Getting your supplier to do it on the shear like you did is a better way, for sure.

Just pointing angle grinder is all you need for the score and bend method. May actually save time in so far as it saves fit-up, but the cutting is a bit of a pain. Though on 1/8 it should be fairly quick

I do, but it takes literal second to do

Looks good, but if you wire brush that flux off it would look a little nicer

Angle grinder

If you buy it at the hardware store. They mark that shit up crazy high. If you go to an actual metal supplier it’s much more reasonable

I guess so, it’s just that references to guns in that time span are so rare while references to armour are so ubiquitous. Like we have mountains of references to armour from that time period, and several for guns.

Yes, gunpowder may have been hanging around for a while, but it didn’t become a significant force on the battle field until the 1400s.

On the other hand, Europeans knights were routinely covering their entire bodies with plate armour by the 1340s. And that’s after a half century or so of gradually adding more renforcements to the traditional maille. The 14th century is a wild time for the development of armour but by the 1380s, it starts to settle into the standard arrangement that you would think of for “classic full plate”.

That’s at least a solid century of rapid development without gunpowder as a main driver.

“ Plate was developed in response to early firearms making earlier mail worthless.”

That doesn’t sound quite right. Plate got going in earnest by the late 13th century, and was highly developed by the end of the 14th. Firearms show up around the mid 14th century, but don’t develop a serious battlefield presence until the 15th.