black armour - the story so far

[UKRay]

Leaving aside the cool design and solid construction of the armour, the clever bit for me is the way you have managed to get that brown dye and black dye to look so good together. I'm a fan of your work, Paul - having seen it 'in the flesh' so to speak; but this is a very nice bit of work indeed.

I noticed that Tandy now sell a kind of 'scale' armour in pre-cut sections and I wondered how popular it was. Your shoulder sections look like a nicer design altogether. How are you going to finish the back of the leather?

Ray

[troy]

Leaving aside the cool design and solid construction of the armour, the clever bit for me is the way you have managed to get that brown dye and black dye to look so good together. I'm a fan of your work, Paul - having seen it 'in the flesh' so to speak; but this is a very nice bit of work indeed.

I noticed that Tandy now sell a kind of 'scale' armour in pre-cut sections and I wondered how popular it was. Your shoulder sections look like a nicer design altogether. How are you going to finish the back of the leather?

Ray

cheers for your comment ray. Not seen those scale armor bit yet but I made the one's above moulded around old leather dye bottles with pencils stuck in odd places to create their shape - only the high tech stuff for me I'm afraid!!!!!

As for finishing the backs - well.......have not really thought that far yet, just keen to get the d**m thing finished before my son has another growing spurt. Boots are next and last and should be the most fun seeing as I have no clue what I'm doing.

Paul

[troy]

Got most of it finished today and managed to do a first fit and found a few places where things could be tidied up some but generally it looks similar to what I have imagined.

[yan]

Neat, what would normally be worn underneath?

a nice tunic would add event more panache to a already nice kit

[MADMAX22]

Goodjob Troy that turned out really cool.

[troy]

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!!!!

[troy]

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

[jana]

You do realize that your son is going to be talking about this armour you are making him until his hundredth birthday or better.... very imaginative and creative, can't wait to see the whole suit. Thanks for sharing.

[troy]

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.

[troy]

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 -