Identifying BREASTPLATE

[A Senefelder]

I was expected your comment ,yes it seems to be of laminated construction but you are the specialist about the construction so I'm not 100 % sure.

Jean, here is, I believe, why. " Laminated " construction happened for basically two reasons. 1) thrift, steel and iron were expensive and thus the best possible use was made of all scrap so the forge welding togther of " drops " ,of left over pieces after cutting out parts could be forge welded togther to create a new usable piece of steel or iron from which to make something else. 2) and this is I think what I see with yours, late laminated construction was done as musketts and gun powder weapons were becomming the dominante factor on the battle field in the later 16 and 17th centuries. What was done was that extra steel/iron was forge welded into a finished piece to make it thicker ( I have seen pics of Xrayed examples where it is clearly visible that tassets and other armour plates have been forge welded inside a breast plate to make it thicker ) or on occasion an actual " doubling up " where essentially two similar pieces ( i'm unaware of this having been done with anything but breast plates but that certainly doesn't rule out its possibly having been done with other armour components ) ie. two breast plates, one inside the other, being forge welded completely togther to yield a thicker, shot proof piece. I believe this is what I am perhaps seeing with yours Jean. It allowed pieces that had been made of a weight/thickness to resist edged weapons to be thickened to resist shot. It wasn't common, the majority of shot proof armours being built from material of the requisit thickness, but there are examples of this method of late laminated construction out there. Fernandos is likley not shot proof and thus weights less than your's does.

This is of course all based on what I seem to be seeing in photographs so it is simply " my best guess " based on that. It's certainly possible that piece in hand, I or others may conclude differently.