Bushi's First Armor

[Ishida Kentarou Mitsumasa]

Greetings,

I've now done enough SCA fighting in loaner armor to know that this is fun, and that I need to be in armor that fits me and looks better. I have never made armor before, and have been devouring Effingham-sensei's information, but I have several questions about do construction.

1) I got ahold of some Effingham plate. I haven't done a ton with it yet, but it's not clear to me how I would construct a tosei do out of it. There is not an obvious way to get the lames near the bottom to curve inward in the way that a tosei do should. Is there a trick to make this work, or are Effingham plates only functional for o-yoroi? If there is a trick, is it a cool enough trick that one could make a shikoro with it?

2) The obvious way to attach the kanagu mawari to the do is with an enormous amount of drilled holes and lacing. Does this cause structural issues after repeated impacts?

3) It is made clear that tosei sode and o-sode can be made of kozane. Is the same true for tsubo sode? Arima Jinsuke suggested to me that tosei sode would be more protective, as well as appropriate for me, as I have set myself in 1575.

4) It is clear that my sode and kusazuri should match as much as possible. If I have tsubo sode, what is the appropriate way to match kusazuri to them? My instinct was just to match the pre-curve width.

5) A few of the lacing suppliers on Effingham-sensei's website are no longer operating. Arima-dono warned me against using Rice Braid, as he said it stretches unpleasantly over time. My current plan is to get samples from Laces For Less and Dharma Trading, and go with whichever I liked better. Is there a better alternative I don't know about?

6) It is made clear that the do is not supposed to move once it is on me. Will that happen by accident even with a hingeless open-side construction out of Effingham plates? I'm having a hard time imagining it not wanting to move around a little bit.

My current ideal armor is a maru do with main body, kusazuri, and tosei sode all made out of effingham plate, and with kanagu mawari made out of 16-gauge black steel. Are there any serious issues with this plan, given that I'm set in 1575?

Thank you all for any help you can offer.

[Yamamoto Morikazu]

i will take a stab at this.
I have made about 4-5 sets so far out of plastic.

1) no idea. havent used the Effing plates yet. I will soon though.

2) keep your hole about 1/4 inch apart and you should be fine if you are using HDPE plastic. Black plastic barrell. Just cut a few extra plates for field repairs and keep them and some extra lacing in your armor bag. I have only ever ripped one Kuzasari plate. that was from falling

3) tosei sode are best for sca combat. Under neath my sode I have 2 shoulder lames that have extra padding in them. I really like my collar bones. They are well hidden by the sode and sode-cap. PAD THEM !! PAD THEM !!

4) couple ways to match them... jsut re-read that section a few times. the single best way to match them is with the lacing pattern. If you put lots of lacing on the sode you need lots of lacing on the kuzasari

5) laces for less. Awesome price. awesome service. and lots of colors. Fair wide. The lacing melts for when you finish the knot off. (burn it a little) If you want something special colored. i suggest cotton lacing and dying it yourself... mosst colors you want are in the laces for les inventory .. otherwise use parachute cord with the core removed. i made my first one with paracord. meh. i wasnt that impressed with the result. the second one was laces for less. WOW !

6) pad it near the hip and the kidneys. pad the man boob area and the spine. it shouldnt move too much then.

[AJBryant]

1) I got ahold of some Effingham plate. I haven't done a ton with it yet, but it's not clear to me how I would construct a tosei do out of it. There is not an obvious way to get the lames near the bottom to curve inward in the way that a tosei do should. Is there a trick to make this work, or are Effingham plates only functional for o-yoroi? If there is a trick, is it a cool enough trick that one could make a shikoro with it?

That's why I went into all that detail on making a tapered kozane to allow for the curvature of the dô lames.

Shikoro, OTOH, require total home-made scale, if that's what you want to do. They have a really deep curve. Typically, shikoro of that period would be made of kiritsukezane anyway. Real scale shikoro only works on older style helmets.

2) The obvious way to attach the kanagu mawari to the do is with an enormous amount of drilled holes and lacing. Does this cause structural issues after repeated impacts?

Or just a few holes for butch hassôbyô if you want an armour that's seriously combat-sturdy.

3) It is made clear that tosei sode and o-sode can be made of kozane. Is the same true for tsubo sode? Arima Jinsuke suggested to me that tosei sode would be more protective, as well as appropriate for me, as I have set myself in 1575.

Sure.

4) It is clear that my sode and kusazuri should match as much as possible. If I have tsubo sode, what is the appropriate way to match kusazuri to them? My instinct was just to match the pre-curve width.

No. The kusazuri should be made in size and scope appropriate for the dô. The "matching" comes solely from using the same materials and the same lacing and lacing pattern.

6) It is made clear that the do is not supposed to move once it is on me. Will that happen by accident even with a hingeless open-side construction out of Effingham plates? I'm having a hard time imagining it not wanting to move around a little bit.

Everything you wear will move a bit. I'm not clear on what you mean.

My current ideal armor is a maru do with main body, kusazuri, and tosei sode all made out of effingham plate, and with kanagu mawari made out of 16-gauge black steel. Are there any serious issues with this plan, given that I'm set in 1575?

None at all.

Effingham

[Ishida Kentarou Mitsumasa]

Jul 21, 2010 14:11:03 GMT -5 AJBryant said:

That's why I went into all that detail on making a tapered kozane to allow for the curvature of the dô lames.

By "making a tapered kozane", do you mean just heating and warping off-the-shelf Effingham plates into S-shapes, or making a few hundred or so of my own scales? I don't feel that I can justify the time it would take to create a big pile of scales myself, so if that's what it would take I think I am likely to just do solid plastic lames instead and try to imitate the other good barrel plastic armor thread I saw here with a sheet of ABS.

Others laced the kozane together in a slight arc so that if a board from the nagagawa were laid flat, it would form an arc rather than a rectangle. When curved to fit the body, this causes a slant that allows the lower part of each lame to "fit inside" the top of the row below it. This is the method you will have to follow with the Noble Plastics kozane, as there is no taper.

After interacting with the actual Effingham plates, I'm not sure how to do that. So far, the plates have just snapped into a straight orientation and I haven't been able to manhandle them into getting a curved board. Am I doing something wrong?

[Ishida Kentarou Mitsumasa]

My apologies; I had to re-write my post after my browser ate it, and I transcribed two things out of my brain wrong. I meant to ask...

-----

3) It is made clear that tosei sode and o-sode can be made of kozane. Is the same true for tsubo sode? Arima Jinsuke suggested to me that tsubo sode would be more protective, as well as appropriate for me, as I have set myself in 1575.

My current ideal armor is a maru do with main body, kusazuri, and tsubo sode all made out of effingham plate, and with kanagu mawari made out of 16-gauge black steel. Are there any serious issues with this plan, given that I'm set in 1575?

----

Effingham-sensei, I'm not sure I understand whether your "sure" applies to the appropriateness of tosei sode for 1575 or whether tsubo sode can be constructed out of scale. Would you clarify?

[Ishida Kentarou Mitsumasa]

I suppose it's time to demonstrate that I'm serious before I keep asking questions.

I got some samples of laces from Laces For Less in the mail yesterday...

...to go with a big pile of scales...

...and I figured out from the Kozane and Odoshi pages on Effingham-sensei's armor instructions how to put them all together correctly!

However, I ran into a snag. I got two widths of laces. As it turns out, one of them is 1/2 inch wide, and the other is 1/4 inch wide. The scales are 3/4 inch wide, and I need to cover a whole scale with two laces side by side. This means that the 1/4 inch wide lacing doesn't create the right period appearance.

However, the end caps on the 1/2 inch wide laces don't fit through the holes in the scales!

I see a few options here. I could drill bigger holes in the scales--13 holes in each of 1500+ scales--which sounds awful and may or may not compromise the structural integrity of the things. The other way is to find some trick to get the wider lacing into the holes.

I attempted to cut off an end cap and stitch the lace into something tight enough to fit through the hole, but that wasn't working. Does anyone have any ideas for how I might get the wider lacing through?

Also, my previous post's question still stands: can I make tsubo sode out of this scale with a straight face?

[Kurodachi no Mykaru]

Use the big laces. Cut off the ends. Cut at an angle. Wrap with slick tape (postal box tape for example).

In your example, the bottom row is exactly the opposite of how it should be. Sequence is fine, but look at how the laces are shaped through the holes on the top lame, they are correct. In the bottom row of scales they look like an empty taco shell. You want the opposite appearance.

[Ishida Kentarou Mitsumasa]

I attempted to do that, with something in between success and failure. There seems to just be too much material in the 1/2 inch laces to get through the holes easily, as it is an unpleasant minute-long struggle to get a pointily-taped strand through a scale, and the tape keeps sliding off the lace after the third hole it goes through from all the pulling. I can't imagine doing the whole suit hole by hole with that much struggle. My conclusion is that 1/2 inch lacing is just not going to work, unless there is some other trick to getting it into the holes that I don't know.

Now to find a source for 3/8 inch lacing that is reasonably economical and the right colors....

[AJBryant]

Jay trim's middy braid.
www.jaytrim.com/CGI-BIN/LANSAWEB?WEBEVENT+L03178F0D490483009420047+M37+ENG

[konrad]

37 bucks? Man that's a good deal!

[AJBryant]

And it is exactly the stuff those kozane were made for. 3/8"-wide middy braid.

[Ishida Kentarou Mitsumasa]

Thank you so much! I might have gone down a terrible road without that information. I'll be getting back to this once I get back from my second business trip in three weekends next Monday.

[AJBryant]

Good luck!

Keep us posted!!

[maredudd]

On the "how to get it through the holes" question: Any braid or lace with a significant amount of synthetic material will melt in a lighter flame; wet your fingers and roll the melted material to a suitable point.
SAFETY WARNING: if you don't wet your fingers the lace will not only burn you, it will stick to your skin and carry on burning (and I didn't tell you to do it, and yes my fingers have healed now :-) )

[Ishida Kentarou Mitsumasa]

Aug 14, 2010 16:06:11 GMT -5 AJBryant said:

And it is exactly the stuff those kozane were made for. 3/8"-wide middy braid.

Hilariously, they only sell that braid now in 288 yard increments. How much lacing should I be expecting to use? It seems that at minimum I will need spools of red and white to do the bottom of the sode and kusazuri correctly, and some other color if I choose to go with something other than red and white for the body of the do. Now, two questions:

1) How much lacing of the main color should I expect to use between do, sode, and kusazuri?

2) Is the shita garami expected to match the main color of the do? If not, what color is it supposed to be? Is it hidden well enough that it doesn't matter?