One of the things I consider was the number of points of fixture. Mountain Pattern has only one, which makes it easy to assemble, but if a piece fails it has the risk of becoming dislodged and would create a week point in the armour if that point too a regular beating. Star Scale has three points, which makes it complex to assemble, but does provide three points a failure, before loosing a lame.

Another thing I considered was something unique to the Mountain Pattern. I thought that the up risers of the 山 character on the left and right side provided a possible point for the sharing of metal when under a lot of stress.

And finally, if the two types of lames where to be cast, using period metalwork techniques then the star scale is the easier to create.

So as a result of these consideration I chose to focus primarily on the Star Scale.

Chinese Mountain Pattern Armour

In 2007 I read the article on Armour Archive about "Construction of Chinese Mountain Patter Armour" by Daniel Slone. SKA: (Sun Lu-shan). Inspired by it I aimed to tried to reconstruct the piece of armour, known as Shan wen kia,or “mountain pattern armour”. Through a process of trial and error I have reconstructed an effective piece of armour.