Building Medium/Heavy Armour for Crucible, scale amour?

Community Gear
#1

Hi first post here, I’ve crewed for all four of the Auckland landings from Crucible and I’m planning to make up a character to join in later on this year. My thoughts is to go in the fighter direction. I would like to be able to do lots of running around all day, so picking armour which is lightweight and flexible is important to me. My budget is limited too.

Going with leather armour seems like the obvious choice here. As it is light, flexible, easy to make, and cheap (if I’m going with the pseudo fake leather looking stuff). And as I’ll be starting out with medium armour that means leather would be appropriate for it, but as I’m going down the fighter path I’m sure it won’t be long until I’ll be upgrading… and for heavy breastplate it must be metal armour. So ideally my medium breastplate should be “metal” too? That way when I upgrade in game, I can keep on using the same piece of kit (I assume this ok?) without needing to build two sets of armour.

Looking around online all options seem to either look incredibly cheap (such as those Halloween costumes, which are nothing more than a picture of armour printed over on top of a long sleeved cotton top) or are incredibly expensive!

So I’m settling on making my own, specifically going with making scale armour. (but I’m remaining very open to other suggestions! Throw your ideas at me!)

Getting some parts of it pre made would speed up the process considerably, and from researching online this looks like this is the cheapest place to go to (anything cheaper we can access here in NZ? Unfortunately shipping kills us!):
theringlord.com/cart/shopdispla … .asp?id=84

Using the small black plastic scales looks attractive to me (wish they had large ones however! Would be faster to assemble. Additionally for Anodized Aluminum the large scales are much cheaper per square foot of coverage than the Anodized Aluminum small scales, at US$19.96 vs US$37.07/sq.ft), because the small black plastic scales are cheap-ish & they’d be lighter than the normal metal ones. If I spray paint them roughly with a metallic coating they could shape up nicely indeed.

I estimate 2 square feet on each side of me will be more than generous enough to cover my front and back (and most probably enough to cover my sides too, but planning on just putting a couple of leather straps on each side to tighten it up. This will make it more adjustable depending on the user’s size, as well as making it lighter, cheaper, and faster to build. All good things!). So 4 square feet in total, means 4000 scales are needed, which is four boxes @ US$13.50 for a total of US$54. This is a shipping weight of 1.8lbs (nice! Means the armour is going to be quite light I think), and a shipping cost of US$12.24 to get it to my YouShop address in the USA. I’d estimate it would then cost NZ$22 to get it from the YouShop warehouse to my doorstep in Auckland.

So in total for all this it would cost NZ$101 I estimate, plus a little bit more for miscellaneous costs of assembly (straps/buckles/cloth/thread). Somewhat more pricey than I’d like, but is still kinda acceptable to me at a stretch.

Then there is the question of attaching all the scales, I wonder if simply sewing it straight onto the backing material is sufficient to hold up during LARP combat? As I don’t want to have to replace dozens of little scales after every encounter! Maybe use strong fishing line instead of thread?

So anyway, that is my thoughts, any feedback on this, be it positive or negative, I’m keen to hear :slight_smile:

#2

Did you see this post? How to make your own cheap Brigandine armour.

#3

Hi,

I made a scale mail singlet for Teonn, the campaign that’s just been. I used TheRingLord, like you mentioned. However, I actually weaved the scales together using the binding rings you can also purchase from TheRingLord. TheRingLord were really good, but just be aware it takes a while for the stuff to arrive, as it’s sea freight.

Not sure if you’ll be able to see it, but just FYI here is what my vest looked like:
facebook.com/#!/photo.php?f … =3&theater

I think weight should be a primary concern. Going with plastic and painting it might be a good idea - I think I ended up with steel scales, and I found the weight of the armour quite a strain (ended up being about 9kg I think, but all bearing down on a few centermeters of my shoulders due to the shirt design). Also, TheRingLord have a calculator on their site which is useful for working out how many scales you need.

I generally find that if you have an idea, google it to see what you can find online - someone has probably done it before and there are probably instructions. I found the instructions for weaving the scalemail online.

Also, there are a lot of people in NZLARPS who have chainmail, and it might be advisable to just try and find someone who you can borrow stuff off? Borrowing is much more cost effective!

Cheers,

Jon

#4

[quote=“Hannah”]Did you see this post? How to make your own cheap Brigandine armour.
http://diatribe.co.nz/t/make-your-own-cheap-armour-brigandine-style/7162/1[/quote]

Yes, I should’ve mentioned beforehand I’d already read that before posting this :slight_smile: And it was in a small way an inspiration for this. (the aspect about not needing to cover up the sides, just to front and back then straps to connect the sides)

But I skim over the costs of that and it might be $40 in parts? Tempting, but I think my alternative will look more than three times as good (and possibly be faster too? As I’d be using pre-cut scales, but then again there are more of them as they’re a small size unfortunately. Darn it, I wish again they had large plastic scales!). Additionally I’m not sure how appropriate it is to use Brigandine armour to represent heavy armour? (is it really? Hmm… perhaps)

Anyway, the Brigandine armour has certainly got a clean field to itself in the running for my 2nd place choice. 8)

#5

Yup. For example, if you want lamellar armour, there are plenty of sites which will sell it to you, in whatever material you want. e.g:

plasticlamellar.com/

(I think Nikki is currently working on the same style of armour, but with leather)

#6

Hi David, welcome to diatribe / nzlarps :slight_smile:

I gave Nikki some leather and a quick lesson on making lamellar armour. It’s easy and quick; I think you can cut out and lace leather lameller at the rate of about a square foot per hour.

Regardless of what you go with I personally would recommend doing the sides as well. If you want side opening, I’d overlap them slightly as well.

#7

[quote=“Jon Ball”]Hi,

I made a scale mail singlet for Teonn, the campaign that’s just been. I used TheRingLord, like you mentioned. However, I actually weaved the scales together using the binding rings you can also purchase from TheRingLord. TheRingLord were really good, but just be aware it takes a while for the stuff to arrive, as it’s sea freight. [/quote]

Yes I saw how long their shipping too, horrifying! That is why I’m going to use YouShop :wink: Slashes the time down to about a quarter or less of the time it would take otherwise, and it might even work out slightly cheaper too.

I saw those binding rings they offer, but I think they’d about double the cost and way more than double the weight. So not so keen on that, and leaning towards sewing them directly onto cloth.

I could see it :wink: Looks good!

Yikes, 9kg! I don’t want to have to lose another 9kg of bodyweight just to balance out the extra weight of armour :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: I kid, I kid… but yes, low weight is very important to me (maybe because the “other sport” I do is cycling, which is full of weight obsessed gear nerds seeking to shave off every fraction of a gram that they can from their gear!).

Have used TheRingLord figures already to determine how many scales I need, as I showed in my workings in my original post :slight_smile: I think 4 square feet thus 4 thousand scales is fairly spot on for a comfortably generous figure (don’t want to accidentally run short!).

I’ve been doing a fair amount of googling on this topic already for research, but the problem seems to be using plastic scales is a relatively recent-ish innovation I think and thus not too many people seem to have done it compared to the conventional way. Yet using plastic instead offers a number of opportunities when it comes to construction methods vs traditional heavy metal way, such as fixing it together in a more lightweight manner (as doesn’t need to cope with the strain of heavier metal).

I might for instance try threading lightweight ribbons through the scales then laying them flat row by row on the backing material and then quickly in a few sweeps be able to sew rows and rows on by going in the gaps between scales.

Oh, and plus of course there is the problem of when you go googling for “plastic scale armour” I of course get… TANKS! (though trying to filter out those results)
Which is what I want to be, a tank, but not that kind of tank! :wink:

[quote=“Jon Ball”]
Also, there are a lot of people in NZLARPS who have chainmail, and it might be advisable to just try and find someone who you can borrow stuff off? Borrowing is much more cost effective![/quote]
Maybe… I’d prefer not to have to beg and borrow, plus another factor is I suppose all the other sets are very heavy too and nobody (or only very few) have yet experimented with these lightweight scales?

#8

Yup. For example, if you want lamellar armour, there are plenty of sites which will sell it to you, in whatever material you want. e.g:

plasticlamellar.com/

(I think Nikki is currently working on the same style of armour, but with leather)[/quote]

I stumbled across that website just a little while after I made my first post here, I calculated the initial materials cost for that to be about US$22 per square foot. Which is significantly more than my initial plan I outlined with plastic scale mail :neutral_face:

The sight however does offer quite an attractive option in how it would work to fashion together the armour which I like the look of. But as well as the cost, I fear it wouldn’t have quite the same level of light weight and flexibility of movement that the plastic scale armour would have.

But certainly thanks, it has reminded me lamellar armour is something I need to look more deeply into, to see if maybe this option could be made to work instead. :smiley:

#9

I’d be careful with using YouShop. While I haven’t used them myself yet, lots reviews and feedback indicate that they are more expensive than people think, even after using their site calculators to estimate costs. In most cases it seems that it costs more than just using the American sellers own shipping costs if they offer it to NZ. Which is understandable because NZ Post has to cover the costs of their warehouse and staff in the states in addition to the postage costs. It isn’t advertised as a cost saving service it is advertised as a way to get things that can’t be sent directly to NZ.

#10

I use YouShop all the time :smiley: Seriously. I had five parcels arrive via YouShop just this morning. (I get nearly all my film gear either from the USA, or directly from China)

I know it sounds crazy that shipping via a warehouse in Portland is cheaper and faster than shipping directly here, but it is true! :open_mouth: :astonished:

The problem seems to be that Americans (& Canadians too to an extent) don’t bother to realise anything else exists outside their little world of North America, and so they ignore us waaay over in little NZ. Not bothering with those little details that matter so much to us, such as determing the quickest & cheapest shippings options to NZ then incorporating that into their website. Unlike the Chinese suppliers I’ve dealt with who have that drive and higher level of customers service. For instance, I can get direct from China a lens cap for any of my lens for only US$0.99! (free shipping to my doorstep in NZ from China is included in that price too!!) This is an example why USA is a superpower on the decline, but China is on the rise.

Anyway… thank you for the warning, but I’m quite confident about using YouShop as they’ve already saved me thousands of dollars. :smiley:

#11

Perfectly appropriate - it gets used as the chest-protection on C14th knight’s armour. Just change the styling and plate sizes to be something more like this.

You could make a coat of plates by a similar method, and it would also be appropriate.