Tooling hardened leather armor

[TinkerTailor]

candle/pencil torch and a craftool......not many supplies needed to test and see if it can be done.

[TranscendentalTopiary]

I'll see if any of my tools would work for hot stamping. I think all i have are bevelers and backgrounders tho

[TinkerTailor]

The head of a bolt will work for a test.

[TranscendentalTopiary]

Good thinking!

[Gabriel Rasa]

Hey, I lost the thread of the replies, but heavily tooled leather armor is sort of my jam, so in response to your first post:

No no no, you have to tool your leather BEFORE you shape it! Trying to put detailed tooling on leather that isn't perfectly flat is a nightmare. I mean, I've done it, after I did a whole piece and then decided that it needed more jazz (see the first picture -- originally it had only the dragon in the center and the border along the edges), so I took it apart and got it wet again, but it's not going to lie flat after you've already put curves in it, and it's so, so much easier just to do your tooling beforehand.

The second set of pictures is for a pair of elbowpads (Isabela's from Dragon Age 2, if you've ever played it), and you can see the steps -- do your tooling and finishing (edge beveling, punch any necessary holes, etc) before you shape it. The design does get slightly distorted when you put a curve on the leather, but it's never actually caused problems for me.

As for waxing, boiling, baking, etc -- honestly, I don't think it's necessary. 10 oz leather is plenty hard, especially after it's been wet-molded, so doing anything else to it is just "More Historically Accurate Than Thou" wankery, in my opinion. Both boiling and baking are touchy procedures; get the timing/temperature wrong and you run the risk of ruining your project on the very last step, and winding up with a mass of shriveled brittle garbage. Waxing is fun and much less dangerous (I wrote about it here: http://armory-rasa.tumblr.com/post/136427185638/thrall-cosplay-how-to-make-wax-hardened-leather) and you certainly don't need to dip your leather pieces, a disposable paintbrush and a hairdryer will do you fine. It's good for making pieces waterproof, and it does make them quite hard (as long as you're not wearing it anywhere warm :P), but unless you (or your customers) are going to be LARPing in the rain for days on end, again, I don't think the extra step of waxing is worth the time it takes.

(Full disclosure, I sell to the cosplay crowd, not the SCA crowd, so there's less demand for historically-accurate methods and being able to withstand the elements -- but it's more that the pieces wouldn't look so pretty after combat, not that they wouldn't be able to perform.)

But yeah, anyway. Do your tooling first, while all the pieces are flat. Don't even try doing it on an anvil after you've shaped the leather, it will just end in table-flipping rage.

[TranscendentalTopiary]

Those are amazing pieces! Yeah my first line of thought was more costume armor than functional (larp, renfaire etc) but figured if I'm going to do it i might as well do it right also it turns out that i'll have the clientele in the sca who want leather armor where i dont have clientele in the larp/faire scene. Maybe once i build a reputation I can start doing costume stuff too

[DJole]

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As for waxing, boiling, baking, etc -- honestly, I don't think it's necessary. 10 oz leather is plenty hard, especially after it's been wet-molded, so doing anything else to it is just "More Historically Accurate Than Thou" wankery, in my opinion. Both boiling and baking are touchy procedures; get the timing/temperature wrong and you run the risk of ruining your project on the very last step, and winding up with a mass of shriveled brittle garbage. Waxing is fun and much less dangerous (I wrote about it here: http://armory-rasa.tumblr.com/post/136427185638/thrall-cosplay-how-to-make-wax-hardened-leather) and you certainly don't need to dip your leather pieces, a disposable paintbrush and a hairdryer will do you fine. It's good for making pieces waterproof, and it does make them quite hard (as long as you're not wearing it anywhere warm :P), but unless you (or your customers) are going to be LARPing in the rain for days on end, again, I don't think the extra step of waxing is worth the time it takes.

Gabriel Rasa: 

What you said above about waxing/boiling etc. makes sense for heavy leathers over soft body parts-- hardening it may not be needed. Thighs and upper arms (for example) won't require much hardening, if any, if heavy leather is used. Of course, you could take a lighter leather and harden it, but yes, boiling and baking are touchy procedures.
If that leather is meant to cover joints and bone (such as fingers, hands, elbows), and protect them from actual impact in SCA rattan combat, then a certain amount of rigidity is required. I am not an expert, and I can't say what will be rigid enough to protect those sensitive spots. 

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(Full disclosure, I sell to the cosplay crowd, not the SCA crowd, so there's less demand for historically-accurate methods and being able to withstand the elements -- but it's more that the pieces wouldn't look so pretty after combat, not that they wouldn't be able to perform.)

That certainly makes the requirements of the armor different! You also have to be able to recreate existing pieces-- that's more than I would want to do!
I was noticing on the breastplate/shoulder assembly picture you posted above that the big pauldrons are mounted UNDER the breastplate, rather than over. Now if that's an aesthetic choice, then it's working as designed! (That's some nice tooling and design work on those pieces, by the way!) I was wondering if it works as a functional connection, or if connecting them over the breastplate would make smoother articulation, and keep the points of the shoulder armor from digging into the chest when the arms are raised. What do you think, as the designer?

[Gabriel Rasa]

On 10/3/2016 at 4:28 PM, DJole said:

I was noticing on the breastplate/shoulder assembly picture you posted above that the big pauldrons are mounted UNDER the breastplate, rather than over. Now if that's an aesthetic choice, then it's working as designed! (That's some nice tooling and design work on those pieces, by the way!) I was wondering if it works as a functional connection, or if connecting them over the breastplate would make smoother articulation, and keep the points of the shoulder armor from digging into the chest when the arms are raised. What do you think, as the designer?

That was actually my first attempt at a chestplate, and it was a learning experience, in that I've learned better than to connect shoulders that way. :D It looks nice enough, and it's fine for faires/cosplay (and six years later it's still working-as-intended, so it's not fragile) but it restricts your arm motion too much to be good for actual combat. (It swivels up and down smoothly, but it's an obstruction if you try to bring your arms forward.) What I've found is a better solution (and also easier to put on and take off without a squire) is to have the chestplate/backplate be one unit, and the shoulders as a separate unit, either attached with straps across the chest or hooking onto D-rings at the shoulder. I've done a few of those, but like 80% of what people buy from me is bracers so I don't have any good pictures yet.

I'm certainly no expert either on making armor that's intended to be used for combat, though I would very much like to learn. To a certain extent, ANY armor made out of 9-10 oz leather is going to be functional -- you make it out of armor-weight leather and it can't NOT be, assuming that the rivets don't pop off. The only difference between the cosplay stuff that I make and what I've gathered the OP is interested in making is the durability of the finish -- the acrylics that I use to get that metal effect would look pretty sad in pretty short order if you tried to use the pieces for combat, but the armor itself would hold up fine, including the tooling. It's the same basic technique, but instead of finishing with acrylics, you'd finish with an alcohol-based dye (to hell with eco-flo, seriously, that shit runs if you SNEEZE on it) and a topcoat of hot wax or resolene, depending on how waterproof you want it to be.

[Gabriel Rasa]

Aaand I just realized that I never answered your question, re: connecting the pauldrons over vs. under the chestplate. Answer is that the conchos holding it on have broken a couple of times (I bought the conchos from Thailand off eBay; the screws they came with weren't long enough to go through two layers of 10 oz leather so I had to pop out to Home Depot and try to find something a smidgen longer; and nothing, neither metric nor standard, threads onto them quite right, so they're always kind of touchy) and so I've put it back together several times, and wound up trying it both ways, and

It makes no difference. :D

Seriously, that would seem to be a not-in-danger-of-chafing point, and the real issue is that it doesn't want to let me move my arms forward.

[DJole]

2 hours ago, Gabriel Rasa said:

That was actually my first attempt at a chestplate, and it was a learning experience, in that I've learned better than to connect shoulders that way. :D It looks nice enough, and it's fine for faires/cosplay (and six years later it's still working-as-intended, so it's not fragile) but it restricts your arm motion too much to be good for actual combat. (It swivels up and down smoothly, but it's an obstruction if you try to bring your arms forward.) What I've found is a better solution (and also easier to put on and take off without a squire) is to have the chestplate/backplate be one unit, and the shoulders as a separate unit, either attached with straps across the chest or hooking onto D-rings at the shoulder. I've done a few of those, but like 80% of what people buy from me is bracers so I don't have any good pictures yet.

I'm certainly no expert either on making armor that's intended to be used for combat, though I would very much like to learn. To a certain extent, ANY armor made out of 9-10 oz leather is going to be functional -- you make it out of armor-weight leather and it can't NOT be, assuming that the rivets don't pop off. The only difference between the cosplay stuff that I make and what I've gathered the OP is interested in making is the durability of the finish -- the acrylics that I use to get that metal effect would look pretty sad in pretty short order if you tried to use the pieces for combat, but the armor itself would hold up fine, including the tooling. It's the same basic technique, but instead of finishing with acrylics, you'd finish with an alcohol-based dye (to hell with eco-flo, seriously, that shit runs if you SNEEZE on it) and a topcoat of hot wax or resolene, depending on how waterproof you want it to be.

It certainly can be easier to make cosplay/faire stuff, but it often has to be a lot artsier, so it's a tradeoff -- work to make it functional, or work to make it a pretty design. I certainly would be reluctant to spend a lot of time on tooling, dying and shaping to make a fancy, beautiful armor piece that's going to get sun, rain and mud on it, not to mention get battered and mashed by sticks.

I wonder if I even have any 9/10 oz. leather around my leather stash. If it's thick enough, then it's going to spread the weight of a blunted weapon simulator pretty well, like you say, so there's little point in trying to make it rigid. I can see the weak point being riveted joints, as  you say. Lacing might work-- both durable and flexible, thus less likely to pop out of the leather, but it's not as sexy and shiny as the metal rivets.
I too share your frustration with the eco-flo dyes. I only keep mine around in case of doing leather stuff with kids. I have a collection of Fiebings and Angelus dyes because those colors don't run (to steal a phrase.)