Hi everyone welcome to Lost Wax.
Today I'm excited to bring to you a super cool modular knight armor
costume system that you can make at home from a foam floor mat and some hot glue. What I love about this armor is that all the parts are removable and it's made so that it can fit a
bunch of different sizes so I feel like it's going to be very very versatile for so many things. I do have a pattern available to go along with this tutorial and you'll find the links in the description below or if you're lucky at the end of the video. Alright let's make this thing. Chapter 1: The Pattern Alright, you're going to want to remove
any airplanes from your printer and then you can print off the pattern - just make sure that it's set to print at actual size otherwise it could shrink your pattern
a bit and that would be frustrating. While that's printing off go find yourself some clear tape and a window or a lightbox. Normally I tape my patterns together on a window but I'm doing this one at night so I'm going to use a light box. It's as simple as pressing a button. And pressing it again. And maybe one more time... And boom. Lightbox. You can measure your print guides to make sure your pattern has been printed to the correct scale and then tape the pattern together, lining up the alignment marks and taping with your tape and
your fingers, leaving you with a bunch of pattern pieces that need to be cut out with your scissors. Take it away, scissor cam. Now most of these pattern pieces are going to be used at least twice so I actually cut out a second set so I could see how to lay them out on my foam.
Now it's time to do a whole bunch of tracing. It's a good idea not to use a standard
ballpoint pen here because no matter how many layers of paint you paint over it it's
still gonna bleed through so I recommend using a silver gel pen or a paint pen.
If you didn't print your pattern pieces twice like I did you'll notice some of the pieces need to be flipped over and traced again to make one continuous piece. Make sure to mark all the alignment points and extend them inward. Once you remove the pattern piece you can transfer the alignment marks to the back of the pattern by going over the mark firmly with your pen, flipping the pattern over, and retracing on the backside. Push your pen through the little dots to mark
the holes and make sure to label your parts. I like to put a "b" after the number of any
mirrored parts so I can keep track of them. Now it's time to start cutting so grab your foam and go somewhere where you can cut it. Like a table. The key to good foam cuttery is having a really sharp knife so I'd recommend splurging for some brand new blades before you start working. When you cut you don't need to cut all the way through the foam in one pass. You'll get a
better result with multiple lighter cuts, and as always, don't cut your fingers off. Chapter 2: Breastplate & Backplate All right, now it's time to assemble the
parts for the breastplate and the backplate, which means I need to refine the pattern piece.
For those strips in the front I used a sharp skewer to make some indentations along
that dotted line to help me line up where those pieces are going to overlap
later. Do this on both of the strips. Now when you stack those front pieces together this side should match the side of the back piece. And it does.
Hot glue doesn't stick as well to the textured side of the foam because it's kind of been heat sealed when that texture got smooshed into it so we need to sand it to open up the pores in the foam wherever the overlap is going to be. Some 80 grit sandpaper works really well for this. Apply some hot glue to the point of one of the strips and set the other strip on top, aligning its bottom edge with the overlap lines you drew.
Don't worry if the V lines don't match up. Just match the long straight lines.
Interestingly our bodies aren't flat so we'll want the breastplate to curve around our torso. Now at first those outside edges don't appear to match up but if you start to bend the foam around in a curve they do. That's handy. So tack those outside edges in place so they line up and then glue the rest of the overlap, holding the foam nicely curved until the glue cools. This will help to kind of bake in the curve on the sides so we don't have to fight with it later.
And that should give you a fancy half belt which isn't really good for anything.
Glue the breastplate over your stylish half belt using the exact same technique you just used for the two strips and because no one likes belt ridge edges sticking into them grab your knife and, holding it at an angle, start sawing away the top edge of those strips of foam. This will help smooth out the transition between the layers. Now take some time to have a cup
of tea and be happy with yourself because you made a breastplate. Once you're done being happy it's time to glue the two halves of the backplate together.
Glue about five centimeters at a time, lining up the alignment points and holding
the edges together until the glue cools. Avoid the temptation of letting it go too
early because then you'll just have to redo it that's also why I like to use a glue gun with
an adjustable temperature that way I can turn the temperature down so the glue cools faster makes less fumes and burns me less often. If this is your first time using hot glue to glue foam I'd
recommend checking out my hot glue tips video. It could be helpful. Then again, it might
not. Now it's time to convince the backplate that it wants to curve around your body so
grab a blow dryer and set it to extra hot. Use your blow dryer's super extra hot blowing power and your hands' bending power to force the foam to do what you want. Make sure you hold the foam in its bent position until it cools down, helping to lock in the curve. Give the shoulder strap of the breastplate a little curve as well. Just remember not to use your super hot blow dryer in any places where you've already got hot glue or it could melt your hot glue
and you'd be sad. Of course we could stop right here and
just have some plain armor but as we all know plain armor never did anyone
any good so let's add some details. We'll start off by making a bunch of long
strips so if you can get your hands on a big roll of two-millimeter EVA foam that would
be perfect. I'm using Cosplay Apprentice's What the Foam here. It's super strong and super red which is indisputably the best color ever. Make your strips about seven millimeters wide.
I'm using a pair of dividers here to mark it but you could also use a ruler and a pen.
How many strips you'll need will depend on how long they are and what size of armor you're making so maybe start with this many and when you run out cut some more. The main trick with getting the strips on the armor is lining up the corners, so figure out where the bottom corner goes and cut a v in the strip - but not all the way through the strip, just almost all the way through. That way you can bend it and keep a nice sharp corner. Now you can glue down that strip, starting
with the corner. I don't show it here but it's good if you can catch a little bit of glue in the v-shaped cutout of the strip as you glue it down. Glue the rest of the strip and cut it off
at the point. Repeat the process for all the other strips:
cutting nice v's doing nice trimming and having a positive attitude. You may also want to adorn
your armpits and your neck. If you're wondering how we're gonna stick
the front and back together we're gonna do it with velcro. Sand the shoulder straps on the
inside of the breastplate then cut two strips of the furry side of the velcro and glue them down on the shoulder strap. If you're using wide strips of velcro like i did it's probably not a good idea to let the glue cool on a flat surface like i did. Instead you want to make sure the glue cools with the shoulder curved so you don't have to go back and heat it up again with a heat gun like I did. Now glue the scratchy kind of velcro to the side of the breastplate. Scratchy velcro also
goes on the outside of the shoulder straps of the backplate. Now you can attach
the front and back at the shoulders and pop it over your head to try it on.
Hire an assistant to mark where the breastplate overlaps the backplate. You can use those marks to figure out the length of velcro strips you're going to need. Next I'm cutting my wide velcro in half for this because I'm cheap. Sand where the velcro is going to go and glue
it down. Make sure you use the fuzzy kind for this cause if you use the scratchy kind and it
sticks out a little bit it'll probably catch on your clothes. Also remember to keep it curved
while the glue cools so it holds its shape. To give the breastplate even more of a
breastplatey shape I'm going to heat it up and stretch it a little bit right where the
pecs would be. One of the best tools for this is your knee, so if you have one it's time
to get it out and do some foam stretchery. While we're at it let's flatten those abs too.
It's a subtle difference but it definitely adds some dimensionality to the armor and
everyone loves a bit of dimensionality. The other thing everyone loves is a fierce
creature on their armor because that shows that they mean business. And what could
be fiercer than a winged unilion? Nothing. If you have an inkjet printer this is a great
trick for transferring a design onto some foam: Turn your paper upside down and then use a wet
sponge to carefully soak the paper and transfer the ink onto the foam. Interestingly the printer
ink I was using here was from a cheap refill and it didn't work near as well as when
I used the actual printer brand ink. Once you have the basic unilion
design transferred onto your foam trace over all the lines with a ballpoint
pen and then go over the lines over and over with excessive amounts of pressure to
create permanent indentations in your foam. Now carefully cut out the lion
and glue it onto the breastplate. It's pretty hard to glue down all at once so
glue it in sections starting at the large center part and working your way out to the skinnier
bits like the wings and the feet and the horn. And that's it. You can now
awkwardly put on your breastplate. Who knows, you may never want to
take it off ever again. Maybe. Chapter 3: Pauldrons. Alright if you haven't already, cut
out pieces 9a, 9b and 10. If you have two shoulders you'll probably be making two
pauldrons so just do everything I say twice. Start with piece 9 and its mirror image 9b.
Grab a four-millimeter leather punch and use it to punch some holes in the places you're
supposed to punch holes. Next grab your glue gun and glue the two halves together, starting
at the top and aligning the alignment points. The first part at the top is a little tricky
because you're trying to glue two concave curves together so glue shorter sections at a
time and use brute strength to force it to do what you want and hold it way longer just to
make sure it's totally cool before you let go. I like to use a variable temperature glue
gun so i can keep my glue as cool as possible that way I don't have to wait as long for it to
cool and I don't burn my fingers as much. I also like to use a silicone baking sheet on my work
surface because the hot glue doesn't stick to it. You may notice that I'm gluing the pauldron
with the smooth side of the foam to the inside and that's okay because I'm going
to turn it right side out a bit later - it just makes it a lot easier to glue.
Now it's time to glue the v-shaped cutouts together, gluing a few centimeters at a time and
then holding it until the glue completely cools. I'm going to show you a real-time example here
of how long I hold the edges together while the glue cools. I've never done this before because it
just feels like it could be a little bit boring, however, I do realize that a lot of people have
trouble with hot glue so it's good to show. Okay right here you'll see me wiping away the
glue with my finger. I've waited until it's not so hot that it'll burn me anymore but it's
soft enough to rub off. You'll also notice that I didn't stop holding the sides together while
I was doing that. Of course the only reason I can do that is because I have my glue gun set
to a low temperature, otherwise you'd have to wait a lot longer. I guess what I'm saying is
be careful and don't burn your fingers off. And there we have it. 47 seconds to glue a
piece of foam. That wasn't so bad, was it? Now grab your inside-out pauldron and make
it a right-side-out pauldron. It's also a good time to clean up your seams via vigorous
rubbing with some scrap foam, and if your seam has spots you've missed just shoot some glue
in there and give the foam a little squeeze down move. You don't need to get too pedantic
about the seams because most of them are going to end up covered by some beautiful swirls.
Cut some seven-millimeter wide strips of two-millimeter thick EVA foam and glue them
around the outer edges of your pauldrons. Use two separate strips meeting at the points
at the top and the bottom of the pauldron. At the top and bottom points cut the strip in
line with the center seam then you can match the second strip to the first strip making a
beautiful rim of foam around your pauldron. Trace two piece 21s and one piece 22 on a sheet of
two-millimeter EVA foam. I know they're labeled as piece 15 and 16 but that is no longer correct
so pay no attention to that. Piece 22 should reach from the top to the bottom of the pauldron,
covering most of the center seam. And while you've got it there you might as well glue it down. The
two piece 21s will cover up the side seams. Glue the base flush to the outside edges and extend the
curly bits toward the center and give the pauldron a little squeeze because you love it so much.
Okay now we want to add a flappy bit to the pauldron for extra protection. Punch
a couple holes in their appropriate places then heat up the foam and curve it.
Whenever you heat foam it can release toxic fumes so make sure you're doing it in a well
ventilated space with some lung protection. Hold your flappy bit nice and curved while it
cools so it'll maintain that shape then get out your seven millimeter wide strips again and glue
them around the edges. The only place we won't add a strip is along that top concave curve - it would
just interfere with the movement of the pauldron. Speaking of movement let's make some pivoting
rivets to attach the flappy bit to the main pauldron piece. I have a whole video on this
process so I won't go into a ton of detail but here's the basic vibe: Grab your hot glue
gun and some quarter-inch vinyl tubing. Heat the tubing, smoosh the tubing, slide
the tubing, cut the tubing, heat the tubing, and smoosh the tubing.
Nice. Now you could just stop here
and wear your pauldron as a hat or carry on and attach it to the breastplate.
Grab 20 centimeters of fuzzy velcro and cut a one and a half centimeter wide strip. Grab some
scratchy velcro and cut a strip nine centimeters long and one and a half centimeters wide. Glue
the scratchy velcro back to back on one end of the fuzzy velcro. Do some pre-glue sandpaper
ruffinating on the inside of the pauldron. Place your strip along the center line of the
pauldron velcro, scratchy side up and you want the spot where the scratchy velcro ends to be
1.5 centimeters below the point of the pauldron. Now glue down that strip but only glue up to two
and a half centimeters away from the point of the pauldron. That'll leave you with a short section
of single thickness fuzzy velcro, giving your strap a little extra flexibility right at that
point. That attachment point is gonna get a lot of stress on it so let's call in some reinforcements.
Cut a nine-centimeter-long piece of webbing from your child's old car seat and then glue it
across the skinny velcro strip two and a half centimeters down from the top of the pauldron. You
can even reinforce the reinforcement by spreading glue all the way around the outer edge of
the webbing, overlapping both the webbing and the foam. Now if you want to stay simple
and leave the pauldron like this it would work okay but sometimes the pauldron doesn't
stay in place on your arm when you're doing extreme knight moves so let's add another strap.
Go to your closet and grab your random fabric box, carefully sort through your fabric until you
find a nice piece of loosely woven cloth, cut off a nice strip, spread some water-based
contact cement on your sheet of foam, lay your fabric down on your foam and paint
on another layer of contact cement. You can squeegee out any excess with a gift card. The
reason we're doing this is to reinforce the EVA foam and we're using contact cement because it
stays nice and rubbery and flexible when it dries. To be honest I'm using What the Foam and
it probably doesn't need reinforcing but if you're using regular craft store foam you'll
probably want to do this so you don't have an embarrassing pauldron strap accident in the middle
of a giant battle against the forces of darkness. Once the glue is totally dry I have a nice
sheet of reinforced foam for my straps. Just remember this is contact cement so
if you don't let it completely dry it's going to want to stick to itself. Cut
a couple 2.3 centimeter wide strips. Cut a little nine-centimeter-long piece and
glue it to the flappy bit of the pauldron, overlapping the edge by four centimeters. Don't
forget to sand the foam before you glue then cut a longer strip according to the pattern and
glue it on the other side of the flappy bit, again overlapping 4 centimeters from the edge.
Add a little piece of scratchy velcro to the short strap and a longer strip of
fuzzy velcro to the longer strap. Before the glue cools on the strap make sure
to curve it so it'll want to go around your arm and not just stay straight. If you're into
things that are round you can round off the ends. Of course these strap sizes are just a
recommendation. It's going to depend a bit on your body size so make sure you check
with your own body before you cut anything. Just watch when you do the second pauldron that
you do it all mirror image so the straps will look the same from the front when you put them on.
To install your pauldrons onto your breastplate locate your breastplate pattern and mark the
two ends of the cut line. Again, the placement of this line is just a guide and will depend
a bit on your size so check before you cut. Cut the pauldron slot, cutting through the
foam and the velcro on the back, just be sure to watch out for those fingers because we
don't want to get blood on our brand new armor. Use a slightly thicker object to widen that hole,
like the back of your knife or a spoon. Now the pauldron strap can go through the slot. This gives
you pretty adjustable placement because you can pull it in and out through the slot and slide it
up and down. When you've got it how you like it, lock it into place by velcroing the
velcro to the velcro which then can velcro to the other velcro on the backplate.
And once you manage to get the straps done up you can flap your arms as much as you want
and those pauldrons will stay in place. All right let's make some tassets. Those are
the pieces that kind of go over your thighs. Each tasset is made from three
pieces: pieces four, five, and six. Of course if you have two thighs you'll need
two tassets so do everything I say twice. Using a heat gun or a blow dryer, heat up each
foam piece and hold it extra curved until it cools so it'll keep its curvy shape. You'll also
want to make sure you've marked the center line as well as the horizontal dotted line so you'll
know how far to overlap the pieces. I just use a knife to cut a little slot along those lines then
I can mark right through the paper onto my foam. Sand the foam a little bit where the overlaps are
going to be -both front and back - for extra hot glue adhesion. Then you can line up piece
five over piece six and glue a little glob right in the middle just so you can get
everything set up and tacked into place. Once that center is cool you can carry
on and finish gluing the pieces together, gluing one side at a time and holding
them nicely curved until the glue cools. Now glue piece 4 on top of piece 5,
doing the exact same thing just with piece 4 on top of piece 5 instead of piece 5 on top
of piece 6. I'm pretty sure you get the idea. Here you can see me wiping away some excess
hot glue with a piece of foam which is smart because then it won't burn my fingers.
If you know the glue is definitely cool enough you can wipe it away with your fingers.
It's a lot quicker but also a lot riskier in burning off your fingers department.
And it's time to get out those sweet red seven-millimeter wide strips of craft foam.
Now we've already done this on the breastplate but all we had was one corner to make so it was
pretty easy to line up. On this one the strip goes around lots of corners so you'll need a good
system to get it fitting properly. So as you're happily gluing along and you start coming to a
corner, stop about five centimeters before you get there. This gives a little bit of leeway to
either stretch or compress the foam if you get the mark a little bit off. Make a mark with your
fingernail on the strip right at the point of the corner then use some scissors to cut a little
v maybe 16 seventeenths of the way through the strip with the point at the mark you made.
You want to make sure you cut the same angle on both sides because if you don't when
you bend the strip up those top edges are just not going to match.
That's because of geometry. Of course that's easy to fix by trimming
a little bit off the other side. I like to start by cutting the v a bit too small
then I can trim the sides a little at a time until it's exactly the right pointiness. Also
if you got your point in a little bit of the wrong place you can still stretch or compress the
unglued section of the strip to get it lined up. As you're gluing it down take a little
bite of the glue in the mouth of the v. Yum.
Now elegantly clean it up with either your fingers if it's cool enough or with a piece of foam for
safeness. One other sweet tip is when you're laying down your strip, push sort of from the
inside to the outside. That'll squeeze the excess glue out the outside edge which is a lot easier to
clean up than if it squeezes out the inside edge. Finish off the ends with a bit of
guess and check, cutting the strip shorter and shorter until it fits perfectly.
Clean it up a bit with some foam rub-inating. You can also use the heat from the nozzle
of your glue gun to melt any extra glue and smooth it out a bit. This generally works best
if your glue gun has a nice flat wide-ish tip. And that should leave you with a tasset
and a bunch of little tiny triangles. Next we're going to take pieces seven and
eight and hinge them together with a piece of lightweight cloth. Hold pieces seven and
eight together with the smooth sides facing each other. Spread glue on the two top edges
and place your fabric down on the glue. You can use the heat of your glue gun to encourage
the glue to totally saturate the fabric. Now you can open it up and apply just a tiny little
bit of glue to the outside edge of the seam, making sure you're pressing the two pieces
against each other while you're doing it. Now all you need to do is cut off that extra
fabric with a pair of scissors and you've got a super cool foam and fabric hinge piece.
Attach some strips around the outer edges of piece eight, add a strip of scratchy velcro on each
side of piece seven, line it up with the inside center of the breastplate, mark and sand the
corresponding locations, and glue down two strips of fuzzy velcro. And while we're attaching things
to the breastplate let's grab our tasset and mark the "webbing location back of tasset marks"
(robot voice) Foam prepping 17-centimeter long webbing glued down with
five centimeters overlapping the foam and extra glue around the edges for reinforcement.
Figure out where you want your tasset located. I like mine just barely overlapping
that front center flappy piece. Make some vertical marks where the webbing
straps line up and some horizontal marks about in the center of that bottom segment of the
breastplate and then cut on the line, making sure to keep your fingers away from under the knife.
Now you can slide those tasset straps into the breastplate. Glue a five-centimeter strip of
scratchy velcro to the end of the straps and a 10-centimeter strip of fuzzy velcro to the
breastplate above the straps and you've got yourself some adjustable removable tassets. Chapter 5: Legs Now let's make the leg piece. It's made up
of a cuisse, a poleyn and a greave. And some poleyn hinges but I just made that name up.
Let's start by punching some holes in our poleyn. Heat up the center of the poleyn
and use your knee to form it which kinda makes sense because that's where it's gonna go.
You're trying to make the center nice and domey so kind of dome it over your knee then grab
the edges and stretch it over your knee Pretty soon it'll look like the
best poleyn you've ever seen ever. Now you can glue the v-shaped cutouts on
each side and clean up the seam with some foam scrubbery. These seams aren't going to be
hidden so make them nice and neat. To make the poleyn look even more fantastic than it already
does we're going to heat and bend back the points at the top and bottom and there's your polyn.
Okay the rest of the leg pieces don't need any gluing but they do need bending so let's heat
them up and roll them into skinny little tubes. Obviously our legs aren't that skinny but if we
roll them up skinnier than we want them to end up being then once they relax a bit they'll
be the right skinniness for our skinny legs. After lots of rolling and squishing and holding
and letting cool you should end up with a bunch of parts that look like this. Now it's time to
temporarily assemble the leg but we need some pivoting hinges for this. These aren't going to be
permanent yet so just flare one side and then cut the other end about five centimeters long.
Attach the cuisse to the top poleyn hinge, the top poleyn hinge to the poleyn, the greave
to the bottom polyen hinge, and the bottom poleyn hinge to the poleyn.
Plain and simple. Now try it on your leg, locating the poleyn
right on top of your knee where it should go. If the greave is contacting the top of your
foot it's too long and needs to be trimmed down in which case you can go back to your pattern
and shorten it according to the shortening lines. Now remove all your temporary hinge rivets and
attach some strips of seven-millimeter wide craft foam. They go around all the edges except
the ones that are covered up by a piece on top. Then you can reassemble your leg with the pieces
of tubing you took out just a few minutes ago, this time cutting them short and
heating and forming the other end to make them permanent. I used a drumstick.
Okay let's attach these to our legs with some one-inch elastic. Mark and sand some spots right
near the bottom of the greave, near the top of the cuisse, and in the center of the poleyn. The
elastic lengths will vary depending on your own leg measurements but here are the lengths I
used for mine. For the back of the poleyn: one 16 centimeter and one 11 centimeter strip
of elastic with an eight-centimeter strip of scratchy velcro stuck to the 16-centimeter strip
of elastic and a four-centimeter strip of fuzzy velcro stuck to the 11-centimeter strip of
elastic. Glue the elastic on the poleyn so the scratchy side of the velcro is going to face
away from your leg and the fuzzy velcro will face towards your leg on the opposite side. Spend some
time reinforcing the elastic with some extra glue on top and all around the elastic. Just make sure
not to glue any of the other parts while you're doing it or you could be walking kind of stiffly.
Next cut a 16-centimeter and a 22-centimeter strip of elastic, a 7-centimeter strip of scratchy
velcro, and a 5-centimeter strip of fuzzy velcro. Glue the longer velcro to the longer elastic
and the shorter velcro to the shorter elastic. I should mention that I have come across
velcro that doesn't want to stick to hot glue so in that case, it's worth sanding the
back of the velcro to help it stick better like I did just a couple seconds ago now.
Glue those elastics to the top sides of the cuisse in the same way that you did
for the poleyn and our last elastics are both 10-centimeter strips with 4 centimeters
of scratchy and 5 centimeters soft and those will go at the bottom of the greave.
And that's some finished leg armor. Now it's just a matter of strapping them onto your
legs and the next time you go for a walk you don't have to worry about your legs getting chopped off. Chapter 6: Arms Okay now it's time to protect your arms. If you
want to go simple and easy you could just make a bracer or if you want to go more complicated
and more epic you can make the whole arm. We'll start off with simple and easy, so
I'll show you how to make the bracer first. Start by tracing the pattern and cutting the main
shape out of 6-8 millimeter foam. Now go back to your pattern and cut out the diamond and the
swirly bits as well. You actually only need to cut the swirls on one side because you can always
flip the pattern over to trace the other side then you can line up your pattern and trace those
swirls and the diamond onto your bracer. We're doing this just to make it easy to line up all
the pieces when we go to glue them in the end. And look at this: flipping the pattern over to
trace the swirls on the other side. How efficient. Now let's trace those swirls and diamond on a
sheet of two-millimeter thick craft foam and I know you're wondering, "Can't I just trace
one swirl four times?" and the answer is no. Those two swirls are different sizes to fit
properly on the bracer. You can however trace the two swirls two times. That's okay.
I like to label the matching sets a and b so I know which ones were traced right side up and which ones
were upside down. Helps avoid confusion later. And some more careful "not
cutting your fingers off" cutting. Now heat up your bracer and roll it up
into a little roll. To make it hold its rolly form hold it all rolled up until it's
totally cool so that when you release it, it'll stay in that shape. Now you can glue
on your two-millimeter craft foam sheets, lining them up with the marks that you made
earlier. They won't necessarily fit right on the lines exactly because you have curved
the bracer but they should come close. It's a good idea to do any cleanup on the center
diamond before you add the swirls because there's just more space to do it right now
and then it's time for some swirl gluing and a seven-millimeter wide strip of craft foam
all around the outside finishes it off nicely. For going around those tight corners you can heat
the strip up a bit and it's amazing how sharp a curve you can actually get. Once you're back
where you started, cut the two ends flush and you're done. All that's left is to sand a couple
spots on the inside and glue a couple short strips of elastic across the opening on the bracer
then you can put it on and feel super strong. Alright that's it for the bracer. Obviously you'll
probably want to make two of them or you can keep watching and make the whole arm.
The arm is made up of three parts: the vambrace the rerebrace and the couter.
Trace the arm pattern on some EVA foam, making sure to mark all the alignment marks and
the hinge marks. The couter (or elbow section) for each arm is made from two pieces so for
each elbow first trace piece 20 with the fan section attached then cut it off on the dotted
line and trace piece 20 again. I call it 20b. Now you can cut out all your pieces with your
sharp sharp knife. Grab a four-millimeter leather punch and twist it like crazy until
you've punched holes everywhere that holes are supposed to be punched. Heat up your glue gun
and start gluing the two elbow pieces together, one with a flap and one without. If you've been
making the whole armor costume I'm assuming you know how to glue things together by now so I
won't keep talking about how you have to line up the alignment points, glue small sections at
a time, and make sure to hold the sides together until it completely cools. Or how you can glue
it inside out and then flip it right side out. Heat up the side with the fan on it, being
careful not to melt the glue of the center seam, and use your thumb to form a little
valley in the fan. A fan valley. You can also use your fingers to stretch the foam
a little bit, kind of in the center of each piece, and flip up the outside edges for style. Now glue
pieces 18 and 19 together to make the front half of the rerebrace. Start at one edge and
make sure the alignment points are lined up as you go along. Now you can glue
the rear of the rerebrace piece 17 onto the front of the rerebrace. You might find
you need to stretch piece 17 just a little bit to get the alignment marks to line up and that's
okay. That's how it's supposed to be. I think. Once one edge is glued, turn it right
side out and glue the other edge, and there you go. You made a rerebrace.
The vambrace or the part that guards your forearm is made by gluing pieces 15
and 16 together. Gluing this is pretty straightforward. Glue one side, turn it
inside out, and then glue the other side, and that's a vambrace.
You're welcome, forearm. If you're into things being nice and smooth, now would be a good time to clean up the seams
by rubbing them frantically with some foam. Also now would be a good time to check to make
sure they fit. Make sure to try them over top of whatever you're going to be wearing underneath
them. Apparently I'm going to be wearing an orange fuzzy sweater under mine. If everything looks good
you can cut some seven millimeter wide strips of craft foam and glue them around the outside edges
of the elbow piece. You may need to use some heat to convince that strip that it really does want
to go around some of those tighter corners. Cut cut.
We'll also glue a strip at the cuff end of the vambrace starting at the bottom center
and going all the way around. Not only does it add a little more detail, it also strengthens the ends
of the two seams on the sides of the vambrace. Now it's time to put it all
together with some pivoting hinges. If you don't already know how to do this make
sure to check out my video on pivoting hinge rivets. I'll have links in the description.
If you notice the back edges of the vambrace or rerebrace rubbing against the inside of the
elbow you can heat them up and curve them inward so they don't rub anymore or you could also just
trim a little bit away. That would work too. Once everything is working well you can
cut and flare the other end of the rivets. I'm using the back end of a drumstick here
because it's just the perfect shape and size. Okay the arm's ready to go but it can have a
tendency to drop down on your arm and pinch the bit of skin on the inside of your elbow so we're
gonna add a strap connecting it to the breastplate to hold it up so grab some two centimeter wide
webbing and glue a five-centimeter strip of scratchy velcro on one end on one side and a
strip of fuzzy velcro on the same end on the other side which allows it to be sandwiched
between the velcro on the shoulders of the breastplate. And get a beautiful helper to mark
where the strap overlaps the top edge of the arm. High five for some great helping out.
Cut the webbing about five centimeters below that mark and then cut a five-centimeter
strip of fuzzy velcro and a five-centimeter strip of scratchy velcro. Now glue the scratchy velcro
to the outside of your arm and the fuzzy strip to the end of the webbing. Make sure it goes on
the opposite side of where your assistant marked the line. Now you can put it all together with the
pauldron attached and the strap for the arm coming out from the shoulder. It's a little awkward
putting it all on by yourself but it is possible. I think there's a reason knights had
people helping them put their armor on. Of course you could leave your armor like this because it looks pretty cool
already or you could paint it. Chapter 7: Painting Now it's a lot easier to paint if everything
isn't riveted together already. Here you'll see me unriveting all my rivets so I can take
the pieces apart that's why I keep mentioning it in the little pop-ups in the video. Make sure
to mark the parts so you know how to put them back together then you can paint it black. I tend to
use artists' acrylic paints. They're reasonably flexible without getting too crazy expensive. The
more money you spend the more flexible paint you can get so it's up to you. I give my projects
three coats of black paint, waiting for them to dry completely between coats. I even make a
little mark for each coat I paint just so I can keep track because black kinda looks like black.
If you're planning on making black and red armor you'd be almost done - all you need to do is
paint the accents red. I was super tempted to paint my armor like this cause black and
red is my favorite color. I also tried out a few other color combinations and thought I'd
share them with you just so you can get an idea of different options for your paint job.
I ended up choosing to go with all silver and a gold unilion.
Grab a cardboard cereal box that has no brand name showing for copyright reasons. Grab
your metallic paints and put on a rubber glove. My favorite silver color right now is a 50/50 mix
of DecoArt Metallics silver and pewter colors. Using your gloved finger take a tiny little
paint and then rub most of it off on some clear cardboard. Now very gently apply the paint onto
your armor in a circular rubbing motion. Repeat this process over and over and over again until
you don't want to see silver paint ever again in your life. If you're planning on painting a
contrasting color on the edging try to get as little silver on there as possible although you
will get some. You'll just have to paint black over it again to cover it up. If you're
just painting it all silver you can just paint it all silver. The thing about this
technique is you're not trying to get right into the corners and edges that's why we
use a finger because it just can't. Instead, it gives you kind of an antique effect
which also helps to show off the details. If you do get some silver too far into the
corners and don't like how it looks grab a tiny little bit of black paint, rub most of it off
on some paper and then just dab it along the edge. I want my unilion to look gold because it's
special so I'll paint over any parts that accidentally got silver on it then I'll take my
vintage brass paint and golden-ate my unilion. If you're planning on doing the trim gold
now would be also the time to do that. I'm not I'm doing mine silver. Oh yeah and don't
forget to paint the straps on the arms too. I painted mine brown to look like leather.
It's not super necessary to seal your paint but it'll probably make it last longer. I'm trying
something a little bit different I'm using Plaid FX's primer as a sealer. Not sure how that'll
pan out but I guess I'll see once the paint's dry. You can rivet all your pieces back together
for good and depending how pedantic you are you might want to paint those rivets black and silver.
Now you can velcro your armor all back together, put on a sexy sweater you got at the thrift
store that looks a little bit like chain mail, and squirm your way into your armor. All right, there you go, some knight armor you
can be proud of. And what I really love about this knight armor is its modularity. For example,
say you didn't like your pauldrons and wanted a different pauldron.
(whispery) Magic You could just magically swap
it out for something spikier. Or if you didn't like your breastplate you
could change your breastplate. Maybe you don't want a unilion on your breastplate and
you want a narwhal or your favorite sandwich. As of right now when I release the video I
only have one size: Size Chris. However I will be releasing more sizes - some kid sizes
and a larger adult size. Stay tuned for that. If you're watching later they may already be there
and if you've already bought the pattern they will be added to your pattern for free with updates.
Even though there is only one size the good thing about this pattern is it's really adjustable.
It fits my son Sam, it fits my wife Lorinda... it doesn't quite fit Isabelle.
And it's not too hard to say like just lengthen the shoulder straps to make the
breastplate bigger even though it's one size it is still lots of sizes if you know what I mean.
I'm also thinking I'd like to make a more female breastplate if there's enough interest so if
you think that's a good idea make sure to leave a comment in the comments so I know that people
want to see that and then I will make that happen. I'm also including the knight helmet which is
already a pattern but I'll include it with this pattern so that you have the whole thing.
Don't forget this pattern is part of my Ultimate Everything Super Value
bundle which is all the patterns that I've ever made and any foam patterns I make
in the future all for a really really good price. Uh what else. If you're wondering if you
can sit in this armor the answer is yes you can. I made it so you can sit down which is
handy if you like sitting down. Which I do. Alright I'm done.
Thanks for watching. See ya. Okay it's caught my blouse Stuck everywhere I cannot see
Do some knight moves
