I’ve got a coffee-table book from the Last Samurai that has lots of photos of the gear used in the movie, if anyone want to borrow it.
Mostly done. A bit of lacing up the back, a face and throat protector and six sets of hanging tassets to make and I’ll have finished my first ever Oriental-ish armour.
I should probably learn the names for all these pieces as well.
Now my character just needs to save enough cash to purchase some light armour!
And here are all the tools needed. A knife, hole punch, “cookie cutter”, steel ruler, hammer and wooden block…
That’s really cool Derek.
Thanks Ryan, the book has turned up. Pretty! IOU a beer.
Sorry for the apparently obscure reference.
Your armor looks amazing. Maybe even too nice for a ronin.
Holy crap.
That’s AWESOME, Derek. I am absolutely blown away that someone would go to this kind of effort for my game. happydance
I’ll have the announcement for the next game up shortly.
This is just my practice suit, in deliberately plain brown leather, as befits my current lowly station. i.e. it’s my “calico”
Now that I have made all my pattern and construction mistakes, the next suit will be better
I am now planning my flash “now I’m a wealthy samurai again” suit. It will be in red leather with yellow lacing. I have just bought 100m of yellow 3mm braid and I will shortly get some leather so I can begin it.
I hope the game doesn’t plan to end soon.
And finished. I think it reminds me of one of the terracotta warriors of Qin Shi Huang the First Emperor of China.
I got lazy and glued all the tassets together instead of stitching them. Saved hours, but I may have to stitch them if they start coming apart. It’s a large contact area, so hopefully that never happens. There is about 6-8 different types of leather in this, which gives it a very patchwork quilt feel to it. My leather scrap box is somewhat diminished, but that’s why we keep our scraps after all.
Surprisingly easy to make, if a little time consuming (probably 20 hours all up).
I’m happy to give anyone a push in the right direction if they want to knock one up. After all, one of these looks a little lonely. It really needs a cast of thousands to look its best.
Wow…i could do with a breast plate like that
It’s actually not a difficult project. Patterns are easy, tools are cheep, materials easy to come by. I can get you started if you want.
Does anyone know of any Oriental arm armour other than the “kote” style (kind of a sleeve with armoured bits sewn on)?
It’s the only sort I can find and I just don’t like the ascetics of it…
Bravo, dude, very very cool
And the shorts and bare feet go so well with it :mrgreen:
Had to laugh…
could have been 1% better if the mon was a deathstar
So, Darth Samurai huh? An interesting mix of Sith values with Japanese ideals. Very strange…
I haven’t had a chance to investigate the costs for tempering 6061 aluminium, but I couldn’t face the possibility that I may have to fight with the last larp safe bokken I made at another game. So I made a new one.
Not quite finished yet, but it looks better than my last effort already. I’m contemplating a second matching one as I have all the materials already. It feels too light at the moment, hopefully a bit of latex will add some weight.
10 bonus points for the person who can read the inscription
I finished my bokken. Getting a nice wood effect with latex is very simple. In fact, when applying it with a brush, think it would be harder to not get a wood grain effect than to get one.
It still feels far to light.
I’m contemplating making the next one to look like a piece of curved green bamboo.
[quote=“Derek”]Had to laugh…
could have been 1% better if the mon was a deathstar[/quote]
The Mon is the Imperial Logo
What did you settle on for the core of that one, Derek?
10mm OD aluminum pipe with 1mm side wall. It seemed to be very standard in some of the online rulesets around for larps that actually have rules about such things. It has a piece of sturdy fabric glued around the tip to reduce risk of punch through.
[quote=“Derek”]
10 bonus points for the person who can read the inscription [/quote]
Tsunami