My journey through armour.

[raito]

This will probably end up in several installments. It's a bit of a story though my own armours and how I came to be where I am. Most of the installments will have pictures.

But not this first one.

I started doing the armour thing because I started fighting in the SCA way back in 1977 (I was 15). Fortunately, Master Thorbjorn had enough bits and bob around to lend out that I was able to train a bit.

For my 16th birthday, my parents gave me $15 to buy a helm that the local armourer's guild was selling to raise a bit of money. It was one of Polidor's kits than they'd bought somehow. Then they didn't let me pad it. Somewhat of a pattern for them. For instance, they allowed me to authorize at a local tournament, but did not allow me to fight in the tournament. There's reasons I left at 17.

I made some armour not from carpet, but from some spare carpet padding. Awful stuff. Later some out of carpet. Still borrowed a bunch of bits.

Then I left home.

See you next installment.

[raito]

This was my first 'real' armour. Sadly, only the dou remains. The plastic piece got added along the way when I stopped being 150 lbs. soaking wet.
The waxed leather was cut out using an exacto knife on the floor of the apartment where I was living. As the place was being renovated, I didn't feel too bad about scratching the floor. I made a jig out of a couple pieces of wood and a few sewing pins that I cut off so that I could locate the holes.

The original odoshi was some blue rat-tail that I saved up for. Awful stuff, later replaces with the red and yellow macrame cord you see. The lames' lacing was string that tied together towel bundles at the restaurant I worked at. I'd spend my break time doing lacing.

The top places were originally leather also, but those degrades and got replaced with the stainless. I never did get around to making kusazuri, though I did made some kydex sode. I stopped wearing them because the lest one would become detached at the rear and flip up and get caught in the helmet, blinding me. Then they broke along the lines of holes anyway.

I had padding I wore underneath. It had a strip of leather down the back to cover the spine. Even though I'd wash it frequently, the smell never left it.

I wore various hakama during this period. The knees would always wear out. The kote were padded and at that time I didn't wear solid elbow protection until a lot later. The first kote were castoffs from Mikhail the Armourer. I started making my own when I added solid elbow protection underneath.

Knees were for a while simple cops sewn to a pair of jeans. Later, I made suneate and knees from a kydex breastplate that was Mary Keane's (she never really did fight). When the knee rules changed, I added wings to the knees.

The helmet was one I got from Brother Giles for $125. Full so-men, etc, though I did have to make the shikoro myself. Lasted a good long while, but eventually the so-men rusted out from the inside. Naturally, the nose fell off a week before the first Crown I ever fought in. Borrowed a helmet for that one.

Gauntlets were hockey gloves for a long time. My first steel gauntlet (I only made 1) that I made when I was 20 was garbage, so it didn't last. Eventually I moved to aluminum.

This armour lasted at 20 years or so and fought and won literally hundreds of tournaments, including (I think, time gets muddled) a Coronet. I was close to fighting a tourney every week.

Next time I'll show the failed next level of armour I started, but never finished before moving on to a better way to do barrels.

[Mega Zenjirou Yoshi]

Well, this is gonna be a fun ride.
Gonna pop some corn.

[raito]

The Armour That Never Was:

Somewhere along the way, I decided I needed something better than that red/yellow thing I was using. After all, I was older, done with college, and making at least some money. The late period solid plate armours never held much interest for me. Japanese armour is all about acres of lacing.

Lacquering metal was going to be very tedious and probably expensive. I'd go with waxed leather again. So I got some and off I went.

This time, I was a lot smarter about how I formed the kozane. I got a strap cutter and made a pile of 3/4" straps. Then I used a paper template and a single-edge razor blade to cut those strips into shape. That part went rather quickly as opposed to painstakingly cutting each with an exacto knife. I got an old pan and boiled the leather in paraffin. In they go, wait 10 minutes, take them out. That part took a long time.

I'm not even sure I ended up with enough to make the dou. All of it is sitting in a tub in the basement, except the pan with the wax. That's in a different box.

Here's a picture of the jig I used to mark the plates for punching. You can also see an aluminum top plate and part of a leather covering for it. There's also a bit of mimi-ito of a very old style. I do have a picture of a Tomow Gozen recreator from Japan who has this style of lacing around the edge of her armour. Making that ito was very time consuming. I did it on a square dai. A round one wouldn't have worked well for the pattern. I'd forgotten I'd made more than I use on my shikoro. There's also a punched and unpunched kozane.

This time aorund, I used the usual waxed leatherworking thread to lace the kozane together. The odoshi pattern is supposed to be my mon in front, and diagonal stripes elsewhere. It actually looks better in the picture than live. THis stuff is pretty heavy, though. Imagine wearing 2 layers of 9 oz leather.

I abandoned this project when it became clear that I really needed something new ASAP. The string on the old dou was dying and some of the leather was disintegrating. This dou wasn't going to be finished any time soon. It may have also been around the time I either moved to or came back from Texas. A lot of projects got reset about that time.

Somewhere about this time, I switched from the blue kydex suneate to ones made of leather. They were 3-plate, with stainless articulated knees. No pictures, I'm afraid. I think I passed them on years ago. I continued to use my stainless elbows (that I still use today), and made kote as they got chopped up. Remember, I was still wearing the previous dou, so I still wore the stinky padding underneath.

Next time: the 2 weekend armour, the invention of the Raito method, the first Japanese battle at WW and Pennsic, and the highest compliment I could ever receive.

[human]

can't wait to see more beutiful armor

[raito]

I can't wait to write about it. Things got busy. Comtemplating a sidestep jnto the weapons.