Leather armour- best way to make something like this?

[LadyAmanita]

So I want to make a breastplate similar to this:
http://www.medievalcollectibles.com/pop ... 701_2_.png
It's going to be shaped similarly, but with Art Deco ornament instead of Celtic.

What's the best way to go about it? Now, I want this for cosplay, it doesn't have to take an SCA-type beating. And I've got a side of roughly 9 oz leather to make it out of.
I have a couple of problems- one is that I'm female, and unfortunately large chested. I do NOT want breast cups, but how might I adjust the upper part of that to fit a female form, without being too..blatant?
Would I need to wet-form the leather, or harden it afterward? Hardening the smaller plates shouldn't be too hard, but that upper body part is a challenge.
I'd need to learn how to harden leather in general, as I've never done it before.

Anyone have any ideas that might help?

[Alex Baird]

I'd look about for a corset pattern that gave a similar look (overbust single flat front, no cups), and start from there. Then decide how close fitting you want it to be. If you want to try wet molding, you are going to need a form to mold over, which means a casting of your torso or some similar mannequin.

Mock it up in something relatively inexpensive first, like stiff canvas.

There are several older threads here on hardening, but the two most popular methods seem to be water and heat, and acrylic floor polish.

[Kilkenny]

A couple of things here.

First, the picture you linked to shows what I am pretty certain is a two piece breastplate construction, the upper portion being a different section than the band at the waist. This is important in terms of how you need to work your patterns and, subsequently, your leather.

I would not go to a corset pattern as my starting point, but rather would look to a women's vest pattern. The vest pattern has the shoulders and upper elements generally missing from corset designs. I would redraft the vest pattern, creating an upper section and a lower section, with some allowance for the upper to overlap the lower. Looking again at the image you linked, I believe that the "straps" (for lack of a better word) running from the top section and continuing on the lower section are there on top to cover darts for shaping the bosom. On the lower section they are just decorative, picked up to continue the lines started with the darts in the upper.

So.. you can get a bunch of shaping in the upper with those darts. The lower section won't require shaping - it's effectively a girdle and not part of the upper. I think this was done quite consciously to avoid more complex shaping.

In the event that the upper requires more shaping than you will get with darts - or you want to refine the shape a bit more subtly than what you may get with darts - you can dampen the leather and mold it to whatever form you wish. It doesn't need to be really wet. Really wet is for when you want to be able to do truly dramatic molding, or are working with very heavy leather. You just want it damp enough that it will let you mold it without it sagging.

After you have done your tooling, molding and dying, but before you fully assemble the project, is the time for hardening. In this case, I don't think you will need to harden any of it. If you did decide to harden any of it, I would recommend using the acrylic floor polish approach. Just soak the piece of leather in acrylic floor polish, allowing it to saturate the leather, then hang the leather up to dry and wipe the occasional drip or bubble with a damp cloth. Give the acrylic overnight to dry thoroughly.

My two cents

[LadyAmanita]

I have some more pictures of that armor, the site used to show pics of it from the back, and since it's only got a partial back, the insides were visible, making it obvious that it's made of quite a few segments of leather- I'm guessing this made shaping easier and cheaper, also a lot of the plates could be cut from oddly shaped parts of the hide, cutting down on waste. The lower part (below the breastplate) looks to be made of about 6 segments, not counting the vertical narrow straps holding it all together. I've got domed rivets for that, I'm going for a skyscraper-ish riveted look.

Good idea on using a women's vest pattern, I might have something that would work. I'm planning to do a duct tape dress form of myself soon, so I can use that as a base to draft the pattern over.

[Sean Powell]

I'm not a leather expert but the shape and design isn't all that difficult.

Skip all of the pre-made patterns. Get a cheap/old t-shirt. Pull it snug but not tight at the spine with some safety pins. Cover your chest in alternating rows of horizontal and vertical duct-tape. (Do not pull your body into odd shapes by wrapping, tear strips and apply with 0 tension). Have an artistic friend draw the armor on you. Cut up the spine and remove shirt and tape in 1 piece. Cut on the artwork lines. unfold and transfer to poster-board (MUCH cheaper then cardboard!) Flip each piece and trace twice to even out pattern, add over-laps as necessary. Cut and assemble with tape and those propeller type push-pins for rivets. (note the upper chest is almost definetly hiding 2 vertical cuts under the 2 strips of leather.)

make multiple mockups in poster-board until you are happy with your design and then trace the patterns on leather. Shape in warm water if necessary, slick down all edges and do whatever tooling you want. If you are going to case the leather for tooling and hardening then add a bit extra as leather can shrink in warm water.

Luck!
Sean

[Kilkenny]

I'm not a leather expert but the shape and design isn't all that difficult.

Skip all of the pre-made patterns. Get a cheap/old t-shirt. Pull it snug but not tight at the spine with some safety pins. Cover your chest in alternating rows of horizontal and vertical duct-tape. (Do not pull your body into odd shapes by wrapping, tear strips and apply with 0 tension). Have an artistic friend draw the armor on you. Cut up the spine and remove shirt and tape in 1 piece. Cut on the artwork lines. unfold and transfer to poster-board (MUCH cheaper then cardboard!) Flip each piece and trace twice to even out pattern, add over-laps as necessary. Cut and assemble with tape and those propeller type push-pins for rivets. (note the upper chest is almost definetly hiding 2 vertical cuts under the 2 strips of leather.)

make multiple mockups in poster-board until you are happy with your design and then trace the patterns on leather. Shape in warm water if necessary, slick down all edges and do whatever tooling you want. If you are going to case the leather for tooling and hardening then add a bit extra as leather can shrink in warm water.

Luck!
Sean

I still recommend the commercial pattern. It's all too easy to mess up that duct taping process and produce something that doesn't actually match your real shape.

Not sure where "warm water" comes into play. I don't case in/with warm water and don't believe there is any reason to...
Also, depending on how much tooling is being done, the result can be that your piece is very significantly larger than what was originally cut. The leather can, and does, spread with the stamping work.

I've had a pattern piece stretch an inch and a half over on what started as an 18 inch long piece. Fortunately, the opposite side (two pieces of a quiver) stretched almost exactly the same amount when I tooled it

It's this stretching that leads some people to run packing tape across the flesh side of their leather, or rubber cement it to a cardboard backer to minimize the stretching.

[LadyAmanita]

Luckily there's not going to be a lot of stamping on the armor itself- just some beveling around the decorative grooves cut into it, and maybe a few simple designs here and there. I'll have to post some pics of the leather apron I made for my Shaak Ti cosplay, now THAT was a tooling job!

At the moment, I think using a commercial pattern over a duct tape dress form might be the way to go, then mocking up with posterboard to check the fit.

Has anyone here used Tandy's domed rivets? I was planning to use those, even if I have to buy a bag of regular rivets with longer posts (same thickness, just longer) and swap them out.

I am debating designing my own moulded leather pauldrons to wear with this, perhaps moulded top piece with hanging scales- I already have a scale apron made to go under the short hanging flank guards of the breastplate.

[PatternWeld]

I'm going to offer a dissenting opinion.

http://www.armourarchive.org/patterns/g ... struct.gif

model it on a segmented gothic german breastplate. You can see, in the flat, that the upper breast portion is a loose "X" by extending the pattern a bit you can make ample room for your chest and not screw with the visual lines. The only thing is that you will have to compensate for dished shapes with darts.

Grimr

[coreythompsonhm]

I'm going to offer a dissenting opinion.

http://www.armourarchive.org/patterns/g ... struct.gif

model it on a segmented gothic german breastplate. You can see, in the flat, that the upper breast portion is a loose "X" by extending the pattern a bit you can make ample room for your chest and not screw with the visual lines. The only thing is that you will have to compensate for dished shapes with darts.

Grimr

That would be interesting to see a gothic breast plate in leather