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/diy/ - Do It Yourself

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142638 No.142638 [Reply] [Original]

hello diy i im thinking about buying/makeing some medieval armor im thinking something like roguish style lots of chor buiile leather and some downplayed mettle have any tips or cheep pieces for me? and yes it has to be real armor no card board or aluminum modded football helmets no matter how cool they look.

>> No.142665

There is a good amount of money in making functional replica armor, it's like football for nerds to get in some metal and beat on each other with blunt swords.

If you are going for making your own style stuff or anything that would likely be categorized as fantasy you will make a lot less off it but will able to sell products on line or at ren faires all the same. If you get good at it people love cool custom work and a lot of those people have a lot of money to blow on their fantasy lives like its 1599.

>> No.142669

>>142665
>nerds

I thought nerds are about technology and electronics and shit. Not one-on-one combat.

>> No.142672

op here im the one on one combat kind its fun and there are a ton of creative people there

>> No.142676

>>142669
Well maybe not technically 'nerds' but 'geeks'. I've gone to a few live steel wars, it certainly attracts a unique kind of person.

Btw if you have never been I recommend it, the after parties are fucking awesome with a lot of raunchy stuff happening in tents.

>> No.142679

ya the one i go to is a bit more "unique" they mix in a live economy night raids wile you sleep and lots of hard to understand plot i love it.

>> No.142680

oh and they try to keep it pg 13 but the most of people that go are like 18 and up so fun times.
no raunchy tent action though.

>> No.142817

>>142638
If you want to make stuff that looks authentic, you'll want to decide on a particular suit from history, or on a period and region. 12th century German is quite different than 12th century Chinese, or 15th century German.

There are a lot of good sources out there. Museums in Europe have a lot of stuff online now, and your local museum (assuming your city is >1M) should have at least one or two suits of armour for you to gawk at. The SCA to an extent, and live-steel combat societies, do a lot of research on period-accurate armour. The SCA makes changes for safety's sake, live-steel guys make fewer or none, and LARP groups make stuff out of bendy leather that looks good but definitely isn't accurate to any period design.

Having built my own coat-of-plates based on the design from the (14c) Wisby graves, I can tell you the following things; 20-18ga mild steel is as close as you're going to reasonably be able to get to authentic materials for coat-of-plates. It's not exact, but it's close. You're going to spend a couple hundred dollars on some 8oz latigo leather if you use that for backing, or less than that on less substantial canvas. You can use roofing nails to fake period-accurate iron rivets, or spend a lot of time with 1/8" mild steel rod, a bolt cutter, a post vise, and a ball pein hammer.

>> No.142821

Steel is cheap, leather is expensive, cuir boulli is easy. Buy thick (12+oz), vegetable-tanned leather (not latigo). Get water hot enough to not-quite-boil, dunk your cut, sewn, shaped piece of armour into it for 2-5 minutes (practice with scrap pieces). Let cool on the table or stuck on a form. It'll be hard as plastic. Coat with melted beeswax if you like.

While cardboard is not good armour, it IS good for prototyping armour. Get boxes and cut them out in the shapes you think you want for your cuir boulli, and see if they work right. Cardboard is much, much less expensive than leather. Ditto for brown wrapping paper and canvas and latigo leather. I use a lot of cardboard between the "finished calculations for what the sizes and angles OUGHT to be" and "cutting leather" stages. As a bonus, when you've got the cardboard just right, it becomes your pattern to mark the leather cuts with.

The project will take you weeks of solid work. I think my Wisby coat took 60 hours including all the planning and adjustments and math I had to do. A much simpler set of cuir boulli knees and splinted legs is going to take me about 15 hours from start to finish.

If you want more advice, you'll have to be more specific about what you're going to make.

>> No.142826

Iron is pretty cheap, IIRC it's like £200 a ton.

That or the metalworker I was talking to lied to me.

>> No.142831

>>142679
What society? Belfag here

>> No.142835

OP if you want to make your own shit like this then go ask the geeks that do this stuff. Go to the Belegarth,SCA,Battleguard and other MCS forums and look up armor making. Hell maybe find a practice or even near you and go join in the fighting. Make your own armor and weapons, get good at the sport, then go to Chaos Wars this year if you're on the west coast. Drinkin, bard tournament, hooka-in, people beating, hot girl fucking, the woirks!

>> No.142843

>>142676
Takes a hell of a nerd to take an axe to the shin, a buckler to the face, a mace to the ribs and then come back swinging.

>> No.142876

>>142843
I meant geeks, particularly history geeks in this case. I sometimes interchange nerd and geek because most people don't think of them as different.

Though a fair chunk of these guys are nerds too...

>> No.142885

>>142638
How about lamellar armor? You only need leather scraps and some string or wire, and it seems pretty easy to make.

>> No.142904

>>142885
The scraps have to be substantial enough to handle getting hit with a sword. Again, cuir boulli or 20ga mild steel.

>> No.143067

>>142831
its called knight realms its a larp to be fair but it makes sense the way they do things and its fun as shit. they have a looser grip on history so anything made of real steel or leather will work as long as it looks cool.

>> No.143075

A good book for making accurate armor// learning about historic armor is "Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight" by David Edge and John Miles Paddock.

Very educational.

>> No.143078

>>143075
oooow i may have to check that out thank you. i know it may seem lazy just to ask diy but i thought you guys would enjoy the conversation. im actually considering scale armor.

>> No.143086
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143086

>>143078
Scale armor is cool.
Personally I prefer Maille and plate.
I don't have the patience/ tools for plate right now, but I've been doing some maille.
This is what I've got of some Roman doublings.

>> No.143093
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143093

>>143086
It'll look something like this when it's done, except I think I'm trimming it in tiny bronze rings.

>> No.143104

>>143086
You have lots of patience
I respect you

>> No.143107

>>143104
Thanks~
It's something everyone should try sometime.
Get some Needlenose pliers, cut them down a bit so they're blunt, and buy a small quantity of rings.
Try it out, see what you think.
I think it's really fun, though right now I can't get more than a ~4"x4" patch done before my hands hurt a bit.

>> No.143119

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/trevor.barker/farisles/guilds/armour/mail.htm
Here's a guide for ttyhe basic 4in1 pattern.

>> No.143135

There's a book called Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction by Brian Price that goes over how to make 14th century armor. I think it's out of print, and when it was in print it was expensive, so you can find a copy on Ebookee or something.

>> No.143151

>>143107
I might get into it when I have a steady source of income

>> No.144383

bump

>> No.144499

>>143151
Depending on your material of choice, it can be fairly cheap, especially if you make your own rings instead from wire. For armor the best starting material in terms of cost in galvanized steel.