On Making the Lorica Bronze Fittings

The little bronze rosettes on the Roman helmet and lorica were made by stamping them from thin bronze. Alastair and I made a punch that had a flower shape cut into it. We took thin bronze strips, annealed them by heating them to red-hot and dipping them in cold water, then stamped the shapes out over a block of lead. Then we used aviation snips to cut the little circles out and then trimmed and polished them, and sanded the sharp edges. The stamp was easy to make using a metal lathe and then a dremel tool to cut the slots between the petals. The stamp was polished to remove sharp edges. This was a rather easy piece of armouring work. Our stamp was even made from soft brass and has not been worn out yet. It works well. There are many different patterns of rosettes that can be made.

As far as the hinges go, I took 20 gauge phosphor bronze (hard to obtain but a more accurate substitute compared to what the Romans used than silicon bronze) and stacked 5 layers of it, with the top layer having the pattern on it. The Romans commonly used brass (zinc alloy of copper) which is far easier to obtain but not nearly as strong as bronze (tin alloy of copper). Brass hinges must be thicker in order to be strong however, perhaps 18 gauge in thickness. This is a neat trick: I took a scan of the hinge pattern from the Legio XX Legionaries Handbook (http://www.larp.com/legioxx/index.html) and blew it up to the right size, spray-glued a paper sheet o f it to a sheet of bronze, stacked four more layers of bronze sheet under the one with the pattern on it, and then used a small band saw to cut the rough shape out. Before cutting, three rivet holes out of the ten on each pattern are punched and temporary copper rivets were inserted and swelled into place with light tape sof a flat hammer to keep the five bronze layers from sliding around relative to each other while I cut the outline of the pattern from the bronze plates on the band saw. The three holes you select for holding the layers together should be: a centerline hole on one end of the piece, and the two holes in the leaves at the other end of the part. Why? So, when you fold the piece over, the holes you made as placeholders can be used to align the punch to make the hole in the second layer of bronze. If you choose holes that line up with each other after the hinge is folded, then you have a problem of misalignment of the holes to deal with. The holes for the remaining rivet holes are drilled or punched with a mechanical hand punch after each half-hinge is folded, aligned and shaped. The rivets are carefully ground and removed, and now you have five half-hinge pieces. The bronze pieces are annealed as above and then folded over a piece if bronze brazing rod 1/16" diameter which will also be the material used to make the hinge rods. The loops that the rod passes through are offset from the flat plane of the hinge so that when the folded hinge lies on a flat surface, no gap is present beneath it. Use a chisel and strike on a line paralleling the hinge rod to offset the hinge loops with the hinge resting on a flat surface. From the edge view, the loop then resembles the letter "P" in profile. After forming and aligning the top and bottom so that the edges line up as good as you can get them. The hinge pieces are then trimmed and the edges files with needle files until the edges are aligned and when assembled, it is very difficult to see that the half-hinges are two layers of bronze. They appear to be a single piece. This is exactly how the Romans did it. Why? Because hinges that have little tabs curled around the hinge rod without having their ends secured and fused with the hinge leaf itself are easily pulled open and are extremely weak compared to a properly folded hinge. Do it right the first time and you will solve all problems. It's not much fun because it's so time-consuming, but the results are excellent. You cannot buy Roman style hinges in bronze or even in brass from any cabinetry or woodworking shops because the Roman lobed style hinge is no longer manufactured in modern times and there are no styles even close to resembling it.