/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.

Ingredients:
First off we have leather - heavy duty buffalo shoulders (~5mm thick). Bought from le prevo leather in the uk, and worth around £40. Off to the side is a bucket of 8mm steel rings. Not pictured (but currently on their way from my supplier) are 12mm Steel rings, which will be used for joining together the leather plates.

Hey guys, can I butt in a little?
I was wodering how to attach a feather to the backside of a helmet without doing any forging or metalwork.
Can it be done?

Sweet, looking forward to updates.

>>379484
Superglue

Hey sorry I didn't update yesterday, been busy!
So since last time I spent an annoyingly long time sellotaping cardboard to myself and adjusting my design. I has to increase the size of the arm holes for better maneuverability. The straps at the top and side of the larger chest plates have been left longer than needed in case of shrinkage when I heat the leather.
I've also split the front chest plate into 2 halves and will use a separate strip of leather behind the gap to join them to and increase plate movement.
The gap in the belly area will be covered with chainmail, which will hang from the center plate. The back has remained pretty much unchanged except for a little arm hole widening.

Yesterday I also started on the front strip of mail - the 8mm steel rings are hard as all hell to work with and make your hands rather painful after an hour or so of working.
Here's a pic of the width of the central section and my progress on making the rest of it.

I started work on the mail strip for the center. Working with these rings is hard going and after a couple of hours my hands are too painful to do more which slows things down a little. Pic is a small completed section (for width guide) and my progress so far...

I started work on the mail strip for the center. Working with these rings is hard going and after a couple of hours my hands are too painful to do more which slows things down a little. Pic is a small completed section (for width guide) and my progress so far...

I always wanted to make chainmail out of titanium keyrings, but it would cost several hundred dollars for enough of them.

>>381011
Totally worth it though

Paper design has been transferred to the leather hide - As you can see it only just fits! I expected to have more leather left at the end but whatever.
Now I have to cut out all the shapes using a Stanley knife. This could take a while...

>>379476
How do I make chain mail using only split lock washers?

>>381605
Not OP but why don't you make your own rings?
It's not hard.

>>381049
Where'd you get the leather from? I'm looking to try a similar project but it only seems to be available by the fuckton.

>>381633
I'm sure using your own rings isn't hard, but I think I like the convenience of using galvanized washers rather than rings.

>>380996
were did you get the rings?
do you think you could just use lock washers?

>>380996
were did you get the rings?

>>381657
>>381660

Got these rings from a place called Armchair armoury in the UK, they're pretty cheap. I don't make my own (I have before) because I don't have a good cutting tool, and the difference between wire and cut rings isn't big enough to make me want to buy my own rig.

>>381605
Pretty sure you could - depends on the size. Check out some mail websites or youtube for info on how to do a 4:1 pattern.

>>381639

I got this leather from le prevo in the UK, it was discounted because it's so thick there's not many uses for it. Even for armour it's pretty thick and difficult to work with - more pictures up tomorrow.

Isn't it useless if the rings arent smithed together?

>>381972

No, the gauge I'm working with it's damn solid. You couldn't pull it apart, even with a couple of people on each end. As for impacts, it's solid. Even if a ring is bent open somehow (in which case, you'd probably have broken bones beneath the mail) it's easy to fix.

>>379476

>calls maille "chainmail".
>"Hardened leather armor"
>doesn't rivet the rings

Fucking LARPers

>>381989
>doenst know that Maille is an Old French word, which in English is called Mail.
>doesnt realize that anyone using mail is essentially a LARPer unless its for a shark suit.
>is a general supercilious faggot, begrudging people who actually have a hobby.

>>381989
>Thinks there is any reason to make actual functional armor anymore using these methods.

Do you know how much more work riveting is?
No benefit at all for a decorative set.

>>381989

During the period mail used, the alloys of steel were not nearly as solid as the stuff we use today, it was much softer as the techniques for hardening it were still being developed. So rings needed to be riveted for strength.
"Hardened leather" I mean similar to cuirboulli, though I didn't want to use that term as that technique describes boiling leather then stretching it out into shape for drying, whereas the method I'm using is soaking in cold water then shaping and heating in an over to harden. Also, like I said before, this isn't a historically accurate piece, it's fantasy styled.

Oh and I've never done LARPing before in my life. Though I do sell armour to them.

>>382039
Where can I view your armor pieces? I would love to buy one.

>>382039
Are you gonna reinforce the shoulder/neckline with riveted rings?
Always seems to be there it fails.

>>382185
This is the first full set I've made, I'll be making a website soon for stuff but it's not quite ready yet - watch this thread though.

>>382190
There's not going to be any mail around the shoulder area - around the neck I was going to make a separate coif to go with the set.

>>382201
I wasn't asking for a full set. I just wanted to see the pieces you sell since you said that you sell them to LARPers. Which would mean you made these before.

OP, what have you made before besides mail? Have you made a helmet? I'd love to see a template for one.

>>381011
>it would cost several hundred dollars
pleb.

Srsly, though, where would one go to find these titanium keyrings you want to make chainmail out of?

>>382271

I don't have many pics but this is a camera phone pic pf a bracer I made recently - I'll have a rummage around see if I can find any others.

>>381989
This.

If you're going to make armour, make it right.

>>382472
why?

>>382472
If I made armour 'right', I'd be fabricating Kevlar not joining together steel rings - that method of armouring died out hundreds of years ago. So 'right' is somewhat of a subjective term. If I made historically accurate armour it would cost much more and also take much more time and effort, meaning my finished pieces would have to sell for many hundreds if not thousands of pounds/dollars. I haven't turned my hand to fully accurate historical pieces yet for a number of reasons - the above being one, another is that I'm still learning and stalling myself on projects far above my abilities and without the necessary tools is no way to progress.
Like I've said from the beginning, this is fantasy style armour, made from butted rings and water hardened leather - it's not meant to be completely realistic, it's meant to be a first project. Which I'm sharing with you guys. To be nice. If you don't like it, fuck off. Go contribute some more to a thread about the viability of shipping containers as underground bunkers or something.
At least I'm doing something interesting.

>>382503
I'll drink to that! I can't wait to see the final project!

>>382468
Are those metal rings? Looks extremely uncomfortable. I guess that kind of construction could work if you had a strip of leather attached underneath the rings so that they wouldn't be rubbing directly on your skin

>>382503
Righteous armor building OP is righteous.
So I've never seen hardened leather armor joined by mail before. Any chance you have a pic of something that has been completed using the same style? Because atm all I can think of is something like a hoplite curiass.