The Worcester Art Museum (WAM) commissioned a set of new stands for their travelling exhibit of armor.
They were designed by Sean Powell and the CNC work was done by Peter Carmichael. These have many advantages over
the static stands that I have made. These include:
They are actually complete - including arms.
The arms can be posed. This helps a lot when you want to make a natural looking display.
They can be adjusted for height and the shoulders can be adjusted for width.
They also have a set of basic features that make them well suited to displaying armor. These include:
They are very solid and stable.
They can be used without an additional base.
They can easily be secured to an additional base for added stability and security.
The legs are set in a genric pose, but one that isn't static and straight. This keeps the design (relatively) simple but still provides a natural look.
The piece separates below the waist, so the top half can be used for half suits on a base.
The parts have been sized to be relatively slim. This allows them to be used on more different sizes of armour without having to cut into the wood. The WAM can pad them out to fit each individual armor.
They can be adjusted for height at the knees or with spacers added at waist and neck.
The neck and waist can be turned as part of a realistic pose.
By reversing the leg assembly process the stance can be reversed during initial construction so you can pick which leg should stand forward.
The shoulders can be adjusted for width. and the arms for length at the elbow and wrist.
Each basic stand can be cut from one sheet of plywood. The base is additional plywood and 1x3.
The legs can be turned through at least 30 degrees each to adjust the pose and stability.
I took the PDFs off to a print shop that can print on a large format printer and gave this a try. I had some scrap plywood lying around, so I just used it all up
and ended up with a mostly complete stand. Then I put 3 different armors and part armors on it.
First I used it to pose one of my composed black and white half suits. This was complicated in a few ways.
The munions on the "suit" are missing a plate on one shoulder. So I cranked one shoulder in to allow me to pose it reasonably. This worked pretty well.
The "suit" includes elbow gauntlets. These are always an annoyance to display, but I basically made it work with a relatively horizontal forarm position.
Finally, the helmet I have on the "suit" is very small. This caused a real problem, as it wouldn't fit on the head. I would have to
cut it down to work. This would be easy if I were planning to use this stand on this suit permanently. I did this before I built the legs.
Once I had the legs built, I tried it on two more suits.
Here are two very different armors on the same stand. One is antique and for someone about 5'6", the other
is modern and was made for someone 6'1". Normally you would need two different stands.
In this case, I set the knees at the shortest and longest settings. I then added a 3/4" spacer at the hips to
further extend the stand. I also added an additional 3/4" spacer at the neck, but this was used for both
armors since the helmet on the tall one has a lining, but the antique one doesn't.
I have since turned the legs to give me a more natural looking angle between the feet.
These images show the overall stand from various angles.This is just fun. This is what was left over after one stand was cut from one 4x8 sheet of plywood.
This shows the full set of stands set up temporarily. The bases on the left are to be used to display half suits.
This shows the full set of stands on their way toward packing.
This shows one stand taken apart into all of its separate parts. The eyebolts for the elbow joint have been put in sideways, but otherwise this is ready to be assembled.
If you look carefully you can see that there are three holes at the top of the calf and bottom of the thigh. These allow the leg to be adjusted for height.
Similar adjustments are done in the arms and shoulders by screwing the eyebolts in and out.
And now on to details that show how the sections are joined
This shows how the shoulder is assembled. The eyebolt goes through a block (allowing it to be moved in and out for narrower and wider shoulders) and rotated to move the arm forward and backward. The arm is raised by rotating the upper arm on the eye. When the right position is chosen, the nut locks it is place.This shows the parts that actually make the pivoting joints work. The eyebolt is a 1/2"x6" fully threaded eyebolt. The 5/8" nut can be jammed into the eyebolt, and then the 1/2" bolt fits inside the nut. Then when the 1/2" bolt is tightened, the nut cuts into the plywood locking the joint into position. This shows how the knee is assembled. The knee can't be posed. This helps the stand maintain a lot of stability. It has been designed to allow the leg length to be changed by moving the bolts to different sets of holes above and below the joint.This shows the wrist joint. This uses a smaller eyebolt and since the wrist doesn't have to support the weight put on elbows and shoulders, it can just be kept in position with friction.And for fun, a picture of the CAD SolidWorks 2019 drawing.
When I built my stand, I did it from scrap with a sabre saw which doesn't cut straight. I didn't want to have to cut all of the tabs and slots, so I adapted
the existing plans to eliminate them and use narrow nailer strips instead. I think that this meant that I messed up some of the alignment in the legs. My fault.
Getting the body and arms built was very straightforward. Moving on to the legs, there are a lot of parts so they took a while to cut.
They also need to hold the stand up straight, so I had to mess around a lot of try to keep the stand straight as the knees are adjusted.
This isn't all that hard to build, but it does take some time, and you do have to be very careful cutting the pieces.
The only really ticklish part was getting the top of the legs set at the right angle. This required careful sanding to get the pieces to the right angle.
I expect that this would have been easier if I had used the tabs to set the side pieces at exactly the right vertical position.
Most of the stand is constructed from unmodified plywood pieces with sanded edges. You do have to sand the arm sections down to round, the shoulders
to blend the pieces to mimic the curve of the shoulder front to back and the top of the hips and bottom of the feet. I never quite finished the
lower legs (ran out of plywood) so I haven't put the foot bottom plates on.
