Make Leather ARMOR - Leather Leg Armor - DIY

what's going on everybody today we're making a set of combat ready wax hardened leather leg armor specifically with rattan combat in mind now if that's not your jam maybe you stick around and learn something else let's get started before we get started remember that you can get all the patterns and artwork from my website darkhorseworkshop.com i've moved my website to shopify recently from squarespace and that means that whenever i update a pattern or a piece of art i can send it out to everybody so they get that update for free so make sure you check out the website darkcourseworkshop.com thanks as usual this video is brought to you by lonsdale leather check the links in the description down below for tools supplies and of course leather so obviously we're gonna bomb our way through a bunch of this cutting out a pattern isn't exactly the most complicated process in the world so i'm just going to tell you a few things while we get this out of the way first things first when you cut this pattern out you need to mirror it for each leg and that means mirror every single piece because the hole placement though not random is very specific so if you're using the same holes as i have here not doing your own holes for some reason make sure that you flip every single piece there's a lot of carving on these legs maybe you don't necessarily need to do leather carving i really like it i've also done a bunch of adjustments on the fly during this build process usually i prototype once and then i build once but i wanted to do some more changes so there'll be a bunch of changes that you see during this process that i end up adding to the pattern as this video is released so just be aware of that the leather i'm using here is 12 to 14 ounce vegetable tanned saddle skirting whether you're water forming this piece or wax hardening it you need to use vegetable tent leather otherwise it's really not going to work very well or at all quite honestly usually i would just use a sewing machine to do all this so one thing i found quite handy is making sure you punch all the holes before you cut it out now the reasoning behind this is that the weight of the leather will keep everything down you'll be able to pull your hole punch out a lot easier and it will stay in place you could even not even mark these holes you could just punch straight through and into the leather but that can get a little dicey with tearing your pattern and things could get a little awkward so i just did it the old-fashioned way once we've got our pattern all traced out we're going to move on to cutting i make sure i strop my blade every single time i'm going to cut into some heavy leather or it's going to be a brutal time now if you are not a large mammal like myself you might want to get a bandsaw if you're going to start doing this kind of stuff so you can use a band saw with a wood cutting blade be super careful they're very dangerous but you can you can cut out heavy leather with a bandsaw now obviously you can cut it out with a band saw because of how firm it is so if you're going to start trying to use a band saw to cut out thinner stuff i'd be very apprehensive about that but if you have a large thick heavy chunk of leather bandsaw will work now i've just wet the leather down and i'm going to trace my pattern onto it in preparation for carving it i use a ceramic blade i strop my blade to polish it somebody on this will post that you shouldn't strap your blade i've always dropped my ceramic blades and they've always cut better so until they stop cutting better when i strap them i will continue to strap them just think of it as polishing them not sharpening them you're just getting rid of a little bit of debris now we're doing some beveling and i want to go over something that i haven't gone over in my other videos once i get to the end of the beveling part here it's a specific tool that i use that i always forget to mention now there are a bunch of different bevelers and the goal of the beveler is to make it so those bevels don't look like a bunch of individual tool marks so they're really nicely curved on the bottom and it just makes it so it's a lot smoother but because of the curve on the bottom it does make it difficult to get into the very tight spots on your piece like right at the edge where your knot work is meeting and going under the other piece that you're not getting a strong separation between the lines to make them look very distinct is more difficult with a beveler like this you need a specialty beveler especially if you're going around sharp angles and curves you need something different so i've been using this other beveler that i'll show you here in a second for a while i'll link it in the description down below and it is much more angular much narrower and has a much more gradual curve to it as you can see here so i'm going to spin it through these tight curves and it's going to mean that when i do get to those tight curves it's not beveling over onto my line and making a mess of my piece it's super sharp it's really angled and you can get some really good definition using this beveler so i'll link it in the description down below it's also on my website so go have a look at that trust me it's great you'll see here a really tight spot that i'm going to use it on that is a prime example of where it's needed like i like cleaning up my lines with it all over the place like here but right in this tight spot here here is where it really shines you can get in there without walking all over your other lines make them nice and crisp and get really good separation i almost exclusively use pro dye it dies extremely evenly it's a little lighter but i've always liked the dye so i just keep using it might need a few coats because of how light it goes but it has never failed me once we've got it all dyed we're going to burnish the edges now i've been using token oil a lot for burnishing but there's a couple of things about tokeno it's wet so if i'm going to burnish and then throw in the wax it'll annihilate my edges you can't put wet leather in the wax don't put wet leather in the wax let me just say that right away i'll say it again later another reason i'm using wax is because it's wax and i'm gonna wax it anyways so why not just use wax there's lots of burnishing tools this is another one you could use i've got a two different wheels i've got the dark crap wheel which is that one and then there's this one which is 100 clean in theory in theory buff up any marks and get ready to paint now you guys have seen well some of you who have watched my channel a lot have seen me put a resist on my pieces and antique them and stain them in this process to make the leather carving pop really well and that's great if you're doing stuff that you're not putting in the wax but wax is a big pain in the butt and i've never discovered any way that really works other than painting to make it look really nice so painting it is and these pens i this is the first time i've used this pen and i will use them many times in the future got them from lonsdale leather they are awesome easy to control goes on really smooth yeah i can't say enough good things about these pens they also have angelus dye pens and i've used them before and shown them in some videos but this paint pen was awesome once we've got all of our pieces painted up there's many of them and i'm not going to show that whole process we're going to hand stitch everything which everybody loves hand stitching the only thing that i didn't do on this that i could do that's an extra step that you guys may want to think about is in my shoulder video after i punch the holes i then used a stitch groover to cut a line along to nest all these stitches in now if you're making this for rattan combat and you want to protect your stitches a little more that might be something you want to do you may want to stitch groove all your stitch lines so those stitches disappear and are harder to cut or break because they're not going to be rubbing against stuff as much so let's talk about this knee design for a second my whole plan with this knee design was in the rattan fighting i do well when you get hitting the leg you go to your knees now i wanted to avoid a center seam that could get ripped and so it's got this kind of half curve half flat thing going on and it works but i'm not sure if it's avoiding the stitches well enough and i would say that if you are copying this pattern exactly i think you have to stitch groove minimum the center seam piece on the knee you should really stitch through that just to be sure now it's time to throw this in the wax use a well ventilated area it's 250 degrees hot wax it's all 100 paraffin wax i don't do any kind of weird beeswax paraffin mix i've never noticed a difference and i always put it in for a minimum of three minutes you've seen here i've added some time to the clock because i want to do a little extra and i think i even do a little extra on top of that because if it was totally submerged three minutes is good but since i have to roll it around a bit i add some extra time it was probably five minutes in total at that heat if you leave it for a second a lot of that wax is just gonna soak right into your leather and then you can wipe away any top excess let me explain to you one more time about safety do not move your wax pot when it's full of molten wax because i've done that before and i had melted the skin off my arm now let my mistake be your safety net just don't do that be really smart careful around molten wax for crying out loud somebody please tell me that in the past if you get a time machine so all these pieces i will sit in here for their shape and then i will double check them to make sure that they are the shape i like so not every second but you know five minutes passes 10 minutes passes double check them to make sure they are even and cooling to the right shape that you want now we're going to cut out a bunch of straps i'm using three quarter inch straps for the top of the legs to mount to a belt that you would make arming belt and i'm using 5 8 inch straps for around the leg you can use whatever you want it's not complicated it's strapping they'll be on the pattern as well but don't think too hard about the straps just make straps put them on your legs i use solid brass rivets and hardware and exclusively heel bar buckles now heel bar buckles are buckles that don't have that center bar in them because those are center bar buckles they lay flatter to me they look more medieval i guess and so i've always used them that means that you need to make a keeper to go along with your strapping and buckles but it's really not that big a deal when i'm making a keeper it's usually anywhere from a quarter inch to just under a half inch and i just skive down my leather and stitch it together now you probably don't have access to a good skyver so you might just have to use some thinner leather that you have lying around which is fine just you know make do i stitch my keepers inside out and then i make sure those stitches aren't super tight just tighten up but not super tight and then i flip them outside in or inside out whatever and open them up a bit with some needle nose pliers and they're good to fit on the strap my anvils have little divots in them because these are round head peening rivets and so they kind of rest in there it takes some practice i assume most of you guys won't be crazy like this and we'll use some different kind of rivets but i love the look of these so i've been using them and i've gotten pretty good at it though i must say back when i started using them they were a giant pain in the butt and you can always put some masking tape over those washers to hold them down while you rivet it now this is where things get a little weird i've decided to change the pattern i was going to use rivets and i was going a little crazy trying to figure out how that was going to work and it wasn't gonna work one of my first inspirations for leather armor was kerrigan now when you go check out his stuff i'm gonna put a link right here he's got some of the best leather armor you'll find for rattan combat it's phenomenal you'll definitely see where my styles come from and so i checked his out and he's used paracord to connect his pieces which means the pieces will turn and twist and open up but be able to resist against the twisting paracord if it was just riveted it would be very hard for it to line up nicely and turn off of each other really nicely i'm not sure if i explained that very well but you're just gonna have to trust me it really works so just go with it and if you're worried about paracord being not very period neither are these legs they're not really period legs they're functional combat ready legs that look cool but are definitely not from any kind of magical period so a lot of melting the tip to make sure you've got like a needle at the end and then you just thread it through get it as tight as you can and if it's too tight change it until you've got your knee rotating how you'd like it to rotate because you don't want it to gap but you want it to rotate another thing you guys should realize is i do not make a lot of armor i want to make patterns and have people make their own stuff with my new website everything that i've made in the past that i still have and all my new stuff is going to go up there for sale so these legs will be for sale on my new website just this pair so if you're looking for leg armor in the future check out kerrigan's stuff or if you're not looking for leg armor in the future just go check out his stuff in general there'll be a link in the description i can't plug them enough so the only thing that i ended up being not so sure about on these legs was the center seam on the knee because the whole plan there was to make it so when you're knee fighting because that's what we do it's a little ridiculous but that's what we do is that it won't tear the stitches so that center seam even when it's bent it's going to be hitting the ground so make sure you stitch groove it or after you've stitched that down glue another piece over it and then wax it i think they turned out great i had to make a few adjustments on the fly but obviously that'll be reflected on the pattern when you get it from my website make sure you hit the like button if you enjoyed this video subscribe for future videos hit that notification button so you don't miss any of my content and until next time keep on being creative in whatever it is you do

Channel: Dark Horse Workshop

Views: 32,849

Keywords: Leatherworking, leatherworking projects, leather craft, leather working, leather armor, how to wax leather, how to make waxed leather armour, how to make leather armour, hardening leather armor, leather armour patterns, leather armor patterns, making leather armor, how to make armor, wax hardening leather, leather armour, larp armor, costume armor, leather leg armor, how to make leather armor, how to make armour, cosplay, armor, ASMR, fantasy, unintentional asmr, sca

Id: OQ5XeVUUTPc

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020