Leather Gauntlet

[hivemind]

Clamshell-style gauntlet I banged out last Saturday to protect my sword hand, after one of the guys in my unit got a broken thumb the previous Sunday.

[moeg]

Well done!!

that looks like it should protect you. The white layer inside of the gauntlet is padding? is it closed cell foam? The red thumb straps are a nice touch too.

Moe.

[Daggrim]

Wow, you "banged" that out in a day? Amazing. It's got a lot of depth to it...I mean there are a lot of things you had to do just right to get that all to fit, and to look so good. Many layers of skills there. lotsa hours at the workbench.

What did you use for rivets? Looks like rapid rivets, or maybe tubular rivets.

Dag

[hivemind]

The padding on the knuckles is 6mm closed-cell foam, over the thumb it's the same stuff in 2mm thickness. Commonly sold at craft stores as "fun foam" in sheets.

The rivets are all speedy rivets, in three different sizes.

And yeah, it took a few hours, but not terrible. Mostly because the pattern I had was rubbish in spots, and needed to be reworked: http://www.bladeturner.com/pattern/clamgaunt/clamgaunt.html

The wrist cuff (piece J) is probably twice as long as it should be on the ends, the thumb cover pieces (K & L) make zero sense, and the section on the back of the hand (I) wasn't quite right, and needed more space in the thumb webbing area. Basically, once it was together, there wasn't any space to hold something in my hand, and my thumb stuck out. I reworked that whole area to get it so that I can actually grip a hilt and fight with it on.

But, I needed something fast, lest I end up like this:

so I grabbed the first workable pattern I saw and ran with it.

[BlackRivet]

Awesome gauntlet! I like the colours you chose.

[Daggrim]

I made a gauntlet as a one day project, my first, in a hurry, and it looks waay bad...bad as in sh#tty, not as in cool. I plan to redo it with what I learned, but at best it will just be functional. Yours is functional and good looking

. Dag

The padding on the knuckles is 6mm closed-cell foam, over the thumb it's the same stuff in 2mm thickness. Commonly sold at craft stores as "fun foam" in sheets.

The rivets are all speedy rivets, in three different sizes.

And yeah, it took a few hours, but not terrible. Mostly because the pattern I had was rubbish in spots, and needed to be reworked: http://www.bladeturn.../clamgaunt.html

The wrist cuff (piece J) is probably twice as long as it should be on the ends, the thumb cover pieces (K & L) make zero sense, and the section on the back of the hand (I) wasn't quite right, and needed more space in the thumb webbing area. Basically, once it was together, there wasn't any space to hold something in my hand, and my thumb stuck out. I reworked that whole area to get it so that I can actually grip a hilt and fight with it on.

But, I needed something fast, lest I end up like this:

[jinrui73]

When you guys make armor, is it raw leather or do you actually harden it? I understand that re-enactment stuff doesn't need to protect from live blades as much as blunt weapons, just curious though.

[hivemind]

I was pretty sure I had answered this, did we have a database rollback?

I don't have much call to harden stuff for what I make leather for. Usually water hardening is enough - but I do have a pot of beeswax and I'm not afraid to use it.