Leather armour scales

[Barristan]

Hiya,

I recently got a price from a blacksmith to make a punch for cutting scales quickly and uniformly. It came in at £70 +VAT.

Might be a cheaper way to get hold of a load of scales easily if you have the money up front. You may even be able to use it to make some cash yourself?

Good luck :D

[Dmitri]

I play SCA as well.

I am having a fabricating friend of mine look at building my a scale punch as well.

I am hoping for atleast 10 in a shot.

Jig and drill press for the holes is a need.

I kind of like the idea of the plastic scale Suze. Our local group is working hard to get away from the pickle Barrel but scales would be neat.

Purchasing is way too cost prohibitive for me and I HATE lacing....lol

Cutting yourself although time consuming would be your better bet for the money.

[Charke]

I just made a suit of leather scale-mail. While it was not hard, it was a heck of a lot of work. The scales are diamond shaped. Each side is about 2 inches so they are about 3 inches long. I ended up needing 250 just to cover the front and back. Each needed 2 rivets, so I had to punch 500 holes and put in 500 rivets. The cost of the project shifted from leather to rivets. The leather came free and I was asked to make "anything" out of it. They had some 8oz and some 4oz. I suggested it would make good scalemail. I boiled the scales a fairly long time to make them fairly hard. Scalemail is very forgiving because of the soft backing. Your scales could be steal and on a soft leather backing the suit remains very flexible. The overlaping scales create an intresting bit of a spring-board effect. I'll grab a picture for you although, you've probably done your project by now.

Mark Charke