|
Your stuff looks great Pagan! It makes me regret leaving all of my leatherworking tools at home; my fingers have been itching to get something done, but it'll have to wait till May when I'm back. I mostly tool leather for 'armor'/costuming and it's a shame I haven't taken many pictures of my work/my progress while I was working. I'll get on that once I'm home and probably post some stuff in here as well. To atleast contribute something, here's the link to the old, archived, leatherworking thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3260854 And one picture of something I did a while back, including a prop 'clawhand'. The edges were tooled, as well as the symbol, which I painted white for contrast/colour matching with the hand:  Also, in regards to transferring your patterns for tooling onto the leather, I've found that working with kite paper can be very handy. It's see-through, but quite water resistant and I've found you can use the same pattern for a very long time before the paper wears out.
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2012 16:00
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:51 |
|
|
This guy (also here for contact info) I found once looking for inspiration does it through actual moulding (either on a mannequin or on a precast, plastic breastplate that's common in EU Larps). Soak leather, stretch it, work the shape into the leather, dry (maybe even work wax into it for strength, I'm not sure). In all honesty, I think the Spartacus cuirasses are made out of some cast flexible latexy stuff (they just flop down once they're taken off, but given the thickness of the material, if they were made from leather, they should remain upright). I've always stuck to more 'lorica' type armours, that slowly take the shape of your body when you sweat, but have never given the moulding method a real try. I could post some pictures of the armours I have made later, if you're interested.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2013 22:13
|
|
|
Lorica's are indeed mostly just strips, although I always construct a separate 'chest' piece, that goes over the shoulders and forms more of a cuirass look, than a lorica look. I've uploaded a few photo's of the armours I've made to this album: http://imgur.com/a/T7uDI#XnV6eLz. They're in chronological order and each one has taught me more about shaping armours and making them fit better. I've recently made an armour for a slightly sturdy friend of mine, but I haven't got any pictures of that one yet (and won't for a while, as I just moved to a different continent). I wish I had a few more close-up shots of all the tooling I've done on the second and fourth armour sets you see, but they're still on the other continent, so this'll have to do. Just a few words on each set: -The first armour was more 'fantasy' inspired (my friends called it a Batman armour) and was the first time I made a whole set. It didn't move very well (as I didn't allow room for the different plates to move much), the chains on the bottom piece weighed it down and the center front and back flaps were terrible for walking. It did look pretty good though, even though I couldn't pick up anything I dropped. -The second set was a very large improvement on the first, with an opening in the front, for ease of use and lots (I mean lots) of tooling. It consists of a lorica with a so called 'hero belt' (inspired on celtic/germanic imagery) over it. I even tooled most of the edges you can't see (which I'll never do again). The veg tan leather was a little too thin in places, so the edges of the plates do curl up a little. I met the guy who makes these and he uses double layers of veg tan to make his armours, to fight bending/curling/creasing; I might do that when/if I get rich, cause that's a steep price to pay. -The third set might be the simplest I've done and I made it for a friend. It's a basic three strip lorica, with the chest piece altered in the way I like to do it. -The fourth set is my most recent work, it consists of alternating rows of tooled leather and metal lamellar, all bound with thinner leather to keep the edges nice and neat. It was a hell of a lot of work (the helmet alone, which has a bronze scalemail coif, took me about a month, cause I'd never made a helmet before. It only just fit). I later added legpieces, which still need to be stamped, but someone borrowed all my tools and hasn't returned them as of yet. If you have any questions regarding any of them, just ask!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2013 01:21
|
|
|
Thanks for the compliments, it was a lot of hard work! I mostly went by feel, learning as I went along, although I had a few friends who could show me tricks every here and there. I don't think I found any proper tutorials, what I did do was look closely at a lot of armours other people made (both on- and offline) and to eye 'how they did it'. Some of it was guesswork on my part, othertimes I could get some solid tips. I think I started by looking up how people made lorica's (so I could get the shapes and such right, but also to learn about how to make your segmented plates be able to move). There's plenty of tutorials online for that. I also looked at places like andracor and the guys I mentioned earlier, just to see how several things like shoulderpieces and collars were constructed. Then I just winged it. If you don't want to waste leather, you can always make a mock-up in old vinyl flooring or linoleum. It's not as rigid, but it'll help you get the shapes right. Knowing the dimensions of your own body helps to get things mostly right, but you'll always do alterations when you try it on. Good luck!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2013 01:37
|
|
|
I don't know about the thing in the video, but I use this thing: http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/en-usd/product/craftool-strap-cutter-3080-00.aspx, which makes it impossible to cut yourself.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2014 16:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:51 |
|
|
I'm not SAS, but I've found an easier and more controllable way of doing boiled leather for costuming/armor was to soak it in water, mould it and then heat it with a paint gun. You keep the leather malleable for as long as you like and you can do touch ups while you're working as the leather shrinks. It dries out the leather a bit more, and doesn't quite reach the levels of hardness/brittleness boiling leather does, but otherwise I've found the results to be much more satisfactory than just tossing leather in hot/boiling water and hoping for the best. You can also put wax on the leather and melt it in for added hardness/durability/gloss. Here's the moulded/hardened bracers that I did that way, before I painted them: The pointy bits were all waxed and hardened even further. The bracers keep their shape a lot better than regular moulded leather and they're pretty tough and durable. Here's a picture of the end product, with added gauntlet bits: 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2015 05:43
|
|