[MR] Buff coat?

[David Chessler]

The information I have is that they used vegetable tanned leather, treated
with an oil finish. The pictures I've seen show a tan (buff) garment. My
experience with oil treatments on vegetable tanned leather is that you get a
dark brown finish. This leads me to suspect they did something different.
Could just be a different oil--I usually treat leather with neatsfoot oil. 

The issue came up in my mind because I punch-tested an old garment leather
jacket that I thought would be too thin to use, and it passed the test easily:
no damage and barely a dent. My jacket itself can't be modified to look
period, but it put me in mind to make a leather buff coat. four-ounce leather
(2mm) is supposedly "known" to pass the punch test without actual testing. 

I had been thinking of making such a jacket design in linen. (It is a valid
military design of the entire Tudor and Stuart period.) This made me think
that leather might also work well. 

A leather jerkin with skirts would be a sleeveless buff coat (most of the
museum copies have sleeves, but not all of them--and they are mostly later
period anyhow. 

--

YIS

Davitt il Bigollo da Pisa
Erudit de l'Academie de Espee de Atlantia
Storvik (rapier)
Roxbury Mill (other things) 

------ Original Message ------
Received: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:07:37 PM EDT
From: James Barker <flonzy at hotmail.com>
To: <atlantia at atlantia.sca.org>
Subject: Re: [MR] Buff coat?

> 
> I don't know about buff coats on the Mary Rose but there were a number of
leather jerkins, 46 individual jerkins are identified. I understand buff coats
are made of a specific leather type/finish; the leather jerkins on the MR are
just normal vegetable tanned leather. "Before the Mast" has drawings and
information on the MR jerkins and taking a look at the glossary buff coats are
not listed in "Before the Mast".
> 
>  
> 
> Also having seen the reply with a vendor selling 17th century buff coats
reproductions I would caution one thing, depending on your personal accuracy
level, modern suede leather is split on both side with the flesh side (the
outside of a cow) removed where medieval suede is just the split side out
flesh side in. Having both sides split makes the leather easy to stretch; the
strength in leather is the flesh side. 
> 
> 
> 
> Hope this helps
> Baron James de Biblesworth
> 
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> 
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> 
>  
> > Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:26:34 -0400
> > To: atlantia at atlantia.sca.org
> > From: chessler at usa.net
> > Subject: [MR] Buff coat?
> > 
> > I'm looking for an illustration (or pattern) for a "buff coat". 
> > Supposedly, they were fairly common in the 16th C and later, and many 
> > were found on the Mary Rose. However, I have not found any 
> > illustrations as to what one looked like in period.
> > 
> > --
> > 
> > YIS
> > 
> > Davitt il Bigollo da Pisa
> > Erudit de l'Academie de Espee de Atlantia
> > Storvik (rapier)
> > Roxbury Mill (other things) 
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