cuir bouilli how-to

[Patrice]

Metal pie pans. I had a fit when I saw him about to melt the paraffin in my favorite dutch oven, so he got a cheap one from a store. It is in the shop full of wax, still, ready for the next project. Meanwhile, my cooking pot has probably made another thousand meals. Never ever take kitchen items without checking with the chief cook of the household, or you risk the wrath of the person who tries to scrape the wax out of the pot, cussing you the whole time.

The cork is a piece of a wooden broom handle, served to the canteen with twisted artificial sinew. That's another thing on my "needs fixed" list. I think one of the kids was playing with the cap and cut the sinew somehow. That would have taken scissors, but we had a bad time with scissors a few years ago, when they were much younger.

Here's a war shield he made. Yes, that is real human hair. A lady gave him hers when she cut it in mourning. The middle tail used to be considerably longer...but one of the kids...well, I said bad words that day. You can't see it in the picture too well, but there are tokens or charms sewn into where the hair comes off the circle. The red dot symbolizes our daughter's birth, the black one was for our son. It would have been my responsibility to carry his shield to the next camp (except during times of menstruation) and to place it on a tripod in front of our lodge, if we were Plains Natives. It would have been the equivalent of saying "The Smith's" on the door. Wow, I got a little off topic, huh?

Johanna

Have you try to line the canteen with brewer's pitch? It is sell form Jas-Townsend? : Here's the link for the pitch:

http://jas-townsend.com/product_info.php?c...products_id=373

You could also use natural bee's wax melted and swirl inside the canteen!

Anway, i'm very exited and think i will try myself at making a leather canteen! :beer:

Edited February 13, 2007 by Patrice

[Peter Ellis]

Hi folks.

Cuir Boulle happens to be my particular area of focus, as I make armour out of leather for SCA, LARP, Ren Faire, WMA - anybody that's interested :biggrin:

There's an excellent paper by a fellow named Chris Dobson that was produced perhaps three years ago and should be available from him through his website http://www.masterarmourer.com/

It's pretty certain that wax played no part in the construction of hardened leather armour, because there is solid evidence that they coated the leather with gesso and painted (and gilded) it. The gesso will not stick to wax.

Dobson has done extensive experimentation with a method that involves taking wet leather, stretching it over a wooden form (last), tacking it in place and then heating it while painting on hide glue. The glue is absorbed into the leather - and when it stops being absorbed you stop applying glue - the heat is somewhere in the range of 170 to 180 degrees F at which point (as mentioned in the piece Kate linked to to start this thread) certain compounds in the leather become fluid. It's very important to get the leather to this temperature, because the flow of those compounds is a large part of the hardening of the leather. The glue helps the process, but is not the basis - you can get quite hard leather without using glue at all.

The piece is kept at temperature for some time - if you're using a last, you can probably keep it warm until the leather appears fully dry. I don't use lasts (yet - it's a matter of making them) and I've found that if I let my pieces dry fully I get shrinking and warping and those are not either of them good. I pull mine out at about the point where any portion of the piece looks like it is dry. At this stage one can mold the leather still, it's quite cooperative about making final adjustments to form. Then I set it aside for a couple of days to finish drying out completely. At that point if you rap it it sounds like wood, and it is definitely hard. It retains a bit of springiness but it can be broken by trying too hard to bend it.

The hide glue Dobson uses, and which was probably used 800 years ago, is a water soluble glue. Even after it cures completely, it remains water soluble. For my purposes that is a problem, so I use Titebond III in place of hide glue. When it cures it is waterproof. It's a practical advantage for gear that may be heavily sweated in and will almost certainly spend time out in the rain at some point.

I bake mine in my kitchen oven. Dobson uses a heat gun (I tried that and scorched my leather).

I've tried the boiling water approach with wholly unsatisfactory results. The piece of leather shrank by about 30% and the hard shriveled thing that it became was brittle and easier to punch holes in than the leather had been to start with. Some people have good results with boiling water - I think it's possible, but an art form with too many chances to go wrong. Baking is easier and more consistently reliable.

With my baked pieces, I've found that if I need a hole that was not punched before hardening, I should drill it. Punching after hardening runs a high risk of cracking the leather. Dyes go on very differently after hardening than before - penetration of the leather is very much less and it's pretty likely to produce a streaky finish. The streaky finish isn't necessarily a bad thing - I've got some rather nice woodgrain effects.

I use a very simple but highly effective method for sealing these pieces. I dip them in acrylic floor polish and hang them up to dry. Not exactly a "leather finish", but these pieces are intended to be worn as armour for recreation combat and they take quite a beating - the floor finish cleans fairly easily and can be refreshed by the client with a damp rag and some Future.

[TeriYool]

I was reading about the dog armour but the pictures aren’t avaialble so I went looking and this is what came up. I am still laughing!! 

TY

Edited May 30, 2018 by TeriYool
Grammar