The Armour Archive

So I hate straps and buckles..

I tried laces, tried tying everything on.. I couldnt figure a good lacing method..

I tried Velcro, very much an " Oh shit " reaction when you get hit and hear that trademark Velcro sound..

Only thing I havent tried yet is snaps...

When I first started being interested in the SCA, was at my high school.. A demo group came out and I was hooked... One of the fellows had laces, yet somehow they were loose.. Basic look of it was he snugged up the laces down the vambrace then pulled one string up and it tightened down the whole shibang...

Anyone happen to know what lacing method he was using ??

Or failing that anyone got any suggestions ??

So... um, you hate straps and buckles. Frankly, I don't know what to make of that.

Do they hate you back? What'd they ever do to you?

Every now and then we get something this... unusual. And it's always remarkable what people don't explain. Like: what are you trying to hold up? Is it a vambrace? -- or is it a whole arm?

I don't care for buckles either, so I use antler button disks and and a strap with a slit cut into it, to make a toggle like fastener. I also hate "quick" rivets, so I use waxed linen thread to sew almost everything.... it last a lot longer as well.

"One of the fellows had laces, yet somehow they were loose.. Basic look of it was he snugged up the laces down the vambrace then pulled one string up and it tightened down the whole shibang"

sounds like speed laces or gromets as would be used on a bodice.

Konstantin the Red wrote:So... um, you hate straps and buckles. Frankly, I don't know what to make of that.

Do they hate you back? What'd they ever do to you?

Every now and then we get something this... unusual. And it's always remarkable what people don't explain. Like: what are you trying to hold up? Is it a vambrace? -- or is it a whole arm?

Sorry, I apologize for the lack of info...

I just cant seem to keep them on my armour... Every time my armour craps out, its due to a strap popping.. Or the rivets shear right through the leather as I am finishing them up or as I get hit.. Just very annoying all around..

It could all be a combo of bad leather, improper rivet setting, or perhaps just plain ole dumbass syndrome on my part...

If I could I wouldnt use buckles or straps at all.. But I just havent found anything else that will secure things down as well.. I am having problems with all my armour...The vambs, cops, kidney belt, and gorget.. Only thing I dont have issues with is my helm.. Mainly because it is in pieces..


Thanks for the ideas folks and sorry about the " off in left field" sort of nature on this post..

Slipknot? There are certain rock-climbing knots that can behave like that as well. Another possibility is those plastic tighteners, that you have to depress to move along the cords.

Okay, let's bip through the usual things, then. Velcro never really was intended to hold something as dense as metal up or on. You really need a powerful mechanical fastener, and Velcro just isn't powerful enough this way.

Leather straps: large ones (1" wide) should be no lighter than 7 ounce, and 9 is frequently encountered. Small ones (3/4") can be 5-6 oz. It sounds like buckles aren't giving you trouble. The leather itself should be latigo -- harness leather -- it resists rot from sweat and weather. You can oil and wax vegetable tanned to something very close to latigo.

Riveting them on: fender washers the width of the strap. That joins the strap to the metal. The buckle end where it turns over, you stitch. It's more medieval.

An SCA-Engineered school approach: Tandy Clip-n-Dees (or make your own D rings mounted on metal clips/tabs for riveting them down) riveted to the fastening points and the end of the strap put through the D ring. You can either sew the end down or make it into a tapering thong, put a hole in the body of the strap, thread the tapering end through the D ring and then the hole in the strap and then knot the end. Another one is a slot in the end of the strap. You pass the strap through the D ring then through the slot, and snug it up. The nice thing about all this is that if a strap busts, you can almost instantly replace it either with a spare strap carried for the purpose (hole end or buckle end) in your repair kit or by running some paracord in there as a temporary fix.

I honestly think most of the problems with straps not holding up are due to improper positioning of were the straps are attached.

If the placing of the strap is correct it should work with almost anything, from a thin leather string tied on to a fat leather belt.
While if the position for an attachement is wrong you will need the sturdiest leather available and it will still wear out.

Then the (almost) impossible thing is to figure out were the straps should be...

I can't say that I know were, sometimes I get them right and then they last, sometimes I have to replace them until I toss that piece of armour.

Just my idea in the subject.

And then I strongly believe you should use your hand-made washers that are rectangular and very well rounded along the edge were the leather straps has the stress point.
I usually make the washers 4 millimeters wider than the strap and pound down the 2 millimeter sticking out on each side around the leather strap, that feels very solid.

/Sven

Excellent advice all around !!

Oswyn - I will have to look into that possibility..

Konstantin - uhmm, I seems to be not doing the straps and such right.. I dont use latigo, nor am I slapping washers on..

Sven - I will have to check out that idea..

bigjon - I like that idea, I will have to experiment with it..

losthelm - I will have to ask this question to my sewing friends..

This is an alternative solution.

I heard about this, said "That's cool, but I will never do it"

Try lacing with bungee cord. Leave it fastened, and then pull it on like a piece of knit clothing.

Like I said, it's not for me, but it might be something that you had not considered.

f

"I seems to be not doing the straps and such right.. I dont use latigo, nor am I slapping washers on.."


Yeah i think thats the prob.

That and it sounds like your using thin or soft leather.

Kormakr,

Straps and buckles can be a great source of annoyance, but it would be a shame to use an inauthentic solution.

If you show me a picture of a failed strap or buckle, I can tell you what went wrong and how to do it better next time.

(this limited-time-offer is available to anyone with strap-n-buckle problems, see stores for details, some restrictions apply)

Mac

I don't like throwing in my two cents in this manner, but why are we reinventing the wheel? There were hundreds of years of development, with thousands of lives depending on it, so I'm pretty sure they figured out the best possible solution. If its done right, it will work better than anything. If you do it wrong, you might as well waive them over your head and run around in circles.

Instead of rivets I would use waxed linen thread and sitches, as was said earlier in this thread. In theory, stitches are stronger and less prone to 100% failure than rivets, as the lockstiching tends to pop only a few stitches out at once instead of the "Hey where'd my greaves go?" of a rivet popping. It also spreads the stress along a lot of small holes in the leather instead of being on one large hole.

If you want a tutorial on stiching, read Al Stohlman's "The Art of Sewing Leather."

I would like to say a little about snaps.

I made some sabatons for my wife and she did not want to mess with buckles.
So I installed heavy-duty snaps on the steel and leather.
The arch strap and the back strap.

The snaps worked very well attached to the stainless steel.
They penned right over in place with the proper tools.
I fit them to her boots, easy on and easy off.
No muss and no fuss.

They just looked like big rivets from the outside.
http://home.armourarchive.org/members/h ... keboot.jpg

Hal

Something I forgot to mention: if and when you take to cutting your own straps (saves good money) cut along the spine portion of the hide or half hide. That's the densest, toughest leather. Belly leather farther down the side is considerably softer and comparatively floppy. Use this for other leather jobs where soft and supple win the day.

Halberds wrote:I would like to say a little about snaps.

I made some sabatons for my wife and she did not want to mess with buckles.

{freiman's snip}

They just looked like big rivets from the outside.
http://home.armourarchive.org/members/h ... keboot.jpg

Hal

Hal, only you, working for something for your sweetie, could make greaves and sabs look dainty and sexy.

f

Dierick wrote:I don't like throwing in my two cents in this manner, but why are we reinventing the wheel?

I assume we're talking SCA or similar because he's actually getting hit.

First, notice that within this thread there's confusion not only about the type of buckle, thickness of leather, etc, but also something incredibly basic: what the armor is made of. Is it metal or leather? If you're talking about a leather cuisse, and you can provide an extant piece showing how it was secured, then I'm pretty sure you need to write a paper and get it published. I don't think such an animal exists.

Second, SCA armor often fulfills an altogether different purpose than its period counterpart. In period, if we're talking about something like a brigandine, then I'm pretty sure we're talking about a lifesaving measure - not a piece of sports equipment, which is what many later armors also were. In addition to being lifesaving battle equipment, most of what we have extant examples of probably also was used in tournaments. Not only would buckles need to be correctly placed, but they weren't even used in a lot of cases - the armor itself was fitted properly and relied on hooks and spring pins.

In the modern day, nobody in the SCA wears a BMW worth of armor. There's a lot of CoPs out there not because thats really what people want, but because they are still cheap and effective. In period I don't think they'd be expected to do more than save your life once. Today, they have to put up with a regular serious beating. So the requirements are different, and I think that affects buckle choices.

Most of us also get into something that works, and then don't think about it for 10+ years, regardless of the fact that some of it doesn't fit well or could be done a lot more effectively. Without the good fit, properly placed buckles won't help, and without proper placement, they need to be made of elephant hide.

(Edit: I am mostly on your side with this... the bottom line is that I'm willing to allow bigger buckles and thicker leather to be what the 'A' stands for, as opposed to velcro.)

Dierick wrote:I don't like throwing in my two cents in this manner, but why are we reinventing the wheel? There were hundreds of years of development, with thousands of lives depending on it, so I'm pretty sure they figured out the best possible solution. If its done right, it will work better than anything. If you do it wrong, you might as well waive them over your head and run around in circles.

Because the OP began the thread with "I hate straps and buckles" ?

Yes, he didn't explain why he hates them (still hasn't, actually), however, when the discussion begins with "I don't want to use 'X', what other options do I have?" then it's not unreasonable for the subsequent discussion to omit 'X' and consider other possible options.

If the reason that he hates straps and buckles turns out to be that he has been making them from the wrong materials, attaching them in the wrong ways, and so forth, then education as to the correct materials and means of attachment is constructive.

On the other hand, if he's got an idiosyncratic problem with straps and buckles, then other options are called for.

And as a note with regard to straps - if you "double and stitch" which means to glue and then stitch together two pieces of leather flesh side to flesh side, you can get a very strong strap out of a lighter weight leather. The strength is all in the grain side - double & stitch gives you twice as much grain in your strap.

I sew my straps on with sinew. They last years that way.

I see it in the same way as if he had posted "I hate buckles, my full arms keep sliding down because the straps won't keep them in place," and everyone just rules out buckles and straps because of that rather than suggesting pointing his rerebrace to his undergarment. I can follow up more later, I'm just about to walk out the door at the moment...

Alrighty...

I have leather armour...

Yes this is for SCA combat..

I apparently havent been using the proper grade of leather for my straps..

I am using Tandy Brass buckles..

I have learned numerous things I am doing wrong from this post so far..

I am realizing I have been using the wrong grade of materials up to this point..

Please do keep the ideas coming..


EDIT--

I have your basic Ansteorrian sport armour kit... Vambs with attached cops, kidney belt, gorget, knees... On these pieces of armour I seem to have the most problems.. Either I blow out straps or I blow out the rivets.. They pull through, or they slice through the leather strapping them down..

I am starting to think I just do not know how to do this right...

I am learning though..

Are any of the named pieces steel, or is it all leather neck to knees? Any leather component, you can hole it and stitch, or two-slots-and stitch shut.

Two-&-stitch can also be used in steel. Not period, though. In some cases or places, you can stitch a strap end on the inside of the leather piece, pass it through one slot to put it on the outside, and generally buckle and unbuckle on the outside. What this does is completely guarantee that any heavy pulling load on the strap is always along its length and across the stitches rather than perpendicular to them -- thus the load is always along the direction of greatest strength as far as the stitching is concerned. Christ-Almighty strong.

Strapping steel cops can give some engineering trouble to the new-to-armoring guy. The straps at the insides of the joints can't really be super tight; they are more retainers. The rest of the job of keeping the cop in place is some means of suspending it at the proper location, essentially by rerebrace or cuisse for elbow and knee, or by substituting points or suspending straps. Arm armor pretty much has to hang somehow from the shoulders. "Somehow" can mean anything from spring-posts at the right and left sides of a plate gorget and all the arm plates articulating to each other by rivets from pauldrons to wrists, through arming-doublet cloth sleeves with strategically located points to lace the German arm's components on: rerebrace and its points, intersecting-cones couter and its points above and below the elbow joint and the knots prominently on display at the couter, then the vambrace.

If you start stitching, go for longish rows of it or enclosing areas: two rows of stitching and if you like, a crossover, making generally a U shape of your stitchline. A rectangle with an X inside it works too. As you can see, the deal is using lots of area at the join to carry your load. The greater the number of stitches, the greater the strength. Make use of a skiving knife to taper ends down, reducing the thickness you have to poke needles through. In heavy leather, an edge groover is also an excellent tool for reducing thickness right at the stitch line and just for extra excellence, putting your stitch threads down inside the leather's thickness to escape being worn or frayed.

Looping strap ends through slots in the straps for the purpose hardly needs much explanation, just the proper D-ring anchor on the inside of steel, or slots cut in your leather pieces to loop the strap through. But all in all, with the proper tools I think sewing your straps to your leather bits will give a neater installation.

List of the proper tools: needle kit and stab awl, which is an essential no matter what else you get; Stitching Awl a/k/a Awl-For-All, and a supply of its spools of colored heavy thread and keep that instruction sheet, leather cement such as Barge, or household cement or Shoe-Goo; optionally a spool of artificial sinew to go with the needle kit; optionally edge groover and pouncing wheel(s) to both lay out stitch spacing on your stitch lines and to smooth your stitches down into your leather after you've sewn them -- this is more useful on long stitch runs than on sewing straps together; skiving knife, particularly the excellent Tandy Skife (tm); strap cutter w/spare blades; neatsfoot oil, beeswax, maybe bottle of dye and applicators. A Dremel and its fine drill bit are a good way to get stitch holes right through even the thickest leather.

Look into steel buckles constructed of, well, wire, or light rod. These are extremely strong, much stronger than cast brass buckles or pot metal. Yes, you can make buckles of steel yourself this way.

How to avoid having your stitch row "tear on the dotted line:" for one thing, use fairly heavy leather on loaded places. In punching stitch holes with a stitching awl, don't align its two cutting edges along the line of stitching and punch like this -------, but instead angle its edges 45 degrees to the stitch line, sort of like / / / / / / /. Any failure of the leather hole to hole must therefore propagate over a longer distance, and that takes more destructive power to accomplish.

Similarly, avoid using a "thonging chisel," that forklike tool of various sizes. That's for thonging edges of the leather, not stitching it, and it gives the dotted line tear under adverse circumstances, and thonging the edges or assembling a piece with thonging is period only for the late nineteenth century and later eras; it wasn't medieval. Rather a pity, because the technique is a handsome one.