Thought this might be usefull. Forwarded message: From: gunnora@bga.com Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Women's Armor Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 20:45:50 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Chastangela of Appledore wrote: > Alright, this may seem like a somewhat dumb question to some of you > but as I am a new fighter...I'm gonna ask anyway. What alterations > need to be made for a woman's breast plate... First off, you will almost certainly want to invest in a copy of Duchess Elina's excellent book, The Armored Rose, which is written specifically to address the needs of lady fighters in the SCA. It's in the near vicinity of $15 and the full info for the book including ordering info is available at http://www.peak.org/~grainne/Ironrose/armoredrose.html Next, the best place to obtain information about what works for lady fighters, as opposed to some non-female or non-fighter's opinions about what that might be, would be to subscribe to the Ironrose email list, which is a forum for lady fighters and their trainers. There you can ask women who fight all the time, lady knights, and those who regularly train lady fighters what works best for them. The web address for the list signup is http://www.peak.org/~grainne/Ironrose/maillist.html And don't forget the Ironrose webpage at http://www.peak.org/~grainne/Ironrose/ and the Lady Knights webpage at http://www.realtime.net/~gunnora/ladyknights/ OK, now to address your question directly. The major difference is, amazingly enough, not the tits but rather your hips when you are building a breastplate. Almost everyone will tend to design a woman's breastplate to be much too long, and it ends up riding up and cutting at the armpits and sometimes even strangling the hapless fighter. A woman's breastplate needs to be much shorter proportionally than a man's, ending above the hips. Yes, you then have to find other means of protecting the hipbones, upper thigh, and groin. With a breastplate it CANNOT be an "under the tits" type thing like I saw described in another response to this question. If you have a rigid edge under the tender tissue of the breasts, and you get hit on top of that breast, you have now caught your tit in the proverbial wringer and it won't be fun. Similarly, you can't use "hubcap" plates like lady fencers use, because it is possible to get hit in such a way to drive one edge-on into your breast where it can bruise or even cut. And, while I'm at it, it's not a good idea to wear underwire bras while fighting, because it is possible to have an underwire break and end up with a cut or puncture which could conceivably go all the way into a lung. Better than a breastplate for many women is a coat of plates. You can use ABS (picklebarrel) plastic and build a nice coat of plates that will protect everything from neck to knee, for low initial cost, quickly, and it will be fairly light weight. It doesn't require shaping or much skill to build, either -- you have to cut smallish rectangular plates and rivet them to the base garment, or install them in pockets inside the garment. The Visby coat of plates tends to work well for a lot of women also, but you'll want to consult with women who've used them extensively to find out where to make modifications -- I've never built one. Still, if you want a solid breastplate, it should be doable. The globose breastplates tend to work very well on most women. Being mashed flat under a breastplate is not a problem -- your sports bra is probably doing that already. You really don't need big shaped tit protrusions on a breastplate. I built a shaped breastplate for myself, simply because I got tired of being addressed as "lord" on the field, but it's not necessary. Just make sure that the length of the breastplate is appropriate for your anatony, and go from there. By the way, The Armored Rose discusses the anatomical differences between men and women in some detail, with specific information on ways to alter armor to better fit a woman! While I'm at it, massive triple padding under a breastplate (or other portions of lady's armor) is absolutely not necessary. I live in Ansteorra, where it's too flippin' hot for gambesons. The plates spread force, which prevents deep bruising -- I typically end up with much worse bruises from strap-bite than I ever do from direct blows. Padding might insulate you entirely from feeling any of the blow, but then how are you going to call shots? (Well, I guess you can do it by ear, or become one of the Legendary Sword Gods who are weeble-like in the extreme). ::GUNNORA:: Baroness Gunnora Hallakarva, OL Ansteorra Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't. ---------- From: "Morgan E. Smith" Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Women's Armor Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 08:59:54 -0600 Organization: Calgary Community Network Assoc. Armour isn't a mass-produced item. You need to figure out what will work for you. I wear a leather breast-plate that is very slightly curved, and sits well above my hips/waist. It pretty much just squishes everything together, which I find is the safest and most comfortable style: FOR ME. I've seen steel breast-plates that are far more - umm - curvaceous, and I've seen leather ones that are not curved at all. Some fighters just don't feel safe unless everything that can be protected is protected, and some of us trade some padding, etc. for the ability to get out of the way. It will depend on how you fight. Incidentally, my armour has changed a lot over the years: at the beginning, I was armoured up a _lot_ more than I am now. If you are able to, try out other people's armour of various styles and see what feels right to you, and talk to as many fighters about this as you can. Don't talk to other new fighters so much (or at least be aware that their experience isn't necessarily the best guide) - there is a tendency, in the first year or two of fighting to believe that YOUR solution is the ONLY solution. Morgan the Unknown ---------- From: hvanderbilt@BIX.com (hvanderbilt on BIX) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Women's Armor Date: 11 Sep 99 17:00:32 GMT Organization: Delphi Internet Services Excellency, I do have to differ on one point. "Massive triple padding" may indeed not be necessary under a very rigid steel or quarter-inch plastic breastplate. Under an eighth-inch lightweight plastic plate with some flex to it, the specific instance of which I wrote, some amount of padding is quite necessary over sensitive areas, in my experience. Three layers of cargo-blanket may be more than is absolutely needed, true, but in this instance it both helps form the plate with a little extra room inside, and reassures the (rookie) wearers. If they later decide they need more cooling and less padding, it's easy enough to cut down the gambeson, but for starters it provides good security. Without, I may add, making anyone insensible to blows received - there's enough flex to the 1/8" plastic over padding combination that while the force of a blow is spread out quite a bit, you most certainly notice you've been hit. There are lots of ways to armor safely; the only absolute is that any statement containing the word 'absolutely' will likely have exceptions. Lord Harry Rudkin Sargeant, House Staghold, Atenveldt gunnora@bga.com writes: >While I'm at it, massive triple padding under a breastplate (or other >portions of lady's armor) is absolutely not necessary. I live in >Ansteorra, where it's too flippin' hot for gambesons. The plates >spread force, which prevents deep bruising -- I typically end up with >much worse bruises from strap-bite than I ever do from direct blows. >Padding might insulate you entirely from feeling any of the blow, but >then how are you going to call shots? (Well, I guess you can do it by >ear, or become one of the Legendary Sword Gods who are weeble-like in >the extreme). >::GUNNORA:: >Baroness Gunnora Hallakarva, OL >Ansteorra >Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ >Share what you know. Learn what you don't. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message as a whole is Copyright (C) 1999 by Bryan C. Lee Please view the file http://home.tampabay.rr.com/leebc/copyleft.html for information regarding printing, storage, and redistribution. (Updated August 11, please re-read.) Information wants to be free. ALL views expressed here in are subject to change without any notice whatsoever.