The Tools and Their Marks

The tools used by the armourer were extremely varied in type and purpose, and they will here be given a technical examination before their use on armour is detailed further in the following chapters. Although there are a seemingly endless variety of tools used by armourers, there are relatively few basic shapes found amongst those tools. Their specific arrangement and size would have had a significant impact on the manner in which they were used and formed ferrous plates. There are other tools which were essential as well, including the forge, bellows, tools for tending the forge, and tongs, but the tools which are most interesting for the present purpose are those which were used in the actual shaping of the plates, primarily hammers, stakes, and anvils.

As has been seen in the inventories cited in Chapter II, especially those from Greenwich, tools could be highly specialised and reserved for specific uses. Despite this, a stake used for a helmet crest is not necessarily different from one used to make a flute in a breastplate, and one used to raise a couter could also be used to raise a helmet visor. The specialisation was partially due to a tool being well-suited for a given task, not because that tool could only be used for one purpose. In addition, as already stated

on page 42, reserving tools for particular uses could extend working life and reduce the risk of damage.

Working faces generally fall in one of several broad categories: flat, domed, spherical, cylindrical, or chiselled. Flat faces are typical of anvils and hammers used for planishing. Domed faces have a slight curvature and are typical for hammer faces and some stakes. Spherical faces are found on ball stakes and ball-peen hammers.

Cylindrical faces are found on cross-peen hammers, the horns of anvils, bickirons, and a variety of stakes. Chiselled working faces are any which have such an edge, though it need not be sharp. Some small cross-peen hammers may be said to have a chiselled peen, and many stakes used for creasing and fluting have this type of working surface. There are other shapes and many variations on these shapes, dictated by the specific purpose of the tool, but these five shapes form the basis from which most others are derived.

It is useful to group tools by their most basic function: cutting tools, striking tools, and bottom dies. Cutting tools include shears and chisels, but can also include gravers and files which also work by cutting into the metal, demonstrating the variety in type and function which can be found in these broad categories. Striking tools are most often hammers and mallets, usually consisting of an iron head and wooden handle though mallets entirely of wood could be used for some operations. Dies are anything over which the object is worked, in particular anvils and stakes, which act as a base to support the object as it is being shaped.

Hammers, the most important and recognizable tools of the armourer, are used to move metal to achieve the final shape of armour plates. The hammer is capable of very subtle work, especially in the hands of a competent artisan, and metalworkers make full use of the various face shapes and the ways they deform plates. There are two

main ways in which the metal is directed by the hammer peen, determined by shape. When the metal is struck by a ball-peen hammer on an anvil it is forged, that is formed through compression, and the material displaced between the top and bottom dies moves outward in all directions because of the sphere of the peen. If the peen is cylindrical, as with a cross peen hammer, the metal is moved only in two directions, perpendicular to the long edge of the peen.294

Armour-making adds another level to this hammer work. While blacksmiths most often forge the metal directly between dies, the armourer usually strikes the material where it is above the bottom die in order to prevent forging and the resultant thinning of the material. By hammering above where the metal contacts the stake and forcing it down, the metal is compressed or stretched in the desired manner to shape the plate.

All of the tools used by the armourer left marks, and the techniques produced distinctive patterns which can be identified on the armour. The marks of the cross-peen hammer and the ball-peen or round-faced hammer are by far the most common. The marks of the planishing hammer are more uncommon due to being made exclusively on the exterior which was typically also filed or ground. That stage is more readily

identified by the marks of the stake rather than the hammer.

Cross-peen hammers leave marks which are longer than they are wide, though they are not always clearly defined around their edges. Some have narrow peens with a cylindrical section, some are broader but still domed and rectangular, while some have very narrow, almost chisel-like peens. This variety means that their marks can range from shallow and broad to clear and narrow. The basic way in which the metal is

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The usual shape of narrow-peened hammers in the Middle Ages and before was the cross- peen. Slash and straight-peen hammers move the metal in the same manner but the peen is oriented differently with regards to the handle, diagonally and parallel respectively.

moved, though, remains unchanged. There are instances where a long mark may be from a chisel with a very blunt edge rather than a hammer, as the two can be similar, and tool type must be determined based on context.

Rounded hammers can be ball-peen or be hammers with a domed face. In either case the mark left is round, usually with no sharp edges or corners. These marks are at least as common as oblong marks, and are mostly, though not exclusively, associated with round armour shapes such as breastplates. Because there are usually no defined edges, overlapping of marks can very easily obscure their shape and size, though this same effect also demonstrates the use of a round hammer.

One of the difficulties in identifying the marks of a rounded hammer is that they can very often be confused with the marks left by a rounded stake. A distinguishing feature of the hammer versus the stake is that marks made with a ball-peen hammer tend to be deeper and more well-defined since the peen is likely to be of a smaller diameter and the force of the striking die tends to create a more defined mark. This is not true of hammers with gently domed faces which would not make such deep marks and which would have been used on more gently domed pieces because of the face’s greater radius. It is usually necessary to take the context of the marks into consideration, including the type of armour, its quality, and the other features which may interrupt the round marks, to make a certain determination regarding tool type.

Planishing would usually have called for flat faced hammers, and here the shape of the face, whether circular or square, is much less important than its flatness, which allows the hammer to create a smoothly faceted surface on the exterior of plates, instead of the divots or pockmarks that a domed face would create. The mark left by planishing is only a flat facet, making it impossible to identify any other characteristic of the tool. In addition, planishing was usually only a prelude to polishing, and so the marks left by

the hammer itself are almost invariably lost. Where pieces have been left at this stage with no further polishing the marks are difficult to determine and as a result it is usually the smoothness on the exterior, the result of planishing and polishing, and the

smoothness on the interior, the result of the stake, which are indicative of the technique. Planishing works best when the curvature of the stake exactly matches the curvature of the area of the plate being worked, and for this reason stakes which are not perfect hemispheres but are instead mushroom-shaped are today preferred for this operation.295 Because of the irregular curvature of the surface a single stake may be used where many spherical stakes would have been required. The need for the stake to match the curvature, and the closeness of the hammer blows during planishing, results in a very smooth interior surface that can usually be differentiated from marks made by a ball-peen hammer, even though both often have little pattern and are usually rounded.

Although the marks from the planishing stake are the ones most commonly encountered they are by no means the only ones. Light planishing may not have been enough to obscure earlier marks, and its lack could leave any stake marks intact. Because plates can be worked on both the interior and the exterior the difficulty lies in distinguishing stake marks from those left by hammers or other tools.

Context is often helpful in these cases. For example, oblong tool marks in a simply curled form are from a hammer, not a stake, since the piece was most likely hammered on the interior; a stake would not leave the same sort of marks and is less likely to have been used. Marks in a deep form which has not been planished are more probable to be stake marks since hammer work on deep forms is normally carried out on the exterior.

A particularly good example of the types of stake marks which can be found on the interiors of unplanished or semi-planished pieces is Royal Armouries IV.499, a late

295

fifteenth-century German sallet.296 The interior is heavily marred by three distinct bands of marks: those in the top of the skull, a wide band around the middle

circumference of the skull, and a lower band on the lower skull and tail. The upper and lower patterns are primarily round although closely overlapped, very deep in the skull and shallower on the tail. The depth of the upper marks would seem to indicate internal doming, possible with a long-headed hammer, but the marks overlap the middle band at its upper edge, showing that they were made later as part of a heavy planishing stage.

The middle band is remarkable not only for its roughness, much rougher than is commonly seen, but also for the clarity of the stake marks which in this case have a square or rectangular shape. These are partly obscured by a very light planishing mark layer, much lighter than the one above, which does not remove the entirety of the larger square marks. These suggest that a square-headed stake was used for raising, and that the armourer was hitting the metal exceptionally hard to leave such well-defined marks, which is borne out in the unusually heavy planishing pattern at the top of the skull.

Unfortunately, IV.499 presents an almost unique opportunity to identify a stake face of a shape other than round. Stake types, either general or specific, typically cannot be determined using the tool-mark evidence because they left very little marking and what they did leave conveys little about the stake as a whole. It is impossible to determine anything about the raising stake used by the IV.499 armourer other than a part of it having had a squared face. That a wide variety of stakes were used is shown in inventories and artwork, but the information that is more readily available pertains more to hammers and the overall pattern of work left by them and the stakes.

Although little can be determined about stakes from the tool mark evidence, there are enough surviving examples and depictions to form an idea of their types. The

296

See Figure 56. For a complete description of this object and its marks, see Chapter V, pp. 177-80.

lower half of stakes usually had some sort of step below which was a square tang which would be set into a bench or block. This step could have been made with a forge- welded collar, or by swelling the step by forging. The stakes shown in Burgkmair’s woodcut are of the latter type, as are the two stakes from the Greenwich armoury now in Leeds. This step prevented the stake from being driven into and splitting the base it was set in.297

The working ends of stakes come in three basic types, two projection, one projection, and upright.298 Stakes with two projections are sometimes called T-stakes, and double-horned bickirons fall in this category. Those with one projection include basic bickirons and raising stakes. Upright stakes include ball, mushroom, and creasing stakes, which may have an offset shaft to reach into deeper forms.299

The Royal Armouries has a fine example of a two projection stake, temporary inventory letter Z, with its two small faces possibly used for planishing, and it likely dates to the sixteenth century and the royal Greenwich workshop.300 This very form of stake is still in use today, under the name of a ‘saucepan belly stake’ because of its modern function of planishing the sides of rounded pots.301 A two-projection stake of this same type is shown in the c. 1450 woodcut of St Eligius discussed in Chapter II.302

The shaft is upset, or forged back on itself to swell it, with a square tennon to fit in a block. The upper end was split, a horizontal bar was placed in the split, and the two were forge welded together. The thickness created by the three layers was turned into a square, flat work surface while the ends of the bar were turned up and slightly domed to

297

Modern stakes lack this step and have a tapering, wedge-like tang. This is suitable for steel stake plates and facilitates their removal from the plate.

298

Untracht, Jewellery, p. 242. 299

See Figure 57. 300

See Figures 58 and 59. 301

R. H. Warn and J. G. Horner, The Sheet Metal Worker’s Instructor (London: C. Lockwood, 1906), p. 204.

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form the main work surfaces. The two ends allow for two slightly different shapes, increasing its usefulness.

The Armouries’ raising stake already mentioned is likewise a perfect example of a one projection stake.303 This precise shape is sometimes known as a side stake

today.304 It has been a part of the working collection of the Royal Armouries most likely since the days of the Greenwich workshop and was still in use by an armourer until c. 2010, when the workshop in the Leeds museum was closed. It is the armourer’s stake par excellence, useful for not just raising but also many other functions, and was the most-used stake during the experimental plate work done for this thesis.305

The stake has an octagonal shaft ending with a swelled base and a wide square tennon. The upper part of the shaft also swells to a flat-topped working face with three straight edges. The projecting horn is round and slightly tapered, and the nose is cut at an angle. The base was formed by upsetting, where the hot iron was forged back into itself, causing the swelling. The horn was also clearly forged, shown by a small depression in the centre of the end, formed when the hotter exterior forged more easily than the cooler interior.306 The working faces may have a steel plate welded on, but without testing this is difficult to say with certainty.

The horn and flat face of this stake make it perfect for nearly all of the shaping operations of the armourer. Raising, curling, doming, fluting, and edge finishes can all be performed, and a ball stake for planishing and a tool for piercing holes are the only other essential stakes needed. It is likely that the ‘byckorne’ listed amongst the armourer’s tools in the Paston letters was just such a stake.307

303

See Figures 60 and 61. 304

Warn and Horner, The Sheet Metal Worker’s Instructor, p. 204. 305

See Figures 62 and 63. 306

See Figure 64. 307

Upright stakes such as a creasing or fluting stake are shown on Seusenhofer’s workbench in the Burgkmair woodcut.308 There are none of this kind of stake in the Armouries' collection, but the 'Creste stake' in the 1511 Greenwich inventory was almost certainly of this type, as was the 'vysure stake' because it needed to fit into a fairly narrow space.

Besides stakes the armourer made great use of anvils for several stages of the work. Anvils are distinct from stakes in that they have a large flat work-surface, which a stake usually does not, and the majority of the work is done over the central mass, while stakes usually have protruding arms upon which the work is done, or small shaped heads which lack the mass of an anvil. The mass of the anvil is central to its design, since it increases the effectiveness of the hammer blows through absorption of energy and the rebound this allows for the hammer. Other now-familiar features of the anvil, in particular the horn, were known at the time but were typically separate tools.309

The disadvantage of anvils is their size which requires a great deal of material, time, and effort to construct. Because of this, probably most particularly the material requirement, early anvils were very small and block shaped with a tang on the bottom to drive into a wooden base. These ‘stump anvils’ are the common ancestor of both large anvils and slender stakes. The tennon and small working surface was retained on stakes, while the block form and central mass was retained on anvils. Both would grow in size and complexity over time, although small ‘stake anvils’ would continue in use, combining the tennon of the stake and shape of the anvil.

The Armouries has a fine stake anvil, struck three times with WP in a heart, which probably belonged to William Pickering, the master of the Greenwich workshop

308

See Figure 65. 309

A small horned anvil is illustrated in Bashford Dean, ‘An Armourer’s Workshop’, in

Bashford Dean, Notes on Arms and Armour (Huntingdon: Ken Trotman, 2007), pp. 109-111 (p. 111).

from 1608-18.310 It has a curved rectangular face and a short, blocky body which flares out on two sides to create the rectangular upper shape. At the bottom is a square tennon to set the anvil in a stump or a bench.

Although this small anvil is not as versatile as the raising stake it would still be a very useful tool in the workshop. The curved face would be well suited to anticlastic curling on smaller plates, as well as forging and shaping other small areas. Because of its size it is not suited to large plates such as breastplates or helmet skull, but armour is