sharp edges are!

Planishing

The dreaded "Planishing". This step alone takes more time than all the rest up until now! A planishing hammer is lighter than a bouging hammer, and just as shiney. Working from the inside, the armourer places the workpiece on a hard piece of shiny steel and hammer mark after overlapping hammer mark back and forth on the workpiece.

Most anvils are not polished enough to do this, so I use a piece of highly polished hardened steel which sits in a neat cout out in one of the wooden anvils. I have met people who have polished anvils for this job. It takes a couple of days to polish and anvil good enough, and then you can't use it for anything else BUT planishing!

The hammers are moved in a quick little wrist flick, and the elbow is held beside the body in order to provide precise control. Then, placing the workpiece over a ball (a cannon ball would be nice if I could find one), the armourer smooths the outside of the workpiece. For the outside, a flat faced hammer is often used. The faces must be very shiny, little mirrors. When every square centimeter is covered with overlapping hammer blows front and back, the worker will examine the surface carefully by oblique lighting, and by feel...often with eyes closed, looking for flat spots, high spots, and textural problems. I have been known to re-bouge and re-planish spots which show up at this point, so I tend to do a cursory once through with the planishing hammer just to take down the big bumps and fill the worst dents before really going to town with the "finish" planishing.