Recommeded thickness for Renactment Armor

[GJMarko]

Hey Folks...as you can probably tell im very new to leatherworking and this board so please bare with me if I dont have all the info needed. Im trying to find out the thickness for leather I should buy to make armor for reenactment purposes? As well as what is the best way to harden the leather so I can form it to my somewhat bigger sized body? Id prefer not to use wax or my oven, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Daggrim]

Hey JG,

Daggrim here. I don't fight or make real leather armor, but I do make heavy leather helmets (12 oz.), hardened in hot water...the cuir bouilli technique.

For smaller pieces I immerse the leather in 175 to 180 degree water for about 2.5 to 3.5 minutes. Watch the leather carefully, and if it starts to get dark, get it out asap. By then it has begun to shrink. If it is sandpapery on the flesh side when dry, it got a little too much heat or time. As soon as you take it out, get it onto your mold.

For larger pieces I heat the water to 200 and pour it into a tub which holds the leather, and soak it for about 5 minutes. Oh, you need to presoak your all your leather in tepid water for about 5 minutes. This prevents the thermal shock when immersing it in the hot water.

No wax necessary. You also need to start out with stiff leather. You can't cuir bouilli soft leather, even if it's thick. It just shrivels up before it's ready to remove.

Daggrim

[Daggrim]

Okay...was in a hurry on my last post. I see my member profile needs to be restored, but in the menatime you can see some of my leather helms at "leatherhelms.com". http://www.leatherhelms.com

Daggrim

[ELAD]

I use saddle skirting, which is usually about ten-to-fourteen ounces in thickness. I've found the thicker, stiffer leather tends to keep its shape better after being wet-formed. I wet-form my plates with tap water, temperature doesn't matter, and it hardens the leather well enough to take a beating. After I wet-form and dry my pieces, I apply a finish to the front and back, so that the formed pieces won't soften or lose their shape if your armor happens to get wet (sweat, weather, blood, gore).

ELAD

[Daggrim]

Elad,

I'm always looking for ways to improve the durability of my helmets. Can you tell me what you use for a coating?

Dag

[Peter Ellis]

Hey Folks...as you can probably tell im very new to leatherworking and this board so please bare with me if I dont have all the info needed. Im trying to find out the thickness for leather I should buy to make armor for reenactment purposes? As well as what is the best way to harden the leather so I can form it to my somewhat bigger sized body? Id prefer not to use wax or my oven, any help would be greatly appreciated.

It depends a great deal on what it is you are trying to do. Are you looking to make armour for fighting in the SCA ?

Are you looking to make armour for dressing up at Ren Fairs ? Are you looking to make armour for fighting in Western Historical Martial Arts ?

Each has a different set of parameters, although it's possible to build one suit that works for all three.

I make a fair bit of armour for SCA use, using 13-15 ounce saddle skirting. Some people prefer to use sole leather, the full 16 ounce stuff run through rollers so it's even and hard right from the start.

You might want to take a look over at the Armour Archive, where this subject gets a fair bit of discussion and there are several people working with leather for armour.

There are a number of people using wax to produce hardened leather armour. Most of the evidence suggests that wax wasn't used for making leather hard for armour purposes, but that they had some pretty elaborate procedures for waxing boots, and that the English (and no one else) waxed leather drinking vessels.

Leather for armour looks to have been hardened by heating it. You've said you don't want to use your oven. Unfortunately, that's the best tool most of us have for bringing something up to a controlled temperature of about 180 degrees.

Some people have success dipping leather in near boiling water. I have had disasters trying that technique. It's tricky and I think very difficult to get consistently good results.

If you wet your leather and mold it to your body while damp, you can get lots of shape into the pieces pretty readily. If all you do from there is let the piece dry, you'll get a dry stiff piece of leather. Not the same as a hardened piece of leather at all. However, you can take that molded piece, wet it some more and heat it to produce a chemically altered genuinely hardened piece of leather.

[ELAD]

Dag,

I use "Super Shene" as a finish. It works great for waterproofing the leather on the inside and out. It also gives an extra stiffness to the wet-formed leather. I didn't mention on my first post, that I like to let the wet-formed leather dry in the sun. That bakes it pretty well, and also hardens the leather even more.

ELAD

[Daggrim]

Thanks Elad. And just one more point about hardening in an oven. I've done it, and it works, but it's not a first choice method. I've had helmets that just ended up a little too flexible, so I soaked them in water for maybe 10 minutes, then baked them in an oven, preheated to 200 degrees, until they felt mostly dry...maybe 45 minutes to an hour. Door was closed, but I checked them often. Y'gotta preheat, or otherwise the heating elements will be on for a long time with your leather in there, and it could get scorched. The leather noticeably darkened, but it looked cool that way. Any part of the leather that's resting on metal will look burnt.

Dag

[Daggrim]

Elad...dude! I just checked out your website. I'm speechless. I have nothing more to say about leather, because you ARE the master. How can one man produce this much awesome stuff in a lifetime? It must've taken you many years to get so proficient.

Daggrim

[leatheroo]

WOW, i checked out your website too and it is amazing!!!! you need to post more pictures in show off.

[ELAD]

Thanks for visiting the website guys, which is my wife's handywork. Nobody would know about ELAD if it weren't for her.

Actually, one of the main reasons I have so many different pieces is because I'm a jack-of-all trades and a master of none. Everyday is a learning experience.

I tried the oven baking thing, and yes, you do have to be very careful otherwise your leather gets brittle. Sunbaking is a little more forgiving, but I've actually had my leather get overbaked in the sun. Its pretty sunny here in Colorado.

ELAD

[Tangent Creations]

We do hardened armour. We have a totally different method than most, and definitely NOT period...LOL!

First it depends on what type you're going for...SCA, Dag, Renfaire, etc. They do have different guidelines for thickness and period/fantasy. We wetform all of our pieces. We completely soak the leather in hot tap water (not boiled etc.) then shape it to what we want. We then dip the entire piece in acrylic floor wax. This sounds funny but really works! It hardens the leather, gives it a gloss and makes it completely water proof! Plus, it won't unshape or soften. It will mould somewhat to your body but won't lose it's shape. The only reason to use an oven with this method is if you are in a hurry, to give the acrylic a 'boost' in drying. But alot of the time we just let the pieces sit and drip dry It doesn't take but 24 hours or so and the finished piece is awesome!

As far as leather weight, we no longer use saddle skirting because of the variance in thickness. We use the solebends as mentioned above. For the price they are a great deal and are beautiful for leather armour, hardened or not!

[Tangent Creations]

Oh, and Elad, AWESOME WORK!!