Maru Do question

[Hiroda Ujio]

Does anybody have a pattern for a Maru Do? Plus the formula for figuring out how many freaking kozane i'm going to need for the Do, Sode, and Kusazuri?

Thanks in advance!

Hiroda

[Kitadatedenka]

Well, I always patterns from measurments, and I've made enough siuts that I don't even have written patterns anymore. Then again, I do nearly exclusively sengoku, so I'm used to those lines. That said:

First thing I do is figure out how tall, in number of lames, I need for the front, back, and sides. I think my current dou is 8 in front, 9 in back, and 5 on the sides, using 2.5 inch lames, with a half-inch or so of overlap. Generally, the back is higher than the front, and the sides are lower. Remember, you have solid top plates all around.

Then I measure around the waist, for me little below the navel (I have a long torso). And again around the chest at the nipples.

The back I usually make as wide as the shoulder blades, and the front just wider than my nipples (trust me on this one). I subtract the sum of the front and the back from the total at the chest, divide by 2, and that's how wide my sides are. For a do-maru, you'll want to adjust for overlap. I do a similar calculation with the waist measurement.

Then I adjust all the widths for my lacing which is 3/8" wide. I want to have the first row of holes in from the edge by 3/16" inch, and nothing left over. Mostly, I'm doing solid lames these days, so I want to have my holes, even for sugake, spaced where kebiki holes would be.

So then I interpolate the rest of the body lames from those measurements, being careful to keep everything even with respect to the lacing. I don't further taper or expand the front and back above the last full lame around the body.

For kusazuri, I figure out how many I want (usually 7 for me), and divide the number of holes around the waist by that many. It probably won't come out exactly, so add in the remainder to some of the pieces. Usually, I'll add to the center first, then the back, then the sides. If you do this, the first lame on the kusazuri, taken as a whole, is the same size as the waist. Then for each sucessive lame, I add 2 holes worth of width. That seems to give a good flare.

Sode are rectangular, so just figure out how wide, by how may lames.

So you'll be able to figure out how many linear feet of lames you need, which breaks down easily into how many kozane you need. Remember to add 1 kozane per lame to cover the half-bits at the ends of the lame. You don't have to add extra for anything else, because that's already figured in.

[Hiroda Ujio]

A thousand thanks Kitadatedenka. I may be putting a new guy in armor so i'm looking at doing the Maru Do for myself and sliding him my current Do.

*edited for spelling* DOH!