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During the samurai era if you were well off you would have a replacement armor for just such an occasion, lower status retainers and foot soldiers (ashigaru) would be using borrowed or lent armor owned by the lord they were working for, there would be replacements available and with labor being dirt cheap (or free) repairing armor was no big deal. Samurai armor needed a lot of maintenance anyway even if not used in battle. Chips in the lacquer needed to be filled in as the environment of Japan is very corrosive to metal and un lacquered leather armor would fall apart from moisture. Cloth linings would rip and deteriorate from use. The lace whether leather or silk needed constant maintenance from wear, there were people who did work like this for a living and they had it down to a science.Tiberius Claudius wrote:Such insane amounts of work. What masterpieces.
I'm curious to know how often samurai armor was rendered unusable because of lacings being sliced away in battle?
GridPoet wrote:hey... i'm not sure if it's cheaper, but my buddy and i have been doing some samurai type builds and we used lacrosse lacing (flat laces)... you can buy it for fairly cheap in very large rolls...
might give Google a search...
the pieces look INCREDIBLE!!! hope ours look 1/4 as good ^_^
jiujitsufighter wrote:I'm using SengokuDaimyo and a whole lot of trial and error. This is probably the tenth suit I've made, but the first in kozane. It has taken me a LONG time. My gf is about going to break up with me. I've been at it for around four weeks now, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I've done nothing but work on armor in my spare time. My best guess is I'm in the 150+ hour range now. So I'd say probably 5 hours a day for the last month. My hand was bruised and swollen from punching holes. I think if I ever do scale again it will be in metal. Leather is just a ton of extra work.
Forkbeard wrote:I guess you don't want to hear about the places to get steel scales pre cut and punched?
FB
I have read that actual Samurai armors made from individual scales (kozane) like the one you are making can have 2000 scales and could have taken over 200 days to complete. Im interested to see what your totals are when your finished.jiujitsufighter wrote: So far I'm in it about 150 hours, 120 yards of lace, 1 1/2 sides of 9 ounce leather, 1,200 scales, and 10,000 holes punched.
Caleidah wrote:Glorious
Arrakis wrote:Lookin' good.
What's up with the bracers?
Karne wrote:A Magnum Opus sir. I really, really like it--some of the best armor I seen built, anywhere.
My question for you, what would you do different next time? Anything that didn't turn out quite right? Anything you would want to change?
It really is a great piece dude, I'm a big fan! If you cross-post this on the armourarchive, I'm sure those guys would love to see it!
Thanks again man, what a sweet piece!
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