Post by roninpenguin on Mar 6, 2013 0:22:49 GMT -5
So, as I promised, here is the step by step on the armor that I made for Mitsuhide Shinjiro here in Atenveldt. He did the lacing so I don't really have any pictures of the stages of that but this will definitely show how I did all the hard pieces.
First off I used the Old Do patterns from Sensei Effingam's site, you can find them here...
sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/graphics/patterns/oldDoFrPattern.PDF and sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/graphics/patterns/oldDoRPattern.PDF
I then used the pattern for Sugake Odoshi lacing found at sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/graphics/patterns/sugake.PDF and just repeated it a bunch of times to get Kebiki Odoshi lacing holes in the right size and space.
Here are the leather pieces all cut out with the holes put into them...
From here I wanted to make the tops look like the scales so I took a large Leather Hammer Punch, ground off one side so it is a half circle, and then used the to cut the tops of each lame...
You can see the home made tool in the top left hand corner of the picture.
Next step I wanted to make sure that the black coloring didn't wear off or scratch easy so I soaked each piece in black dye until bubbles stopped. I used this to kill two birds with one stone because as soaked leather dries you can shape it so I made a aluminum form that would hold them in a curve as they dried...
This gave me one problem, as the leather soaked up the dye the holes closed up and would make lacing difficult as you can see here...
So I had to clean out each hole and to do that I put a counter sink in my drill press and zapped each hole with it.
I had a couple of problems and one more goal with the leather at this point. The two problems were that as the armor was worn it would absorb sweat which would a) loose shape and b) bleed dye on the person wearing it. Also the person that I was making this for is really hard on his armor so I wanted to add another layer of durability. To this end I stared experimenting with things that I could add to the leather to make it more ridged but not change the size of the pieces (like water hardening) and be able to handle the heat of the Phoenix Summer (unlike wax hardening). I settled on a mix of 50/50 wood stabilizer and water which added springiness as well as a heavy seal that kept the dye from running.
I applied it by brushing on several layers until it was well saturated one side at a time...
The counter sinking left an edge that raised when I applied the stabilizer...
But the stabilizer made the leather ridged enough I could hit it with some 120 grit sand paper and smooth it out.
From here I coated each piece with a nice gloss coat.
So the back pieces posed a problem because I really wanted to get that spinal ridge down the pieces, so I cut a few pieces of 3/4" PVC and put them on either side as those pieces dried.
It turned out pretty good.
By this point all of the leather went to Mitsuhide to lace so I started working on the "Ita"s (top pieces). I cut these out of 16 gauge steel and extended them to give him a little more protection along the sides.
I then blackened them by heating them up to about 300 degrees and coating them in Linseed Oil. Then I made the Egawa by printing up the pattern on heavy paper, coating it matte lacquer, and gluing it to the metal.
Then I coated the whole piece with gloss lacquer added the brass trim (automotive door trim from Amazon) and Grommets.
Next was making the Hasso. So I cut out and shaped a few pieces of brass.
I use Ferric Chloride to etch and the cool thing about it is that you can use Sharpie as a resist so I drew my pattern on in negative.
Then after soaking for an hour and washing it off, I then applied a thin layer of flat black spray paint and buffed it off with some 600 grit sand paper.
When it all got put together this is how it looked...
First off I used the Old Do patterns from Sensei Effingam's site, you can find them here...
sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/graphics/patterns/oldDoFrPattern.PDF and sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/graphics/patterns/oldDoRPattern.PDF
I then used the pattern for Sugake Odoshi lacing found at sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/graphics/patterns/sugake.PDF and just repeated it a bunch of times to get Kebiki Odoshi lacing holes in the right size and space.
Here are the leather pieces all cut out with the holes put into them...
From here I wanted to make the tops look like the scales so I took a large Leather Hammer Punch, ground off one side so it is a half circle, and then used the to cut the tops of each lame...
You can see the home made tool in the top left hand corner of the picture.
Next step I wanted to make sure that the black coloring didn't wear off or scratch easy so I soaked each piece in black dye until bubbles stopped. I used this to kill two birds with one stone because as soaked leather dries you can shape it so I made a aluminum form that would hold them in a curve as they dried...
This gave me one problem, as the leather soaked up the dye the holes closed up and would make lacing difficult as you can see here...
So I had to clean out each hole and to do that I put a counter sink in my drill press and zapped each hole with it.
I had a couple of problems and one more goal with the leather at this point. The two problems were that as the armor was worn it would absorb sweat which would a) loose shape and b) bleed dye on the person wearing it. Also the person that I was making this for is really hard on his armor so I wanted to add another layer of durability. To this end I stared experimenting with things that I could add to the leather to make it more ridged but not change the size of the pieces (like water hardening) and be able to handle the heat of the Phoenix Summer (unlike wax hardening). I settled on a mix of 50/50 wood stabilizer and water which added springiness as well as a heavy seal that kept the dye from running.
I applied it by brushing on several layers until it was well saturated one side at a time...
The counter sinking left an edge that raised when I applied the stabilizer...
But the stabilizer made the leather ridged enough I could hit it with some 120 grit sand paper and smooth it out.
From here I coated each piece with a nice gloss coat.
So the back pieces posed a problem because I really wanted to get that spinal ridge down the pieces, so I cut a few pieces of 3/4" PVC and put them on either side as those pieces dried.
It turned out pretty good.
By this point all of the leather went to Mitsuhide to lace so I started working on the "Ita"s (top pieces). I cut these out of 16 gauge steel and extended them to give him a little more protection along the sides.
I then blackened them by heating them up to about 300 degrees and coating them in Linseed Oil. Then I made the Egawa by printing up the pattern on heavy paper, coating it matte lacquer, and gluing it to the metal.
Then I coated the whole piece with gloss lacquer added the brass trim (automotive door trim from Amazon) and Grommets.
Next was making the Hasso. So I cut out and shaped a few pieces of brass.
I use Ferric Chloride to etch and the cool thing about it is that you can use Sharpie as a resist so I drew my pattern on in negative.
Then after soaking for an hour and washing it off, I then applied a thin layer of flat black spray paint and buffed it off with some 600 grit sand paper.
When it all got put together this is how it looked...
