troy

finally got round to making the leather armor tutorial; [link]http://blog.mtn-m.co.uk/__oneclick_uploads/2009/11/leather-armour_l.pdf[/link] I would say that is more for the experiance leatherworker as their is alot more photos than their is words but hopfully it will aid someone aspairing to be a warrior. Paul

thats a couple of really good links there peter and will be putting them in my favourites - cheers

Used to play the flute when I still at school - was in the orchestra and played solo once, but dropped it after leaving for some daft reason. Then took up the tenor sax while living in germany in the late 80's early 90's but that only lasted for a year or so - have actually just bought another which is temptingly sitting snug in its case and am hoping that the thrase 'will all come back quickly' is true as the walls in these houses are paper thin!!! am gonna try and master 'lilly was here' to start with. - youtube link to song

Don't know if this experiance will count, seeing as I've only been on a horse 5 times, I live in scotland and my riding rythem is similar to that on 'city slickers'. A few years back the family and I managed a 5 weeker on the west coast (of USA) and amongst other places, we visited rubies inn in Utah where provided us tourist types with day/s out riding with a wrangler. Went out 2 times taking in the gorgous scenery and ridges of the locality with no problems at all even during the steep ups and steeper downs which amased me. Then on the last occassion instead of riding out into the country we did a ride not far from the hotel with two wranglers, cause some of us wanted to gallop and others not - everything was going honky dory even riding near the bryce canyon, then on the way back we split into the two groups with low branched trees between us. I was with the slow group to help my son!, the other group had a problem with one of the horses (something to do with order of march thing as I was told later) and our wrangler galloped off towards them to help - it was at this point obviously that our two horses wanted to follow....at full gallop through the tree's.....inbetween trying to aviod the branches and stay on the saddle I was yanking like hell on the reins and shouting....did'nt do a damn thing of course but for 5 or 10 seconds I was on the ride of my life; the horse at some point bucked, I was swaying left and right from the branches and to top it at one point I looked across at my son and he was smiling his head off. The above is probably not half as bad as most of your experiance - have certainly learnt alot since then like 'to turn left or right' and especially 'applying the brake properly'but hopfully it might make some laugh.

Just got it finished - used the 5 x 9 as stated before - used 3 strings on the top knot and 2 on the bottom and the strap is 6 x snake looking braid (from ron's adv book). Did attach the strap with a concho, not technically viking but Im technically not viking either!!

Cheers for the suggestions, love that knot LB. And KH, I'll be using thin latigo (5mm wide) as it's all I got at the moment and have decided to use the 5 x 9 wide turks then try 4 interweaves. Just had to cut a bit off a round fence post for the mandrel - will post with succesful or failed results!!! Sorry to hear that another excellent braider has pasted away - am ashamed to say I had never heard of him but would be interested in carrying on his work if any of you ever managed to order the CD's.

Hi Ray Don't know if this helps but recently I made the black arrows (on hardwood dowels)with plain old fiebings dye, sanded it down with wire wool and applied aussie conditioner - unfortunatly some does come off on first use but not much - I used three coats of dye to get a solid black colour, but perhaps one would do for your job.

Hi Brian Not got it yet, hope it's not caught up in another of our imfamous postal strikes. This knot I got planned could be a hell of a way to break it in, so to speak! Have been thinking about this knot again and perhaps just a simple 36 bight pineapple will do but still worried about the length - the picture below so you can see for your self - this would also mean that it could match the lower knot which I guess would only need a normal 16 or so bights - might actually try them as guacho and have the interweave running the other way. don't know if it's important but the capacity of this horn is 1 litre.

Got a viking style drinking horn I'm working on and have had the great idea of using knots top and bottom for the shoulder strap. The bottom is quite narrow and I have ideas for a pineapple in that place, but the top has a circumferance of 25cm - working with 5mm lace I worked it out the top knot would need roughly 35-36 bights to cover it. I also thought it would be great to do a heel type knot using 4 strands, meaning I could use the 8 end laces to make the strap with - crasy I know. My question is, would a 5 part 9 bight turks head be OK to do interweaves on - I am looking at the 5 parts as I don't really want to end up making a long knot which would cover up all the nice shiny horn I've spent ages polishing. Any idea's? Paul

Thanks for everybodies imput - must admit that apart from the disc I mentioned I have never thought of using the windows back-up software which would come in handy on an external drive - I was more looking at a 150gb drive but going by what you all say that would be considered under what I'd proabaly be best using. I am just guessing, but just like when you re-open doc's in windows then save again, will all data/doc's etc that I re-sent to the hard drive (that has been altered)be automatically updated or will I (like on cd/r disc) have to save it as a seperate copy/file? Also, and I only ask as some of you seem really up on computer stuff, I have been given a short report to do (part of the multimedia course I,m doing)to discuss backup strategys of a company - most like on-line systems and archival I know some about but what is meant by 'bulk-transfer systems' is it any thing to do with zip's or more to do with how all the files/data etc is collectivly sent? cheers for any answers.

I'm in the market for an external drive but have never really tried one before. Looking at various outlets, there are cheap and really expensive one's of various capacities of gb's and was wondering if some one has had experiances with them or could suggest one make over another etc. I will be using it to store thousands of photo's I have littered around on disc's, plus college work and to back up my C drive. cheers Paul

Finally finished the whole armour and had a nice dry day to take some photo's - it would be nice to see what you all think, if it works or looks realistic. Along this particular journey I managed to fix some errors as shown earlier on this thread and many that I could,nt such as the ill fitting boots and plus those upper arm guards could of been wider - all good lessons for a next time! Have also thrown in a sunset photo to show we do sometimes get good midgless weather here in scotland Taken with my trusty Fujipix s7000 with a ND4 filter -

I call this one the odd name of 'Fanorientern'. Mainly because within its materials and design, plus the actual carvings there are elements of both eastern, western and fantasy influences, or maybe I have finally cracking up after a very cold, wet and windy summer!!!! or it may seem so, joining pegasus with a chinese archers figthing a dragon! - the back ground is actually mountains but unfortunatly I sized them wrong and you can't see the tops. The horn ends are from indian or pakistan cows, can't remember which. Plus managed to get a few better photo's of the armour boots (inbetween rain showers).

cheers for your replies tashabear and thorr - don't knew why I did not try 'all types' in google image but have ended up using one I already had. That website you supplied is good, never knew there was so many people doing fantasy armour - nice to know I'm not the only wacky leatherer out there!!!!

here's the finished boots - they do fit my son but other dimension of it are wrong and now know the importance of a 'Last'plus the sort of dimension that should be used to make it by - in the end, it does what it was supposed too and I learnt quite a bit about boot making as well.

on the pattern below, the quiver above is number 1 - the one on the pattern is about 20 inches high I think with a collar of leather that was made to fold back onto the top of the quiver, making a channel through which the strap would go - it was another of my 'lord of the rings' copy idea's. To make the quiver above just leave the collar bit off and cut the top in a curvy line. Number two is for the quiver below - ye another 'lord of the rings' or prince of caspian idea. For the colouring I first applied mahogney stain mixed into neatsfoot oil all over, then dipped the shearling I use for such things into the stain alone and dabbed/streaked here and there. Oh forgot to add - they both took about a day minus fifty odd coffee breaks and in most cases i just used the saddle braid to join there edges.

Started the last piece of this particular puzzle or armor. The boots are kinda fashioned on a pair my neibour had and other idea's - is the first boots I've tried so any advise/critisism would be welcome. First photo shows the foot and neck pieces together (neck piece is to raise above the knee like lower leg armour)I am leaving these to dry then remove the last I made and sew these on to the sole. The second photo shows the side and the top clamp, which I had to attach to string suspended from the curtain rail - to hold the whole thing up while I fiddled with the pattern. Paul

I have been searching the web and other places but seem to come up with very little line drawings in the way of horse archers loike the mongols, turks etc. Does any body have something like this hidden away. I plan to use them on some horn topped quivers I have plans for. One interesting thing I found in my search was the winged cavary of poland - yes they really had metal wings fixed to the backs of their armour. Paul

Just found another pattern i don't need - have never used it, it is a pattern for jeans/trousers from Lola gentry originals. Just pay for postage and it's yours Paul

No mate the bow is a cheapie fibre glass one - I do have the materials to make one with and may at some point start it now that I have something to work from, but don't hold you breathe!!! Paul

Oh just love the handle knot - is it an extended heel knot? have done a few for handle ends with 5 strings but never thought of extending the turns to 2 or 2 1/2 times round the mandrel - must have taken forever to tigthen it up. Thanks for sharing Paul

just joined a new archery club - they have a large piece of woodland where I can now participate in field archery - much more exciting then killing haybales plus some of the shots are extreme by their positions through tree's ,over rock, from 20 to 85 yards - if nothing else, should open all sorts of new ways to loose arrows!!! This is'nt I know very exciting for the members over the pond who can hunt live game with bows over 40lb but its better then the boring straw targets indoors, which was my alternative til now. Just for this occasion I converted a shoulder quiver I had and added a horn clip to hold the bow with - for those occasions when two hands are really needed to help alaberate on imaginative archery stories!!!

This next bit was more an idea, that I just had to play out, just to see if it would work - I wanted to see if I could attach a horn bow to the quiver in its unstrung and strung positions whilst also allowing easy retrival for those all important sudden attacks. I guess in a way it worked by using pieces of buffalo horn that I drilled then sawed out into elongated U stapes enabling the thin limbs of the bow to slide snuggly into - tight enough to hold it but not tight enough to cause trouble when removing - they are attached to the leather of the quiver by rawhide lace so do have some movement. The first photo shows how I attached the horn pieces, the next two are close-ups of the pieces on the quiver and the last two are of the bow on the quiver. I think it turned out OK, of course the next task is to get my sun to dress up in it all and ride a horse to see if it works - perhaps we're just try a rocky horse first!!!!

The knot shown in the photo above was just off of the dowel or mandrel and had'nt been tigthen up. The photo below shows it placed onto the sheath and the dip in the top middle was actually intentional - just thought it would look different then the usual level look. I normally tigthen my knots twice to make them really tight but only did it once with this as it took so long and am hoping that as the rawhide dries that it tigthens up nicely - if not, then it was good practise, in the end it has already done it's job of firmly fixing the leather look in place.

Just made this to cover a knife sheath - I'm no where near good with prepping rawhide but all I did was cut from the hide with a tandy lace cutter (need new sharp blade) the same way I have shown in the braided quiver PDF in the quiver section. Then soak in warm water for about 10 minutes and started braiding - It did dry slightly towards the end of making the knot but I just carried it on - then took it off the dowel and soaked again, placed in a plastic bag until I put it in place tomorrow. The way I braided this was to follow the one string pattern for a 13 bight 12 part pineapple illustrated on this PDF tutorial - after half way through it you should notice the pattern being created and just keep following it. the dowel is 2 inches in diameter - placed the nails 4 inches apart - lace is 3.5mm and forgot to measure the length, I just wound it around all the 32 nails to see what length I needed but I'd say it was about 8m.