black armour - the story so far

[troy]

Making this set of armour for my kid - probably have seen me post a few help posts in other threads as some of the construction is new to me - only way to learn I guess!!!!

Below is the helmet and body piece - managed to make the body piece so that it can just slide on. helmet went from the pla facial plan to a 300 look to what actually happened as seen - sort of a box thing!!!!

Will try and do a sort of tutorial when finished - or going by the odd mistakes 'ways not to do it' tutorial.

[yan]

breast plate look neat, how did you do the "shiny horn/claw" near the shoulder?

What was the tickness of the helmet?

Did you mold it?

[BradB]

That Looks Really Cool!!

[hivemind]

breast plate look neat, how did you do the "shiny horn/claw" near the shoulder?

Looks like he laced on some horn tips to me.

[MADMAX22]

THat looks great dude. Looks like you got all your kinks worked out.

[troy]

max - ye got some out but in the back of my mind I always thought I'd have problems with that by using a flat pattern i.e. and not adjusting lengths to compensate for leather thickness. But will know next time to adjust the lower pieces by about and inch each and to leave out making the hole which the concho is covering on the back, plus............

yan - I used the tandy lightweight saddle skirting and cut the pieces as saddle pieces are cut to take advantage of the firm/thick to loose/thin parts of the hide i.e. the top strips are from along the back and the lower strips cut from further down the hide towards the legs - so the top is quite thick and firm, the second is firmish and thick, the last and lower pieces are thin and very flexible which also helped hide the kinks slightly!

The only piece I moulded was the helmet - the shiny horn bits are knife handles which slide into sheaths I fixed onto the skirting leather just under where they cross over one another - more an experiment for me and to show what could be done on an adult version then an item my kid will be using, incase any body worried about that.

[yan]

the knife idea look great,

but personnally I would not wear knife directly over the lungs, a solide mace hit that would barly miss the shoulder on ax 2 or 4 (for old school fencer) could push knife at a good angle for a pneumothorax perforation.

[troy]

the knife idea look great,

but personnally I would not wear knife directly over the lungs, a solide mace hit that would barly miss the shoulder on ax 2 or 4 (for old school fencer) could push knife at a good angle for a pneumothorax perforation.

Well ye, your right but the coool factor alone would make any opponent freese in awe of it giving one time to thrust away!!

Actually the original plan was to put them on the middle two pieces on the front of the armor with the handles bending around the body, hence their curve shape also creating a sort of 4 moulded four pack thing - this would probably work on an adult version where the handles would of also been moulded slightly into the leather and not leave them sticking out.

below is the plan I'm trying to stick to;

[yan]

that would look awsome.

[troy]

Finished another bit today, could of done alot more but ran out of chicago screws again.

These show or I tried to show in them the top half of the arm guards and the rear set up for the quiver and short sword. I should have the horsebow I am using for this armor soon and will be trying to fix up a system along the horn quiver whereby the bow can clip onto and off of it - will see......

[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 -

[MADMAX22]

Must say the overall finished project turned out very cool looking. You did a great job on this huge project.

[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

[MADMAX22]

Great tutorial, that really shows how much work goes into making this project. Im positive this will help alot of people trying to break into making armor.

You should see about getting your tutorial pinned in this section.

Edited November 8, 2009 by MADMAX22

[yan]

The final result look pretty good.

Does'nt look like it would restrict mouvement to much

The only thing (it might be a personnal preference) is that I would not go in close combat (sword, knife, ...) without protection in the groin area...