Teonn has given me a new craft project: brigandine armour. Real brigandine is made of overlapping steel plates, riveted to a cloth outer with teeny-tiny rivets. It looks cool, but is a lot of work - plus, it seems a bit too good for an ordinary mercenary soldier of the sort I’ll be playing. So, I am going to go with something like this: utterly anachronistic, and with small gaps between the plates - but it will look the part. And because it is for larp use, and does not have to protect me from actual weapons, I’m using plastic, from these:
[attachment=2]brigandine-01.jpg[/attachment]
Things you will need
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- Thick fabric for the shell. I’m using brown durasuede.
- other fabric for the lining (optional)
- ~8 plastic buckets ($1 each at your local supermarket)
- heat gun (~$20 at the Warehouse)
- rivet punch
- ~400 single-cap rivets (~$20 at GDL)
- steel ruler
- scissors
- craft knife
- hammer and rivet anvil
- straps and buckles for the sides
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The actual armour part will consist of 2.5" squares, riveted to the fabric. The rivets are spaced to give a rectangular grid on the outside - approximately 1.25" horizontal seperation, and 2.5" vertical.
The first step is to get your personal costumer to do the outer shell for you. Mine used the same pattern used for my surcoats, which gives a bit more space than I want thanks to the flared sides. That’s fine; I’ll trim it down once everything is riveted and its time to put the straps on.
Step 2 is to work out how many squares you will need. I folded the front of my outer in half vertically to give a centreline, then worked out roughly where the first row would start (allowing for seam allowance for the lining), and worked my way down. The general pattern is stacked rectangles: a big wide rectangle on the bottom, with a narrower one on top to cover the upper chest while giving room to swing your arms. In my case, this meant the top two rows were six squares wide, and the bottom 8 were 10 squares wide, with the potential for an extra two squares on the second row depending on arm movement. The back of my pattern has a higher line for the collar, so it will have an extra row of 6 squares.
Step 3 is to turn those buckets into plates. First, you dismember them into the largest pieces you can. In my case, this involved cracking the rim off (it was weak), trimming out the holders for the handle, then cutting down vertically and then around to remove the base (you need to be careful to manage the stress here and avoid cracks). The result was a pile of half bucket-sides:
[attachment=1]brigandine-02.jpg[/attachment]
Which were then attacked with a heat gun to flatten them out into roughly flat plates:
(No photo, because it didn’t come out, and I then cut the things up. But it should be easy to imagine)
Note: heat guns are dangerous, so don’t start a fire. Wear thick leather gloves to do the squishing with, and to avoid burns. Also, plastic gives off fumes when heated, so do this somewhere well-ventilated.
Step 4 was to mark out the squares, using a ruler and craft knife (because it was easier to score the surface than use a pen). I didn’t cut them all out at this stage, because I wanted to test my layout:
[attachment=0]brigandine-03.jpg[/attachment]
This shows the front (L) and back ®, folded in half, with the squares (still grouped in the chunks they came off the bucket) laid out to show the pattern. Fortunately, I had enough of the things.