The Armour Archive

This past weekend I worked out a bazuband and a 2 piece vambrace.
The bazuband is raised on my raising ball, not dished.

On my "What I did on my holiday weekend" thread there are pictures of a greave tooled with vines and flowers. This is a vambrace to go with that greave. Painted but not yet hardened.

And an experiment with other options for dyeing leather - I tried Minwax Special Walnut stain. It doesn't look like much when the stain dries, but the hardening/finishing process gives it a very rich deep brown color - the photo doesn't show it very well.

one more of the bazuband, showing the ball marks on the inside from raising.

No feedback at all ?

Gavin

Are the bazubands for SCA combat?

I think the Bazubands have a good historical shape to them. The photos are kind of small so it is hard to see detail, but it looks like you did a pretty good job.

Did you use Dan's Tutorial on water hardening and dishing to make them?

InsaneIrish wrote:Are the bazubands for SCA combat?

I think the Bazubands have a good historical shape to them. The photos are kind of small so it is hard to see detail, but it looks like you did a pretty good job.

Did you use Dan's Tutorial on water hardening and dishing to make them?

Yes they're for SCA combat. Sorry for the small photos - I keep running into technical difficulties when I try to attach photos - Archive tells me they're too big, I get them to a size it accepts and they're too small to see anything

Dan's tutorial factored in, along with Cariadoc's article on bazubands and Adam's pictures, some historical examples, etc. While I hammer formed the elbows on these, I raised rather than dished.

I'm using a 20th century hardening method (my attempts at Dan's heat treatment approach have so far consistently resulted in cooked leather - I'm obviously not doing it right and am tired of ruining pieces). These are pretty thoroughly saturated with an acrylic floor finish. When it dries the pieces are hard, shiny and pretty water resistant.

Gavin

Kilkenny wrote:

InsaneIrish wrote:Are the bazubands for SCA combat?

I think the Bazubands have a good historical shape to them. The photos are kind of small so it is hard to see detail, but it looks like you did a pretty good job.

Did you use Dan's Tutorial on water hardening and dishing to make them?

Yes they're for SCA combat. Sorry for the small photos - I keep running into technical difficulties when I try to attach photos - Archive tells me they're too big, I get them to a size it accepts and they're too small to see anything

Dan's tutorial factored in, along with Cariadoc's article on bazubands and Adam's pictures, some historical examples, etc. While I hammer formed the elbows on these, I raised rather than dished.

I'm using a 20th century hardening method (my attempts at Dan's heat treatment approach have so far consistently resulted in cooked leather - I'm obviously not doing it right and am tired of ruining pieces). These are pretty thoroughly saturated with an acrylic floor finish. When it dries the pieces are hard, shiny and pretty water resistant.

Gavin

Gavin,

It sounds as if you are using too much heat, or perhaps a steel sheet to dry the pieces on. If you can tell me how you are attempting my method, I can attemtp to help you with suggestions on how to avoid the difficulties. I have enjoyed a fairly high success rate with consistency and hardness, so I am surprised at your results. I would love to have the chance to help with this.

House of the Wolf wrote:[

It sounds as if you are using too much heat, or perhaps a steel sheet to dry the pieces on. If you can tell me how you are attempting my method, I can attemtp to help you with suggestions on how to avoid the difficulties. I have enjoyed a fairly high success rate with consistency and hardness, so I am surprised at your results. I would love to have the chance to help with this.

I've been using a wooden plank to support the pieces. My oven may just run too hot, or perhaps I need to place the pieces differently.

I know you - and others following your methods - have consistent success. This knowledge makes the repeated failures I've experienced especially frustrating.

I tried using a heat gun, recalling the description of how pieces nailed to lasts and treated with hide glue were being dried using a heat gun. That didn't work out so well for me either, although I think that can be attributed largely to impatience - I eventually burned a spot by staying on it too long too close trying to get something to happen.

I get the impression that there's a pretty rapid change of state after some threshhold water saturation point. It may take 20 minutes to get to that threshhold, but only two to pass from that threshhold into burning the piece.

Gavin

Kilkenny wrote:Yes they're for SCA combat.

Are you planning on using simple elbows with them? They look a bit shallow to wrap around the points of the elbows.

Sorry for the small photos - I keep running into technical difficulties when I try to attach photos - Archive tells me they're too big, I get them to a size it accepts and they're too small to see anything

Look here:
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... 57a05b40e5

The upload photo feature for the AA only excepts 100kb MAX file size. That is why you are getting your photos bounced. You can try uploading them to an online photo hosting site and direct linking them or try dropping the resolution on the photos but not the size. Hope that helps.

Kilkenny wrote:I've been using a wooden plank to support the pieces. My oven may just run too hot, or perhaps I need to place the pieces differently.

I know you - and others following your methods - have consistent success. This knowledge makes the repeated failures I've experienced especially frustrating.

I tried using a heat gun, recalling the description of how pieces nailed to lasts and treated with hide glue were being dried using a heat gun. That didn't work out so well for me either, although I think that can be attributed largely to impatience - I eventually burned a spot by staying on it too long too close trying to get something to happen.

I get the impression that there's a pretty rapid change of state after some threshhold water saturation point. It may take 20 minutes to get to that threshhold, but only two to pass from that threshhold into burning the piece.

Gavin

A heat gun is too sporadic and uneven, without a lot of patience and practice, in my experience.

I would suggest two things for you to try in your next attempts. First, allow the leather to case overnight and set in its shape before bake drying. Either that, or allow it to case set overnight before shaping, either method will allow the tannins and fibers to set in and become slightly more rigid, and make the leathe rless prone to scorching. The second thing I would suggets is purchasing an oven thermometer at your local grocery store. Check your oven's thermostat against the thermometer, and you should get a more accurate temp reading.

Hope this helps, good luck!

House of the Wolf wrote:A heat gun is too sporadic and uneven, without a lot of patience and practice, in my experience.

I would suggest two things for you to try in your next attempts. First, allow the leather to case overnight and set in its shape before bake drying. Either that, or allow it to case set overnight before shaping, either method will allow the tannins and fibers to set in and become slightly more rigid, and make the leathe rless prone to scorching. The second thing I would suggets is purchasing an oven thermometer at your local grocery store. Check your oven's thermostat against the thermometer, and you should get a more accurate temp reading.

Hope this helps, good luck!

Agreed entirely about the heat gun. I'm fairly certain the problem really is that my oven is running too hot - that or I'm not watching nearly closely enough, which I suppose is another possibility, or a combination of the two.

I'll throw the thermometer in there and see what it has to tell me. Looking for a temperature of 180 degrees, as I recall ?

Gavin

Nice looking stuff, Gavin!

As one of the leatherworkers here, as well, I want to make a comment about us all in general. In my experience with Dan's work and my own firsthand, and looking at yours and others on the archive here, I've made an observation that I find quite satisfying. (I'd like to note that I still consider myself a beginner, though!)

To a greater extent than most metalwork, all of us who dabble in leather armor (or do it for a living even) seem to create very distinct finished products, even if our patterns may be very similar and the desired results entwined.

It all has to do, in my opinion, with the number of steps leatherwork has. The beveling/tooling, soaking, forming, hardening, dying, finishing... Each part can be so unique to an individual to create such varying results while we may have the same thing in mind, and I think that's cool!

I don't think Gavin's stuff looks like Dan's stuff, or that his looks like my stuff, or my stuff like Cat's, etc...

Neat, I'd say!

Cheers, and keep it comin, Gavin.

-Gregory-