Easy Leather Barbarian Armor! Bonus: Oiling Leather!

foreign adventurers and welcome to Skilled tree where we learn how to do just about everything now on this show we have come a long way with developing our skills specifically our leather craft skills you guys last Sean of that one really hard and I've really enjoyed kind of experimenting and learning more about it so much so though that I think it's kind of easy to get carried away with the with the projects becoming more and more complex as we get more skilled with it but sometimes leveling up those skills can just be taking what we already know and applying them to different even easy projects to kind of hone them in a little bit with that in mind I thought it would be fun for us to take a project that looks really badass but actually doesn't take a whole lot of skill to achieve so today I want to try to make a war skirt also known as like a battle skirt basically one of these bad boys used to protect like your lower regions and honestly generally just to kind of look badass as far as I'm concerned and though we will be trying a couple of new techniques I like to try to Pepper in some new stuff with every episode this is for the most part something that anybody with just like a beginner's leather craft set could totally achieve that said we have covered a lot of the basics of leather Craft on the show so if you're really new to the whole art definitely check out our playlist here it's going to walk you through some of the more Basics that I'm gonna just kind of glaze over as we got all right well we'll jump right into it now and Maddie and I just we kind of always do first thing is to make a Pinterest board of the kind of ideas and Vibes we're going for and while doing that we definitely veered more towards like the Barbarian kind of feel right something a little bit like orcish and Skyrim e so this means we're looking at like layers of leather and fur and again with that kind of like orcish Barbarian style we're looking at a lot of sharp edges nothing very rounded or refined looking definitely not your civilized Knights War skirt no no alright so with those General ideas in mind Maddie started by tracing out what the plate of the skirt are going to look like for General sizing we just kind of looked at how wide it would have to be to cover half of the front of my thigh to just around the back of it all that while hanging just long enough to cover the area from my belt to the very top of my knee once we were happy with this angular rustic design we went ahead and transferred it over to the leather to get it cut out and right away this is already looking really cool though here it did feel a little bit small all I know we kind of geared to just kind of come to the very top of my knee but it it almost had like a feeling of the short mini War skirt I'm just saying I'm not trying to like distract people on the field of battle I'm trying to protect myself not only that but I think just having different layers of leather will look good it's going to add a lot of depth to the piece and just kind of make it not look bulky but looking kind of formidable right so with that in mind I just use the same exact design scaled up making an extra three inches wide and six inches long then I just made the exact same cuts for the other side and already I dig how this is gonna look that extra layer was taking it from this small kind of lightweight piece to something you'd see straight up on like World of Warcraft like this chunky Barbarian coming into the battlefield I love it so in order for these things to like hang on me right we're gonna have to attach it to some sort of a belt or like a waist wrap of some sort to figure out how big I needed that I honestly just wrapped this piece of leather around my waist and use a pencil to Mark how long I wanted it I figured just having it reach around to kind of the edges of my hip bones here would make it so that it left like a nice enough gap for whatever other belts feature I wanted to have in place I was kind of playing it by ear here and that's one thing I really want to point out I think if you're watching this you're probably like you're not giving me a lot of measurements or whatever because my body measurements are going to be completely different than your body measurements part of the beauty of this particular project is the measurements don't have to be exact and the design doesn't have to be exact really it's kind of whatever you think looks cool cut that and that's what it'll be it'll look cool I promise you so like for this waist wrap area here I kept it pretty loose I just measured it to be about six inches wide with a couple of extra inches in the middle area where that flare out sits and then just tapered off the ends again I'll just look could have just went with a straight piece doesn't matter just use your imagination and again have fun once everything was laid on the table I decided that like kind of a centerpiece in the back like my butt area I like the idea of It kind of surrounding me that way and leaving the front a bit open for like my belt to hang or whatever other detail I want to make the shape for that thing I just use the same temp that I use for those side plates but folded in half this way I can trace it out on one side and then flip it over to mirror it to make a centerpiece that's reminiscent of those two side pieces and it all feels kind of cohesive and with all my plates cut out I just went ahead and did the usual of beveling the edges and then using my Slicker brush to make sure everything was laid down nice and smooth while I was working on these I was mulling over exactly how to actually like Loop the thing so it connects to me I wasn't sure if I wanted to connect a belt to it like permanently or if I wanted to make some kind of Loops or pass-throughs for another belt to go on It ultimately I decided making little belt loops just like you have in your pants would be a good idea because then I can actually hang stuff on the pieces of belt that are exposed so to do that I just end up making these five little keeper pieces with a random design I came up again measurements are design wise it wasn't too important I just made sure they were long enough so that I had a place to put rivets in and still enough room to slide a belt through Not only was this a nice easy way to kind of tithe literally tie the whole thing together but it was a nice way for me to be lazy because I already had the belts that I want to use and that's another thing if you have other pieces of projects that you used or or other things laying around you can incorporate into your project you don't have to do all the extra work of making it new every single time now for some Last Detail if you followed my other leather projects I've done in the past you know I kind of like to add a little border around things just to spice it up a little bit and make it look not so plain and to do that all I have to do is Trace around the edge with my wing divider to make a nice even border then I cut that in with my swivel knife once that's all set I go back in with my bevel stamp just to sink the leather in all along that line and make the whole border pop happy with that Bare Bones design I went ahead with a medium brown leather and dyed everything as evenly as possible by the way to do this I actually end up using a piece of wool this time around which I haven't had great luck with in the past and I've used a lot of things to dye I've used dobbers paper towel cloth paint brushes a whole bunch of different stuff and actually this time around it worked really well for me I think for a really large projects the wool is great because it loads up with a lot of the dye for smaller projects it can be kind of a pain so it's too much style it feels overwhelming but for a large project works really well that being said and this is going to be our first kind of new technique for me um I have had issues with dying in the past mostly because I like to use this five things die and it is alcohol based the only reason that's an issue is because it has a tendency to dry out your leather this causes my leather to kind of Bend and fold in on itself and get really crispy and brittle feeling now in the comments section you guys have noted that before and you've let me know that the best thing to do to kind of get around that is to add moisture back to it by oiling my leather and the vast majority of you recommended this stuff 100 needs foot oil so taking your comments to heart I decided to give it a go on this project especially because this war skirt I want it to lay it and flow and not be really like rigid I want it to be a nice Supple pieces of leather now this oil does like to separate when it's cool so I had to add it to this measuring cup and heat it up until all the liquid look unified then I just started generously applying it to my leather and this my dear viewer is why you should always check more than one source on the internet and researching the best way to use nice food oil I found this one article that was talking about how to do it and that that was the one arm that was the one article I read and basically what they said is you apply it to one side of the leather until you see it penetrate all the way through not a little bit like this no no no all the way through until the other side is is wet with the oil here's the thing yes it made my leather really Supple again honestly it made it look really nice the downside is the damn thing just refused to dry like more than 24 hours later which they're like leave it eight hours if you feel like you need to um more than 24 hours later it was still oily it was not usable so again I took to the internet and every single other article I read on eats food oil aside from that one article was like make sure you don't add too much because it won't dry and it could actually start degrading your leather yeah that happened so of course my next search term was how do you fix the stupid thing I did and there's a lot of really helpful things on that and basically it came down to like putting it between some absorbent pieces like like pieces of cloth or something like that and leaving it in a warm place so that all that oil can soak out of the leather and into that thing luckily I was going away on a week-long trip to bensic anyway so I was able to leave it for a good long time with some weights on it and I just let it soak through and thank the gods that did it that did the trick and it was no longer Oily to the touch so yeah apply a reasonable amount of oil to your leather don't try to soak it all the way through that is a bad idea it turns out we learn together here honestly if you have more experience with oiling your leather and you have a better technique please do leave it in the comment section below and educate us because I don't know what I'm doing here let's try my best anyways with that debacle behind me I also decided to add a layer of resist to the top of the thing mostly just to make sure that the the top coat of diet wasn't going to come off on my clothes I did have some issue with my leather being unsealed that happening and I noticed that even though the oil was dry if I took a piece of like lighter color cloth and I rubbed it I'd still get a little bit of residual off so this just kind of bought me that peace of mind at least all right so happy with everything finally I was time to actually put this bad boy together and in the aim of keeping this like a fairly low skill ceiling I decided not to use any stitches at all but instead use some rapid rivets these make life really easy all you really have to do is punch the holes where you want the connection points to be like this grouping I did on the belt loops and then transfer those holes over to the waist portion right where I wanted them to sit finally I locked everything together with the rapid rivets using the recommended Anvil and Striker that came with them doing this gave me a really solid connection point that holds strongly and honestly looks really slick and using that same exact method over and over again I was able to put all five belt loop Keepers together the hardest part was just making sure they were all evenly spaced apart now before adding those plates to the whole assembly I kind of had a Flash and I thought it would look really cool if I added some rabbit pelt to the whole thing just add an extra layer of fur and really drive home that Barbarian feel and putting them in was easy I just sandwiched them in between the two plates for the thighs and then all I had to do was punch the holes as usual for the rapid rivets all the way through everything then to make sure they lined up perfectly on the Belt I used one of those plates to line up the holes where they'd go and punch those as well making sure it was Center of that space so the belt I would use to hold everything together would end up covering those rivets just hiding them all together then I simply used a rapid rivets to connect everything together I followed suit on the same side against sandwiching the rapid Pelt between the two pieces for the thighs I like that so much that I actually decided to add one more Pell to the behind that rear plate just add a little bit of extra layering to that as well and look at how so far right like design plates out of The Ether for for the fronts and the back or whatever came up with a belt design and then just rapid riveted everything together and now we get something that looks straight up like a war belt from Skyrim or something the awesomer would wear I'm really digging how this is coming out that being said at this point I kind of wanted to add just a little a little something else those plates they looked they're cool but they look a little bit plain to me instead of jazz them up a little bit I decided to use these pyramidal spots just to up the Barbarian Chic look I'm going for these are basically just little metal studs that have these two tiny prongs that stick out of the end of them I have to do is stick those through the leather and then you bend those little prongs and that's what holds it to the leather they're actually really easy to use so to begin with I just laid them out so I could see roughly how I thought they would look best then I simply rocked them back so their little spikes left indents into the leather giving me easy marks to know where to put my holes and here's actually another new technique for me in the past when I've used these type of spots on my Witcher bracers here I went ahead and painstakingly punched every one of those holes either with like a hole puncher or with an awl in which I like stabbed through it all that not only took a really long time but it also left it so that if you look really closely you can kind of see the roundness of the hole on the side of those spikes it just it didn't look as clean as I wanted it to this time around though I realized that you could actually just take a razor knife and push through on your marks to make tiny little incisions little incisions that those legs from the spots easily slide into then it's a simple matter of just turning the piece over and flattening those legs out so that they stay in place using this techniques I was able to make all of my holes in just a matter of minutes then very easily push all of those spots into place and proceed to turn it over and bend all the legs at once making sure they were nice and flat by lightly tapping them with my mallet this made a job that once took me like a good hour or so to do only take about 10 minutes and that to me is leveling up that's why I like revisiting kind of skills that we've already done because at this point not only do we know what has to be done but we can develop more streamlined more efficient ways to get those things done that's where like the real skill comes in I'm not gonna lie I'm I'm genuinely really pleased with myself for that little advancement it's something kind of small and dumb but it saved me so much time and it really made the project much more fun to work on and with a sufficient amount of badassery in place now come the moment of truth I don't know about you but I think we totally now killed our Barbarian aesthetic I could for sure see this in like a LARP or even a more standard kind of battle scene the layers give this thing a lot of body and again it just kind of looks super Metal right like oh I'm so happy with how that came out not only that but again these techniques are super simple you can buy some leather and some simple tools and make something like this today and even if you mess up a little bit like my mess up with the need to put oil like yeah it kind of sucked but honestly it worked out just fine we were able to fix it and this thing I'm super super proud of it I do hope you try this project if you do please join the Discord Link in the description below and show us what you got I'd love to see your take on this project and the kind of cool designs you come up with anywho if you like this project or my general Shenanigans want to give me some of that like it love and don't forget to subscribe so you know when I release new content in the meantime though keep leveling up you thank you for making it to the end screen the YouTube algorithm loves when you do and it's a great way to support this channel another great way to support this channel is by joining these incredible people who give to our patreon thanks to their incredible generosity we're able to keep this bad boy running and keep leveling up our skills and while we're at it I'd like to thank our newest High tier patreon members Victoria white and Fabo Miller thank the both of you so much again it means the world to me that you're willing to help support this channel So yeah thank you for everything you do for us if you'd like to join their Noble ranks want to consider joining our patreon Link in 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Channel: Skill Tree

Views: 70,695

Keywords: armor, armour, vikings, warrior, barbarian, berserker, shield, game of thrones, skyrim, elder scrolls, dungeons and dragons, dnd, rpg, roleplaying, Armor, Cosplay, Costume, Larp, leg, tutorial, leatherworking projects, leather working, leather armor, making leather armor, Leather Tassets, Tassets, How To, Fantasy Tassets, How to make Tassets, DIY, cosplay armor tutorial, War Skirt, Barbarian Armor, neatsfoot oil leather, vegetable tanned leather, veg tan, oiling leather, leather oil

Id: qxU-Sfwmckw

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2022