Duke of Burgundy Suit Of Armor

I'd always longed for this suit and when the price dropped, I bought one a few years ago. Don't get me wrong, I love it. It's the centerpiece of my home office and when people ask me on Zoom calls "Is that a suit of armor behind you?" I get a kick out of looking over my should and saying "What? This old thing?" So, VERY happy with my purchase. But there are a couple of things I wish I'd known first.

The description says "fully wearable" and that's mostly true, but not entirely. I haven't actually tried to put the suit on, but it seems like most of it can be worn—except for the gauntlets. These are not full gloves. The knuckle pieces are just riveted to strips of leather that hang from the hand. You can put your hands into the gauntlets, but the fingers will not move with your fingers.

Before you even get to the gauntlets though, you'll discover that the armor comes slathered in grease and wrapped in plastic. There were no instructions for cleaning it. I spent two weekends and two bottles of denatured alcohol degreasing the armor before I could even begin assembling it. I then waxed the armor with car wax to give it some degree of rust protection. The good news is that all of the interior sides are painted black, so while you still have to clean both sides, you only have to wax the outside.

Finally, there are a couple of screws, but most of the plates are riveted together and they do not come apart. Getting grease out from between the very tight joints was nearly impossible, as was getting wax into them. In a number of cases I ended up drilling out the rivets and replacing them with 4mm post screws (Chicago screws) in order to make the maintenance easier.

So there you go. It's a great suit of armor at a great price, but don't expect to pull it out of the box and wear it or display it right away.