Elbow Articulations and the Importance of Patterning

Today I tossed out a pile of elbow lames, because they weren’t quite right. I had spent several hours making these, and they didn’t work properly. The reason that they didn’t work properly is that I had too much “rake” and had put too much curve in them, so that they wouldn’t clear properly.

Half an hour with card stock (really heavy weight paper, about 2/10ths of a mm thick) and I had a new pattern, and a couple of hours later I had the elbows articulating nicely – based on dead flat articulations. I found it useful to articulate these “flat” and then put a (very slight) curve into them once I had them articulating. Here are pictures of the re-patterning, as well as the depth of curvature on the elbow lames.
patterning an elbow lame Shape of an elbow (Couter) - inside view

This led me to question whether I was properly shaping my couters – pics below
Shape of an elbow (Couter) - inside view Shape of an elbow (Couter) - top view

I also found that the reshaping eliminated the creases I had put into the lames, and when I re-peaked them I found that I was a couple of millimeters off true for a couple of them. In future I plan to articulate, and THEN put in the medial crease, and I wonder how many armourers articluate after creasing, and how many put in the crease after articulating.

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