Tooling hardened leather armor

[DJole]

2 hours ago, Gabriel Rasa said:

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.

Ah, that makes sense as a drawback. I hadn't considered that, not ever having been inside the armor. I can see that it would be tough to find something decorative enough yet tough enough to  hold up to the strain at that point. 

I have a somewhat similar problem with my metal rapier gorget-- it has 2 shallow angles at the front, which dig in right where the shoulder muscles meet the chest. This doesn't cause any pain, since I'm wearing a couple layers of cloth and a leather doublet underneath, but it does tend to shift the gorget out of position, and the points (even with turned up edges) have scraped and gouged my soft leather doublet which I wear as the outer layer of rapier "armor" over a shirt and doublet.  
The snapshot below is my leather coat-- it's a slick, somewhat shiny upholstery leather in a nice creamy white color. It was a close-out sale at Tandy, so I snatched up a roll of it, and I used a bit more than half to make this.
On the left side, you can see it's laced together rather than sewn or riveted, because the lacing was speedy and flexible. The lacing is going to hold the strain better than stitching, and if the lacing breaks, it's very easy to replace. It also means that the leather won't tear, since there's a lot of leather between the lacing holes. 
The front ties have an oval reinforcement patch sewn on both sides of the leather. The grey leather on the upper left of the photo is a protective "patch" that is laced onto the shoulder, to protect the white leather from the gorget. Over on the other side, I flipped up the patch so you can see the scraped spot. When the patches start to wear, I'll just cut a couple more and lace them on. Some day I have plans to put short sleeves on this thing, and maybe even skirt pieces around the bottom if I get ambitious. 
As you can see, I haven't bothered too much to make it super pretty, since it's not tooling leather, and it gets stabbed and sliced all the time. It has some black scuff marks on it from rubber rapier tips, but it's still going great after a couple years of use.

[Gabriel Rasa]

14 hours ago, DJole said:

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.)

Well, extremely complicated tooling is my happy place, and I find that I really enjoy the technical challenge of reproducing something from a picture or a sketch, so it's not much of a tradeoff. :D And although cosplayers on the whole are remarkably forgiving of costume pieces that are uncomfortable or ill-fitting (I've heard enough horror stories that I think they pretty much all go into it expecting to Suffer For Their Art), I'm more satisfied when my work is both beautiful and functional, and when you're working with leather, there's no reason why it can't be.

Double cap rivets and rapid rivets are really iffy when it comes to nailing two piece of 9-10 oz veg tan together -- the medium posts are too short, and always risk the caps popping off, and the long posts are too long and slide sideways when you try to set them. (This has been the cause for some table-flipping rage on occasion.) I've taken to using tubular rivets at points that are going to be taking a lot of stress, because they are never, ever going to pop off by accident. (There are definite downsides to tubular rivets though -- they can be harder to come by, a PIA to set, and the star it makes on the underside is relatively sharp and can irritate skin and put snags in fabric underneath it.) I mix and match double cap rivets and tubular rivets in my Wonder Woman greaves, with double cap rivets to attach the little straps, and tubular rivets where it's taking more stress around the knee and where it articulates:

There's also a discreet line of stitching holding the knee caps in place, but for lack of an industrial sewing machine, I try to avoid stitching when I can -- it's just too time-consuming, and can very quickly drive the price up past what anyone's willing to pay. It's on my to-do list to explore posts-n-burrs style rivets, for an alternative that's stronger than double cap rivets but not as temperamental as tubular rivets.

 

[TinkerTailor]

4 minutes ago, Gabriel Rasa said:

 

Double cap rivets and rapid rivets are really iffy when it comes to nailing two piece of 9-10 oz veg tan together -- the medium posts are too short, and always risk the caps popping off, and the long posts are too long and slide sideways when you try to set them.  It's on my to-do list to explore posts-n-burrs style rivets, for an alternative that's stronger than double cap rivets but not as temperamental as tubular rivets.

 

Look into Chicago screws with thread locker to keep them from coming undone. These guys have some nice ones:

https://www.usbind.com/collections/screw-post-sets

[DJole]

2 hours ago, Gabriel Rasa said:

Well, extremely complicated tooling is my happy place, and I find that I really enjoy the technical challenge of reproducing something from a picture or a sketch, so it's not much of a tradeoff. :D And although cosplayers on the whole are remarkably forgiving of costume pieces that are uncomfortable or ill-fitting (I've heard enough horror stories that I think they pretty much all go into it expecting to Suffer For Their Art), I'm more satisfied when my work is both beautiful and functional, and when you're working with leather, there's no reason why it can't be.

Double cap rivets and rapid rivets are really iffy when it comes to nailing two piece of 9-10 oz veg tan together -- the medium posts are too short, and always risk the caps popping off, and the long posts are too long and slide sideways when you try to set them. (This has been the cause for some table-flipping rage on occasion.) I've taken to using tubular rivets at points that are going to be taking a lot of stress, because they are never, ever going to pop off by accident. (There are definite downsides to tubular rivets though -- they can be harder to come by, a PIA to set, and the star it makes on the underside is relatively sharp and can irritate skin and put snags in fabric underneath it.) I mix and match double cap rivets and tubular rivets in my Wonder Woman greaves, with double cap rivets to attach the little straps, and tubular rivets where it's taking more stress around the knee and where it articulates:

There's also a discreet line of stitching holding the knee caps in place, but for lack of an industrial sewing machine, I try to avoid stitching when I can -- it's just too time-consuming, and can very quickly drive the price up past what anyone's willing to pay. It's on my to-do list to explore posts-n-burrs style rivets, for an alternative that's stronger than double cap rivets but not as temperamental as tubular rivets.

 

If people are willing to pay you what you ask for the complicated tooling, that's great!  

I hear you about stitching-- hand stitching sure takes a while, but I can't afford a leather machine. I have a new set of gauntlets i made which are long leather cuffs sewn to a cheap set of goat skin gloves from Harbor Freight tools. One person saw them and commented on the "machine stitching," and then she found out they were hand stitched. She probably thought I was crazy, but when needs must... ;-)

I have used the copper post and burr rivets in my rapier helmet leather piece at the major stress points (there are two leather tabs sewn to the fencing mask, and the leather piece is riveted to those tabs with the post and burr. (I used double cap rivets elsewhere). The problem with those copper posts is that they are indeed plenty strong, but they normally don't look pretty, so they might detract from your pretty pieces. 
But I found an alternative with a quick web search-- perhaps these will work for you:
One-Inch Domed Head #9 Copper Rivets and Burrs (from http://www.brettunsvillage.com/leather/parts/rivets.htm)


 

I didn't know they made these with DOMED HEADS, so I think I'm gonna snag some of these for myself!

[TranscendentalTopiary]

How do those dome top rivets hold their shape when you're peening the other side? Those look really nice. I never really liked the peened side or the flat back of copper rivets and burrs

[DJole]

Like the double headed tubular rivets use a slightly dished metal "anvil," these ones would require a deeper hole to keep their shape. A quick perusing of Brettun's Village tool page shows anvils for the tubular rivets, but not for these.
Hmm...I'll have to email them and ask them if they have such a thing. Maybe somebody else on this forum knows where to get the right tool.
I never liked the look of the flat copper rivets myself (off center concentric circles? umm...okay...), but these fix that ugly problem. Burr side hidden inside, a lovely metal dome visible on the outside. 
 

[TranscendentalTopiary]

Share if you find a link to the "anvil" please

[DJole]

Message from Brettuns Village manager:
 

Quote

The domed rivets are a new item for us - we haven't yet had our tool maker
come up with an anvil for them.  Sorry about that.

 

[TranscendentalTopiary]

Bugger. Hopefully something gets thought of for it

[HENDREFORGAN]

On 10/6/2016 at 3:41 AM, TranscendentalTopiary said:

How do those dome top rivets hold their shape when you're peening the other side? Those look really nice. I never really liked the peened side or the flat back of copper rivets and burrs

Technically you'll need a metal base (anvil) into which a cupped depression has been made, if a flat face is used then your domed top will end up with a small plateau.  You're not needing anything capable of being hit excessively hard though so what I would use is a block of lead - freshly melted and poured to make a flat block - and then "waste" one of the rivets cleanly hammering it into the lead to create that cupped depression.  If your lead former seems to small - others will know what I mean when I say it tends to "escape" the hammering during the setting of the rivet - then mount it into a larger block of wood to create a sort of dedicated work table?

To me the worked burr on the copper hose rivet is part of it's visual appeal, it's that side I present to the face, with the flat side inside for both wear resistance and comfort.  However, I do go a little beyond the default burring of the post and using first a cupped tool and then a flat metal-working hammer I will "peen" the "bur" to form a flattened, almost "pan head" end to the rivet.  Looks neat and solid though takes a lot longer than simply setting the rivet.

There has been a lot of good work shown above from those who I just know have spent ages perfecting their work so I'll not add anything different but agree with many of the views put forward.  Tooling has to be done first and, in view of later shrinkage, may need to be deeper than you think.  Keep to clear bold designs as subtle imprints will be ironed out by the forming process.  What you will find you can do is slightly re-work your tooling later to clean up the impression.

Creating "cuir bouilli" is guaranteed to be a subject that a hundred leather-workers who have managed it will likely come out with a hundred different ways of doing it, there are rules to follow and both on here and on the Web there is everything you need to inform you.  It is then though that you add your particular "magic" and create your own path to a finished product.  It's an awfully time consuming but rewarding process.

In my own "path" I kept two requirements high on the list, leather for tooling and/or forming must have it's full thickness made plastic by liquid BUT not saturated and in using heat it must NOT be overly "boiled" or you risk the destruction of the very thing you create.  So I sourced for my forming needs something a bit different.  I use a commercial "steaming oven" to first soften the leather for tooling and then formers that I have made myself - sometimes both male and female moulds - to mould the final shape.  Even then the final result from the "cooker" may then be mounted into another set of moulds using throw over clamps and then left to air dry.

That's a huge commitment in money, materials and time but I'm fortunate to work from an industrial unit . . which is handy as the power side for the steaming oven is "3 phase" (415 volt) . . and no issues with water supply either as a large feeder tank needs to be kept full.  It's also a very heavy unit requiring a concrete floor.  Safer than it looks though as it's basically a scaled up domestic pressure cooker . . standing almost six feet high with a HUGE door on the front that looks as if it should be on a water tight compartment for a submarine.

Oh, and good heat proof gloves too.