Thinking about research accuracy

I read an interesting article today in the Ottawa Citizen about the rise of fake peer reviewed journals and how they are affecting the scientific world. This was of interest to me from a work perspective since we're always having to answer questions based on "new research" that shows X or Y. But I also thought about it from an SCA perspective.

I pride myself at being pretty good at research. I've been able to dig out a lot of little tidbits of information on my leatherworking projects over the years. I mainly use book resources and museum artifacts as my base, but I also often do some pretty heavy online research, which helps me find artifacts and other people'e research. That being said, I'm not an academic, and I'm certainly rusty when it comes to using research journals as a major source of information. But this worries me.

As an amateur historical organization, I'm not sure how many people use research journals as a source of information. But if this trend is happening beyond the science journals and has been happening in the humanities as well, it's going to make our lives that much more difficult. Given that most of us are not professionally working in these fields, it's probably harder for us to tell whether a specific journal is a good source or not.

I guess it means the same rules apply whenever you're doing research, including online and through the journals. It's important to remember that just because someone wrote it down doesn't make it true.

When I'm doing research somewhere where there's a high risk of inaccuracy (for example, online) I mainly use sources as a way to point me to primary sources and artifacts.  I try not to base my opinions on other people's theories unless its backed up by solid evidence. I'll look for links to other more authoritative sources and then work back from there. Often I'll find references to books I know are good, or references to work or artifacts from museums in Europe. I'll then try to find those references or contact those museums for more direct information about the item.

I think applying these same techniques to research journals is probably a good idea.

General A&S To-Do List

So many ideas and projects floating around, I'm updating my list of things to work on so I can keep track. Some of these have been on the list for a loooooong time. :) These are not listed in any particular order.

1. Replace Avelyn's favour (likely make a second more sturdy one for wearing in armour as well)
2. Develop carving pattern for my heraldry and badge
3. Figure out how to fix Avelyn's armour/finish new lamellar or alternative
4. Start work on designing new leather leg pieces for Avelyn's new knee armour
5. Do "commissioned" children's archery glove for Eluned
6. Do "commissioned" belt favour (with award badges) for Robert the Blue
7. Figure out shoe pattern
8. Start research for leather tooling project
9. Start research for survey of period belt hardware (buckles etc)
10. Finish stick-purse
11. Try blue dye recipe from Plictho using lye 
12. Develop period leather dye class for next Practicum
13. Follow-up with Dragon Dormant about possible leatherworking class interest
14. Fix Avelyn's boots
15. Make silk personal and household banners for camping season

A busy day at Kingdom A&S

So much happened at Kingdom A&S this weekend, I'll try to sum it up in a logical way. Overall it was a terrific event and the site was bursting at the seems with so many people entering the competition. In particular, there were a lot of Skraels in attendance this year which is nice to see given the event was on the other side of Toronto.

Important News

My biggest news from Kingdom A&S came outside of the official activities for the day. Mistress AElfwyn and I have been talking a lot about leatherworking, the arts and sciences and the SCA in general since before QPT and at A&S she officially took me on as her apprentice. This is a really big deal and kind of blows my mind.

We did the ceremony in a gap in the judging schedule in the afternoon, so the low-profile ceremony I was expecting turned into pretty much the entire event watching us. Eep!

For those who couldn't hear what we were saying, this is approximately what was said:

AElfwyn: I will provide you with the wisdom of my council, my guidance, and my protection.  You will have a seat at my table and shelter in my hall. 

In turn, will you pay heed to my words and follow my direction? (I said yes) 

Will you strive to increase your skills, learning from the wise, that you may better teach others?  (I said yes)

Will you share your knowledge openly and fairly? (I said yes with a bit of a smart-ass remark about my level of knowledge)

Dafydd: Before these witnesses here assembled, I will be to AElfwyn faithful and true. To study and faithfully apply myself to the development of my craft in the arts & sciences, in service, and in all the courtly arts. I further pledge to defend her and her manors and household in peace and in war, and through her the Crown of Ealdormere;   and never, by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do aught that is loathful to her, on condition that she keep me as I deserve, and that all remain faithful to the agreement made here this day. 

Given that AElfwyn won the Technological Sciences category, I think I'm going to have to up my game. :)

My Project - The Leather Dyes
The culmination of over a year's work sort-of came to fruition this weekend at Kingdom A&S. I say sort-of because the project is nowhere near done, as there are many more recipes to try and other colours to produce. But, that being said, the formal part of the work is done and I've presented it at A&S, so I can now continue the work at my own pace between other projects, and work on developing my leather dye class.

It'll be interesting to see the comments on a my judging sheets, I had AElfwyn and Master Dafydd as my judges so I know they'll be fair and give me good suggestions to improve. If I had it to do again I'd probably take a different approach to my project for A&S. Based on my initial conversations with my judges, and the way some other people handled the transition from QPT to A&S, I probably would have been better off producing an item made with leather dyed using my period dye. Of course, that was always the plan as I took on this project as part of my overall stick-purse piece. But the stick-purse just wasn't ready to go for this weekend.

In the end, I expect I would have scored higher that way but I always knew it was one of those projects that falls between core research (AKA a research paper) and end product, so wasn't the type of thing that would necessarily do well in a competition. But I've certainly generated some interest and discussion about the topic, which is a good thing. I go back to a conversation I had with Master Wilfrid about how surprised he was that I was able to show a green leather dye was available in period. To me, that's the point of this project.

I'll keep the approach in mind for next year though, as Her Majesty confirmed she plans to sponsor QPT again this year.

Some Gotcha Moments

Not specifically leatherworking related but I wrote my first two sets of scroll texts for this event and got to see the response to the scrolls live and in person. Lady Augusta had contacted me to do these ones personally, which was super awesome! She did a great job on the scrolls too.

The first award was for Avelyn. She was called up by Their Majesties during morning court and received her Scarlet Banner. She was rather shocked. I wrote the text to touch on a number of things, including her heraldry (which has a comet sinister on it, which is interpreted as an omen of doom), some references to her Pennsic fighting experiences and her interest in the Coppergate Helm (her blog is called Y in the Well as a reference to where the helm was found).

The second scroll was for Lady Emelote. She was called up in afternoon court to receive an Award of the Orion. She was bouncing she was so excited. In her text I touched on her sewing and cooking, and tried to reference some of her projects (including the 30 dishes for 30 years of Skrael that she served at Border Spat).

I'll post the scroll texts as soon as I have the final versions for those who'd like to read them in full.

My next research project - the concept

A while back I posted following a conversation with Mistress AElfwyn, where she asked me what my next project would be now that I'm almost done the formal portion of the leather dyes. Of course, I expect the leather dye work will continue for a long time, but I had posted some ideas of what I could work on next.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I ran into AElfwyn again at the local leather store, and she asked me a question about how I did my leather tooling. After showing her my technique using a swivel knife, we had a bit of a discussion about whether that would have been how it was done in period (using cuts as a basis for the tooling pattern).

So, the discussion has been sitting with me since then (with a few more brief exchanges with AElwyn thrown in about the topic).

And of course, I can't just leave a question like that floating out there without a solid answer. Based on the two books I have on hand it looks to be true, but I think this calls for a research paper. :)

So, here's what I'm thinking:

Research paper on specific decorative techniques that would have been used at various periods, along with possibly work on identifying the specific tools that can be documented to have been used.

Step 1: Online research to see what else has been done by others. This includes reading the Floriligium and other online resources. Will want to do my own cross-checks on anything but could give me a good idea of primary and secondary sources to check. Should also check research journals for relevant materials.

Step 2: Documentary search of sources identified in step one and review of materials.

Step 3: Museum research to look at artifacts to determine evidence of techniques and tools used (This would be a good time to do another trip to the UK to see them up close). If can't go in person, perhaps contact museums with significant leather collections to discuss if they have done any similar analysis.

Step 4: Analysis and writing up of research, and any follow-ups necessary. Probably for submission at a future Kingdom A&S.

So I figure that'll take me what...2-3 weeks. :) OK, maybe not.

I can then turn my research into a period leather tooling class to fit in alongside my Intro to Leatherworking I taught this year, and the period leather dyes class I plan to develop this spring. A pretty good triumvirate of courses I think.

Gulf Wars Gift Basket Contribution (With Pictures)

This post was written in advance but now that everyone is headed back from Gulf Wars I expect it should be safe to post without revealing any surprises.

At the major SCA wars, it's tradition that the various royals exchange gift baskets. Often these baskets are made up of various items made by the populace of the giving kingdom. We know in advance which kingdom's royals will be receiving the basket, so we often keep that kingdom's heraldry and colours in mind when donating the items.

This year for Gulf Wars, the recipient of Our Majesties' gift basket is Trimaris. Over the past couple of months, Her Majesty had placed a call out to the populace to for items for this gift basket.

Avelyn had the idea of donating a starter set of silk banner supplies, so we pulled together a quick collection of various colours of silk dye, along with some gutta.

I wanted to do something a bit more personal, so my contribution was of course a leather item. After some discussion, I came up with the brilliant (note: some sarcasm implied) idea of doing one of my rapier sheaths for the gift basket. Now, this isn't itself such a bad idea. The problem was that it took me so long to decide what to contribute that I'd left myself very little time to make the sheath. I basically only had a couple of weeks between when I made the decision on the sheath and Practicum (which was the last event I would see Her Majesty before she left for Gulf Wars).

For those that haven't seen one of my rapier sheaths, they are fairly time and resource heavy to make. The core of the sheath is a plastic plumbing tube that will help protect the sword from bending in transport. I then cover it with leather, which is tooled and dyed as appropriate.

There are now only five of them in existence (I have my original prototype, I gave one to the Barony when I stepped down as rapier champion, Lady Thora received a special one as a going away present and there's one in Dragon Dormant with the winner of the Border Spat tourney I ran two years ago). In all, they take probably anywhere from 10-20 hours of labour to make (actual work time, not including drying time etc.), depending on the complexity of the leather tooling and whether I have to develop a carving pattern or its something I've made before. They also require a particularly long piece of leather since you need a single piece that covers the length of the sheath - in this case about 3 1/2 feet long).

I wanted to tailor the sheath for Trimaris, so I also developed a carving pattern for their populace badge (thankfully their badge is an easy design - Thank You! to whoever designed it) and custom mixed a blue dye that would be the appropriate colour for their heraldry.

All in all I think it turned out pretty well. I hope Their Majesties of Trimaris like it, and that it will work for whoever ends up with it. I attached a little card with my contact information so who knows, they may even be reading this post some day (if so, Hi!!! Hope you like it).

And now, to the pictures:

Proof that I do stuff unrelated to leatherwork (with picture)

Lately most of my A&S work has been related to leatherworking, but every once and a while I do actually do some stuff in a completely unrelated area.

Something we've been meaning to do for a while now is work on our own banners for events. Most of the rest of the members of Talfryn have their own banners at events, particularly when we camp at Trillium War or Pennsic. They're lovely heraldic silk banners and they look really awesome.

Last year at Practicum, Avelyn and I took a silk painting class and over the last year we've been accumulating stuff to do it. I had ordered a starter kit from one of my suppliers for my leather dye pigments, but we've also discovered that our local art supply stores carry the stuff as well.

So, this weekend while Avelyn and Emelote were working on other A&S projects, I decided to do a sample sheet of the various colours so we could figure out which ones we want to use for our banners (there are 3-4 different shades for most of the colours and we didn't want to buy a huge supply of them until we knew which one was the right shade).

The image below is the colour chart before I fixed the dye and washed out the gutta. I used the black gutta so the lines separating the colours would stay in place. I've applied the colours in order of their numbering by Pebeo (the brand we can get locally), with the blank spots for colours we don't currently have in our collection, mostly because we wouldn't really use them (like salmon pink). We may want to get some of the browns though and test those, since we may need them for some pieces.

The Ongoing Challenge of the Period Blue Leather Dye

The last piece of my Kingdom A&S puzzle is the blue dye. For those that have been following along, this has been a bit of an ongoing saga, with multiple attempts at various recipes.

This past week I made yet another attempt at getting the dye to work. I used the first recipe I tried from the Plictho, which is basically a mixture of indigo, water and gum arabic. Based on the input a received at QPT, I adjusted the recipe process by:

• Grinding the indigo finer using a mortar and pestle
• Using distilled water instead of just filtered tap water
• Soaking the leather in alum water for a full 2 minutes instead of just a quick dip
• Soaking the leather in the dye for 30 seconds rather than painting it on.

All of these changes got me absolutely no further than I was before, at least with the veg tan leather. It gives me a bit of a tint on the surface but it just rubs right off as soon as I touch it with a damp cloth.

Just for a test I did try the dye on a piece of the alum tawed leather that I ordered from the states. It seems to have worked much better, and doesn't really rub off at all. I suspect this is one of the dyes that was originally for tawed leather and that's why it isn't working on the veg tan.

As a last ditch effort, I took a piece of veg tan and let it soak in my dye jar for a full two hours, just to see if it made any difference. It didn't really do much, other than collect some of the sediment on the leather (which rubbed off pretty easily as well).

I think this recipe is a write-off at this point. I may try one more attempt at my second recipe, which uses strong vinegar, but I'm not particularly hopeful. If that doesn't work, I'll have to try some of the more challenging recipes that involve stronger chemicals like lye. But that probably won't happen for Kingdom A&S.

Still, I do have four colours working now (red, green, yellow and black), which isn't a bad project I think.