/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Design:

The armour will be made of heavy duty water hardened leather and oil washed steel chainmail links. I'm making this armour in segments, each piece of leather joined to the other by metal rings and accented with chainmail strips. The style is primarily fantasy - but the materials and processes are period. This is just the main torso piece, and will be improved with the addition of arm bracers, shoulder plates and leg greaves.
I decided to make this armour like so as this is the first time I've made a full set of armour; leather is expensive and I want to minimize my risk of fucking up and ruining a large piece of leather. Also I intend to sell this armour and as I currently have no buyer, I need to make this armour as adjustable as I can to fit a wide spectrum of potential buyers. I'm fairly average size myself so I'm fitting it for me but with room and straps which can be adjusted for comfort.
The other reason I've decided to make segmented armour is that it doesn't take a huge amount of skill compared with making sliding rivets or overlapping plates yet is still flexible enough to be comfortable to wear and provides good coverage.
First stage is to make a paper cutout of the pieces needed. Here are front and back. On the front there is going to be a chainmail strip ~2" wide running down the centre onto which the front plates will be secured. The front section is made up of 9 plates and the rear 6 plates.