FACTOID #151: The five countries with the highest coffee consumption are also the five countries whose citizens trust one another the most. Coincidence? Probably.
The couter is the defense for the elbow in a piece of plate armour. Initially just a curved piece of metal, as plate armor progressed the couter became an articulated joint. Elbow redirects here. ... Plate armour is personal armour made from large metal plates, worn on the chest and sometimes the entire body. ... Hot metal work from a blacksmith In chemistry, a metal (Greek: Metallon) is an element that readily forms ions (cations) and has metallic bonds, and metals are sometimes described as a lattice of positive ions (cations) in a cloud of electrons. ...
During the middle of the 14th century this couter was attached by rivets and lames to the vambrace which defended the lower arm and the rerebrace that defended the upper arm.
Also during the 16th century, the size on the couter wing was reduced again and there was a brief flirtation with articulation on the inside of the elbow joint.
1360 Couter is pointed in shape and is generally articulated with two or three lames, but sometimes no lames are present, generally attributed to Italian workshops as opposed to the German method of attaching the couter via internal leather straps.
For the first half of the century they were made of flat plates, but gradually the breastplate was dished to conform to the shape of the body and the waist was drawn in for the characteristic "wasp-waisted" element of transitional style.
Couter: The defense for the elbow, generally mistakenly called the "elbow cop" in modern SCA parlance.
In the second quarter of the century a "wing" was added to the couter to improve the protection for the joint itself, first affixed with laces, then with rivets, and finally, mid-century, was made integral to the couter itself.