The Mercenarys Tailor Armoury started out as The Street Survivors Armourer in the early 90's doing both medieval and cyberpunk fashion armour. With the decision to open a booth at a local ren faire we realized that the name wasn't really going to meet the requierments for "period correctness" and The Mercenarys Tailor was born.
The staff is made up of a group of individuals who have a keen interest in medieval and renaissance history and who really never outgrew nailing boards together to make swords and play "King Arthur". The head armourer did his first suit at the age of twelve made up from scrap buckskin and galvinized sheet steel from the roof of his moms barn. He was thrilled, his mother saw it otherwise. We have members of several LARP groups (Amtgard and Midlands) as well as a former SCA member in our staff. We are a production armoury which means that our armour is pretty much in stock all the time and is one size fits most so no waiting for eight months to get your order and three months of nagging after to have it finally show up. If you are concerned with fit we can usually match a body type with a few basic measurments and tweek a piece here before shippment and we are ALWAYS avaliable for any future modifications you may need.
We use very little electrical tooling in the manufacturing process limiting it to, cut out, drilling of holes, stock removal and polishing, and welding. All our shaping is done traditionally with hammers, stakes and anvils, often using antique tools to better replicate the method of manufacture during the period. The only welding done is for the helmet bowels of things like our Norman Conicle Helm or Casquettel and this is the joining of two halves of the bowel, rather than 4,6 or even 8 seperate pieces often found in much India made armour. While we could make much more extensive use of welding on our products to make building faster we feel this detracts from the "real" feel of the work, also that it is better to have something made from one piece rather than multiple welded pieces whenever possible. All our armour is proudly made by us right here in the United States of America, an increasingly damn hard thing to find in the USA today. We haven't been shipped out to Mexico or China yet!!
We purchase period pieces both armour and weapons to help us get a better "feel" for how and why things were made as they were. This has helped us to incorperate such features as hand rolled edges and countersunk borders, beveled edges on articluating plates to create a better deflecting angle to shead blows, and slot riveted articulation wherever appropriate.
We will be putting together a gallery of customers in thier gear here so that folks can see what looks people have created (besides no one needs to see us modeling our own gear its what the customer does with it thats interesting) so send us a pic of you in your stuff.
Thanks you for taking the time to stop at our site and have a look around. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.
The Staff Of
The Mercenarys Tailor Armoury
Making Things the American Way
In The USA
If your looking for a great place to chat with collectors, users and maker of reproduction arms and armour we suggest Myarmoury.com.
If you are looking for fine custom blacksmithing please visit Greg at Living Iron Forge. Living Iron Forge.
If you are looking for the very finest in hand made maille jewelry please visit Chris and crew at Mardigan's.
These are the folks who've supplied us with our raw materials for the last 13 years. Good folks! White Wire & Metal Products.
If you're ever in our neck of the woods check this palce out. More history than you can shake a stick at, and just plain neat! The Valentown Museum, Victor NY.
Historic and decorative wax seals by soem friends of ours. Historic Seals.
