The Armour Archive

The search is not working, the search is not working. I tried.

I remember discussions on baking wet leather to harden it as opposed to boiling in water or immersion in hot water. Does anyone know of an article on this? I can find Cariadoc's pretty easily but it's about immersion.

Anyone?

go to houseofthewolf.com and look at the tutorials Dan posted there. That's the best I've ever seen on the subject.

Baked Leather...It's what's for dinner!

Try the hide glue marinade and the gesso topping. Paint to taste (or lack thereof). Yum!

What, no pot jokes yet?

Maelgwyn, do you know anything about using hide glue? Cause hide glue I got.

Seriously, I've got scads of 10oz sitting around (just organized the leather recently) and 2 guys I need to armor up in the next year. I've never done any hardening other than the generally frowned-upon wax immersion, and any help or direction to articles would be handy.

Edit: thanks for the houseofthewolf articles, they have a bunch of good info in them. But I think he's relying more on the thickness of the leather (16 oz) and not the hardening. I'm looking to work with between 8 and 10 oz and get maximum results.

Search works fine for me now...

See http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... ake#804282

for how I harden leather with hide glue.

sweet, thanks!

schreiber wrote:What, no pot jokes yet?

Maelgwyn, do you know anything about using hide glue? Cause hide glue I got.

Seriously, I've got scads of 10oz sitting around (just organized the leather recently) and 2 guys I need to armor up in the next year. I've never done any hardening other than the generally frowned-upon wax immersion, and any help or direction to articles would be handy.

Edit: thanks for the houseofthewolf articles, they have a bunch of good info in them. But I think he's relying more on the thickness of the leather (16 oz) and not the hardening. I'm looking to work with between 8 and 10 oz and get maximum results.

Actually, no, Dan's not relying on the heavy leather. He's hardening the living daylights out of it *and* it's heavy leather to start with.

I've been working with saddle skirting, which runs between 10 and 15 oz. and has a relatively soft hand to begin with. Using the glue method is producing quite acceptable results for me in that range.

I don't know about hardening 8 oz leather.

Gavin

schreiber wrote:Edit: thanks for the houseofthewolf articles, they have a bunch of good info in them. But I think he's relying more on the thickness of the leather (16 oz) and not the hardening. I'm looking to work with between 8 and 10 oz and get maximum results.

I had greaves from Dan that I just sold. I smacked myself really hard with JUST them on my shins with a 1.5" OAK dowel. Barely stung. I have his cuisses and have worn them for SCA combat. Hard as anything, I took a solid blow (according to marshal/opponent) to the inside of my leg and didn't even know I'd been hit there.

He hardens the stuff, all right. He also uses 13-15 ounce leather, usually, but does some pieces in what seem to be lighter weights as well. Nothing heavier than that, though, really.

-Gregory-