How to Make a Basic Bracer Using Only Basic Leatherworking Tools

hey everybody this is Josh from hidden library leather works in this video we're gonna walk through crafting a leather bracelet from start to finish using only very basic leather working tools let's get to it this is the second armored leather working tutorial in which we're gonna use only very basic leather working tools to craft a simple bracer from start to finish if you haven't already seen my video explaining the basic tools go ahead and hit the link up here or down in the description before we get started we need to think about the process and all the different steps that are required to make this bracer so we're gonna start out with a pattern choosing the pattern that we're gonna use as well as the leather that we're gonna use transferring that pattern to the leather cutting out the piece soaking and wet molding the leather to make it conform to the shape of our arm cutting straps if we're going to be using straps and buckles punching all the holes dying the leather and finally any sort of finishing touches that we might need like riveting the straps on so this is the pattern piece that I'm going to be using I will have a link to this in the description down below as well if you'd like to use this additionally on top of that I will be coming out with a video soon on how to make your own patterns and things that you need to keep in mind when you do that now as we're going through and cutting our armor after we've marked out our pattern piece you may need to take multiple passes with your knife a sharp blade will definitely help with this ultimately what you want to do if you have to take multiple passes with your knife is make sure that you're keeping your knife perpendicular to the leather at all times this will give you an even cut if especially if you're taking multiple passes you can end up changing the angle of the knife blade which can end up giving you unclean edges so that's something that's very important to keep in mind so a note about using leather you'll note that you'll have many different styles of leather when you look at a leather supply store vegetable tan chrome tanned lot ago many other styles I highly highly recommend with vegetable tanned leather this is really what you're going to want to use for the base of any armor other leather types do have their uses for the structure and then the main body of your armor this is what you're going to want to go for I will have another video coming up soon where we talk about the different types of leather their pros and cons and the uses for each of them but just for now stick with vegetable tanned leather if you're making this armor for combat games such as belgarath a Guri or amp card you will want to make sure to take note of the rules for your specific game for example in Bella Garth leather armor must be a minimum of 3/16 of an inch thick which translates to 12 ounce weight leather I highly recommend purchasing the 12 to 14 ounce saddle skirt this is commonly sold relatively inexpensive you can use things like Sol bends but Sol bends tend to be becoming smaller pieces because they're a bend versus a side they they tend to be more expensive they're harder to work because they are much thicker leather usually on the order of 14 to 15 ounces and that will ultimately translate to heavier armor it's gonna be harder to cut harder to shape so I would recommend against Sol bends unless you are looking for you know a very particular aesthetic if you're looking for a very thick bulky armor and are willing to deal with that extra difficulty so what we have here is a 12 to 13 ounce side of saddle security you can see that bar any cut some some pieces out of it previously but when you lay it out you'll notice that we have there are some blemishes and this is common especially in what what they call economy grade side so just typically what we purchase for armored grade you could see that we have some some lines here there are some areas such as up here by the by the belly where there's some fat striations we want to make sure to avoid these and depending on the piece that you're using you may also see some insect bites or brands and things like that you know leather is a natural product comes from from cows and then these cows live their lives so you want to make sure to avoid that if you're looking for the highest quality and product possible it's not always possible and sometimes you know you could work those into the piece as well especially things like brands those can often add say a cool element you know especially if you're going for some sort of monster armor or something along those lines so keep all of that in mind and just take a look at what you have and and try to find the best positioning for your pattern piece so in this case what I'm going to do I'm going to take my pattern piece and I think what here is actually pretty good this is a spine of the leather because this is a side it's essentially a half of a cow so this up here is actually going to be the thickest part of the leather as we take her off down towards the belly the leather will get thinner and we'll have a higher fat content so will tend to be a little bit floppier than what we get up here so for a bracer this is actually probably going to be perfect so our next step is going to be to take our pen and make sure that we hold down the piece tight and we'll trace around here and then we'll get to cutting it out all right so now that we've got our bracelet cut out the next step is going to be soaking and wet molding this is going to allow us to shape the piece to our arm as well as add the contours that we need to make it more comfortable so what you want to do is start with some cool or lukewarm water this water is room temperature it's actually been sitting in my shop for a while so what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna take this and just place it in the water make sure that it's submerged and we're gonna soak this for just a couple minutes we don't actually need complete penetration because this is going to be a pretty simple bracer we're not gonna have any complex contours or in depth shaping that's going to be required so we definitely don't need complete penetration of the water into the leather if you are doing anything that is any more in depth if you're trying to form complex curves deep shapes things like that you will want to soak it for longer probably at least until the bubbles stop coming out but for this just a couple minutes is going to be okay once your leather is soaked for a minute or two we're going to take it out and dry it off I just use paper towels for this but you can use whatever's handy once we drive the leather off and it's no longer dripping wet we're gonna need to go ahead and start to shake this leather so for something like a bracer it's pretty simple you know we just want to make it into a tube shape to fit over our arm there are a few tips that you can do to make it a little bit more comfortable notably I like to flare out around the wrist and by doing that it's going to make it a little bit more comfortable it's not going to rub on your wrist as you're wearing it and it's gonna be a little bit more comfortable so to do that you just need to simply flare up the end just like this and we'll make this a little bit cleaner you'll notice that the soaked leather is very pliable and the trick here is to get it into the shape that we want and then set it and let it dry and as it dries the fibers within the leather will harden and ultimately retain their shape as long as it doesn't get too wet so as you can see I've flared out the end if you look at that you can see it flares out a little bit and this is gonna like I said make it a little bit more comfortable to wear and this is the basic shape we can actually place this on our arm and test it out this is a pretty simple piece so there's not much complex shaping involved and we know it's gonna fit pretty well you may have to keep working the leather it does take a little bit of coaxing to get into place so this is something that you just kind of have to work at it if you've got an anything like a sharpie or perhaps a an edge burnisher is typically what I use but we'll go into that later that can help to sort of force the leather into place as you as you kind of work it so now that we've got our leather shaped what we need to do is just set it aside and let it dry there are a couple tips that you can do to keep it to hold its shape while it dries often what I will do is take some tape and simply wrap it sticky side out around over itself and that will allow it to maintain its shape however I do want to caution you that if you're using a lighter die especially like lighter Browns or greens or things like that you can often run into issues where the die will not take evenly on the leather because of the fact that it dried differently under the tape so that is something to keep in mind if you're using black die or if you're painting it you shouldn't run into any issues but something to keep in mind it may be experiment with a little bit so here's the brace are all formed up like I said I've used the duct tape here to basically just hold it roughly in its shape as I've mentioned a couple times a bracer is a pretty simple piece so there's not a lot of complexity involved here and you can get pretty close to a very perfect fit with only minimal shaping so we'll go ahead and set this aside this is something that depending on how long you've soaked it will take some time to dry so keep that in mind the same leather that we use for our bracer is not going to be appropriate for our straps armor grade leather in my case 12 to 13 ounce saddle skirting is going to be too thick for straps they're going to be too difficult to work to difficult to put on and off and may even be too thick for our buckles you can certainly skive this down with a specialized tool called a skiver but since we're only focusing on basic leather working tools we're going to use something that I actually use quite a bit even to this day my mother working and that would be latigo so latigo is a combination tanned leather that is going to be a little bit more pliable than your typical vegetable tanned leather but is also going to be pretty accessible and basically perfect for straps this is often what they use for saddle making and things like that so you can actually pick up these bags of remnants at things like Hobby Lobby or Michaels or tandy Leather in or wherever wherever you're able to buy leather working materials and they're gonna be very inexpensive you'll see that you get a lot of remnants but these are basically perfect for straps so the buckles that I'm using are three quarter inch utility buckles so we need to cut our straps to be three quarters of an inch wide maybe a little bit less just to account them the tolerances within the buckle you want to make sure that you have a nice square edge to start off of so that your straps are even in this case I don't so I'm gonna go ahead and square this off now that we've got it squared off all we need to do is just mark out our straps at 3/4 inch intervals so because we are gonna have two buckles on each bracer or a single brace or you are going to need four straps there will be the strap piece on the inside as well as the piece that holds the buckle on on the outside now a note about the length of the straps I would typically go with at least 5 inches you may end up with some excess but that will be beneficially you can certainly always trim it off later so once you have your strap cut out we're gonna measure the strap and we're gonna go in and Mark out the holes for the buckle we're gonna start at the end and we're gonna measure in 1-inch and that's gonna be the place of our first hole try to mark in the center and then we're gonna mark every 3/4 of an inch and we're gonna do three total holes [Music] the idea behind the three holes is to give the where some flexibility in the size of the bracer so ideally the perfect fit would be the middle hole but by having a hole on either side three quarters of an inch space from that the bracer can be expanded or contracted as necessary finally we need to set up a hole at the very end for our rivet so go in just about a half an inch on the opposite end and Mark that now that we have our holes in place we need to go ahead and punch the hole so take your hole punch and your mallet in this case I'm just using the rubber mallet and make sure that your punch is centered on the strap and go ahead and just give it a couple hammers if you'd like you can also take your knife to the very end of the strap and give it a decorative look like you'd find on a belt there are specialized punches for this so that is an option as well if that's something that you would like to consider one trick that you can do to make things a little bit easier on yourself once you have the first holes punched out in your first strap lay it on top of your other straps and use those holes to mark out where you're going to punch next now that we have the two straps sides of the straps cut out we need to focus on the buckle end so much like what we did before we're going to cut out two strips about four to five inches in length three-quarters of an inch wide once you have the buckle end of your straps cut out you're gonna want to take and fold over the edge and from here you'll figure out a good size for how big you need them to be in my case I want them to be about an inch and a half long on either side so we're gonna trim them down to about three inches total and once again you'll want to use the first strap that you cut to measure against the second so that you get an even cut across both now that we have both of our buckle straps done these are going to be a little bit simpler so we simply go ahead and fold them in half and find the middle point and we'll just mark it with our punch I'll go ahead and punch that hole out and from here once again we'll measure about half an inch in for the rivet and then a little tip to make sure that your rivet holes line up rather than punching half an inch in from either side fold it over and then use that to mark where your second hole should be now that we've got the first one once again we'll go ahead and use that to mark the second now that we've got our buckle straps cut out we can take the buckles and place them inside one thing to note especially if you're using these utility buckles is that there is a particular orientation so there is a right and a wrong side so make sure that you pay attention to that I can say from experience that it's not fun to have to drill out rivets because you riveted a buckle on upside-down all right so now to wardrobe changes later we're ready to finish our bracer as you can see I've already pulled it out and I've taken off the duct tape that I used to hold it together and if you look close here you can see that there's a little bit of discoloration this is from that duct tape like I mentioned it does change the drying process so this may show up as we apply our dye so that is something to keep in mind if you are using a dye that is lighter color our first step here is going to be to take our buckles and straps and get these positioned and mark out the holes to punch so you will need to decide on the orientation for your straps personally I'm making this bracelet for the right arm and I like to place the buckles on the outside so you can eyeball this if you would like it to be a little bit neater you can certainly go ahead and measure it but I typically will just eyeball it and make sure that everything looks at my triple so I'm gonna go ahead and grab my marker and make some markings for the punch holes so you may find it a little bit easier if you start with just one of the straps first so I'm gonna start with the frontmost and I'm going to use the strap side first now that we have that hole punched out we can take our rivet and use that to hold the strap in place while we mark our next hole so with that rivet holding the strap in place go ahead and move and pull it tight and Mark off your second hole and just like before go ahead and punch out at the second hole now with that second hole punched out we can actually put in the second rivet and start to mock up and see what the bracelet will look like [Music] and there we have the mock-up of the first strap so with this in mind we can now place the second strap and get a good idea of the symmetry so once again we'll start with the strap side and mark that hole and just like before we'll use our rivet to hold the strap side as we mark out our second hole for the second strap and once we have that marked we'll go ahead and punch out our final hole before we move on to riveting the straps we're gonna need to apply dye to the leather so you'll note that I put an apron on and I have a pair of latex gloves here I highly recommend that you use these leather die is one of those things that once it gets on it's never coming out so I'm gonna be using fiebing's Pro oil dye and a dark brown for this particular bracer this isn't required but I find it much easier if you take one of these small plastic Solo cups and pour a little bit of dye into that it'll make it a little bit easier a little less wasteful if you do have any excess you can certainly pour back in when you're done and once we have that we simply take the foam brush and start to apply the dye now if you are using the theevans Pro oil dye this will be less of a concern but if you're using the normal spirit base thigh you can often run into issues with streaking so one way to combat that is to use small circles as you move over the piece and try to get even coverage [Music] now depending on the leather itself and the dye that you are using this may take multiple coats so just keep going leather dry dyes pretty quickly so you can just keep an eye on it until you start to get a color that you're happy with and you essentially just want to move back and forth over the piece go back over yourself where you where the areas have started to dry and apply a second coat there if you need to there I think that's looking pretty good one thing to note is that the edges themselves will need some special attention so we've applied it to the bulk of the armor but the edges are still uncovered so go ahead and just apply an even coat and this is something that we're not doing for this particular piece but if you are planning on doing any edge burnishing you will want to apply any dye before you do that because the burnishing process will essentially seal up the pores of the leather and dye will not take to the edges all right so I think we're pretty good on the dye here so we're gonna set that aside for just a minute or two to dry it won't take very long and go ahead and clean up this excess dye here now once your dye is dry you will want to take some paper towels and rub across the surface this will pick up any of the dyes pigment that is left sitting on the surface and give you a kind of a a little Sheen to the leather there as you can see on the paper towel we actually have a little bit of the dye pigment come off so that's good means it won't be rubbing off on our skin later all right now the final step to finish up our bracelet is just to Rivet the straps on so we'll go ahead and take them as we laid them out and mark the holes earlier and thread the rivet through place that down on our angle and grab one of the first then go ahead and take your rivet setter and Hammer and set the bird down onto the rivet I'll go ahead and repeat that process for the remaining straps one note I do want to make again is that you need to pay attention to the orientation of your buckles as you're doing this this is your last chance to make sure that you get it right so go ahead make sure that at the correct end of the buckle and that the tongue has the correct orientation so here's something that does happen from time to time you'll note that this particular bird did not actually fully set down onto the shank this is not uncommon and in this case really typically all you need to do is just take a pair of pliers and pull it off and grab an uber and set that now with all the birds set we can proceed with clipping off the excess shank and peeling them down with our hammer it's important to try to get as close as possible to the bird when you clip off the excess shank it's gonna make your job painting much easier now with this the objective is to simply take that sharp edge that we have from cutting off the excess shank and paint it over into a dome using the hammer now that we have all those strap rivets done our basic bracelet is finished let me know in the comments down below if you use this video to make a piece of armor shelling did some pictures I'd love to take a look also if you have any questions about leather working or armor construction feel free to leave a comment and I'll help out if I can thank you so much for watching and if you'd like to stay tuned for more leather working tutorials go ahead and hit that subscribe button thanks

Channel: Hidden Library Leatherworks

Views: 42,187

Keywords: leather bracer, basic leather bracer, diy leather bracer, Leather, armor, leatherworking, leather working, amour, larp, sca, belegarth, dagorhir, amtgard, darkon, leather, armour, leather crafting, leather crafting for beginners, leathercraft, leather craft, leather craft tools, leather armor, leather armor diy, how to make leather armor, leather working projects, leather working techniques, medieval leather armor, diy, costume, renfaire, renfest, armor smithing, medieval, cosplay

Id: yaBw7LwYKbE

Length: 21min 52sec (1312 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 02 2018