Cloth Armor

Leather, Chain and Plate

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Cloth Armor

Postby fideal » Sat Apr 23, 2011 10:07 am

I was asking in the pics & video forum what well done cloth armor would look like, and though there were some great tutorials, it raises another question.

What would the advantages be over other armor? It seems to me that leather would be a lot easier to work with, and less time consuming, than gluing layer after layer of cloth together.

From what I've seen in the tutorials on the cloth armor, leather would be about the same strength if not stronger. I may have a biased opinion, but I don't see any point other than people wanting to try new things for aesthetics.

Also, in case you never read the WC boards, there is discussion to add cloth armor to rules.
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Re: Cloth Armor

Postby Tiberius Claudius » Sat Apr 23, 2011 5:17 pm

Here is one of my favorite tuts on building a linothorax (ancient Greek version of cloth armor). It's by Matt Amt of Amtgard fame. He also links over to the Roman Army Talk boards for additional discussions and history.

http://www.larp.com/hoplite/linothor.html

Per Matt, the benefits are lighter weight and lower temperatures than metal armor, though there are still mobility restrictions which meet a key requirement in our games.

Leather armor might be less time consuming, but not necessarily as cheap. Historicaly, see the bit on "spolas" in the link, there was leather involved with typical Greek armor.

We need an exemplary model created that could pass inspection at multiple events before a rule could really be added to the BoW. I wish I had the time to make it because this looks kick *.
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Re: Cloth Armor

Postby Isk » Mon Apr 25, 2011 11:16 am

'Real' cloth armor that is historically well-documented needs to be at least 15 layers of decent quality fabric (at the very least 5oz, IMO). 20-30 layers is more like it. It needs to be stitched together well. Glued, stiffened cloth armors are rare and poorly represented in the historical/archaeological record. Just the cloth stitched tightly will be encumbering. It will usually be heavier, hotter, more time consuming to make and costly than the Bel-equivalent protection made from leather.

Cloth armor has the advantage of being more historically valid and aesthetically different than what everyone else is doing. It is awesome and it's real armor, but no one who does this right will be doing it for a cheap, in-game advantage. As in-game sport armor, leather is pretty much king.
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