Check Out My Bangin' New <strike>Belt</strike> Armor!

[Derian]

Here's some progress pics on the *' belt I'm working on. They're phone pics; deal with it.

I started out with an extra long belt blank from Tandy, because I'm lazy and either make too much money or don't know how to manage it. Your choice. These belt blanks presumably are designed for monstrously obese people, but they make great starters for ring belts if you either don't want to buy an entire side or simply don't want to take the effort to cut out a 64" strip of 1.5" leather.



I'm doing a relatively basic pattern throughout the length of the belt, because **** this is a lot of leather. I cut out a 1.5" by 6" (or so) piece of paper and drew on my pattern. This was then encased in clear packing tape so the paper didn't get wet and fall apart as I traced out my pattern in to the leather. Here's a progress shot. Sorry for the bad lighting, but you can see the indented lines on the left hand side and my tape & paper pattern on the right. I use a modeling spoon (the stylus end, top right in the photo) to trace out the lines in to cased (damp) leather. This leaves an indentation that can then be carved out using a swivel knife.



The previously mentioned indentations have all already been carved with a swivel knife and are now simply deep gashes in the leather. Because this is a ring belt, there's about 18" of excess that hangs down from the ring/buckle area. I like to jazz the end of this up a bit. Here's the beginnings with a hint of a Chaos Star.



I next used a beveler and backgrounder (actually a matter, but uh, I don't think there's really a difference) to flesh it out a bit. Don't make fun of my shaky cuts and terrible beveling; I'm pretty rusty and was really drunk for this portion. It gets better, I promise.



Just the tip; just for a minute. Just to see how it feels. The area around the circle in the middle of the Tzeentch symbol is a bit wonky; such is the pain of trying to tool a 1/8" space.



I'm tired of dark armor and I'm tired of terrible, unfinished, streaky dye jobs. I bought an air brush. If you're going to do any amount of leather in anything other than straight Fieblings USMC Black -- buy one. Seriously. You don't know what you're missing out on.

My goal with this piece (and the following (nearly) full suit to accompany it) is a bright(ish) blue base with hints of gold and black with a gloss finish. Trying to get any color other than near-black out of the spirit based Fieblings dyes with a dauber or brush is a statistical impossibility. That's where the air brush comes in. Here's my setup along with some dilution & coating tests on some scrap lamellar scales:



In order to prevent the dye from immediately turning the leather to a dark navy, it must be significantly diluted with rubbing alcohol; to the tune of 6-8:1 rubbing alcohol:dye. This plus the air brush allow me to get very, very fine control over the exact color I get, but requires a stupid number of coats. The following picture is about 10-12 coats in (fortunately, due to the alcohol base, they dry very quickly). Also note that I've beveled the edges of the belt prior to this picture.



More pictures are coming. I expect to have the belt finished tonight or tomorrow.

[Thorondor]

Very nice! Love the coloring. And I agree, I too am lazy and just get the strip blanks from Tandy for my belts/straps.

Where did you get the air brush & how much did it cost ya? I have an air compressor and might have to invest in a brush since my next suit is going to be a colorful base (aka not USMC black )

[Derian]

Oh, ****. I totally forgot that.

I'm super new to air brushing, so likely Burke or Soo or anyone else with more air brushing experience can shed some light, but from my research, most people should start with a dual action siphon or gravity fed internal mix air brush. You need the brush, an air hose and a compressor. I bought this:

http://www.amazon.com/Multi-Purpose-Gra ... 450&sr=1-1\

My one (singular and small!) complaint is that the medium chamber is too small for the scale of the projects that I work on. That said, it's a minor inconvenience. The compressor is solid and the air brush is surprisingly well constructed. If you're only planning on using the air brush to dye leather, this will probably meet all your needs.

If you expand later on, you can upgrade your air brush and/or compressor appropriately.

[Burke]

Sexy Derian. I love the tooling design. I really should play more with backgrounders, cause that is awesome.

Couple thoughts on the airbrushing. You can thin the dye with water as well as alcohol, so there's no need to buy the expensive Tandy medium. I use an Iwata Eclipse siphon feed. http://www.amazon.com/Iwata-Airbrush-Eclipse-HP-BCS-Set/dp/B002PNKCRG/ref=sr_1_7?s=arts-crafts&ie=UTF8&qid=1316261011&sr=1-7

This particular model has 2 needle tip options. .5mm and .35mm. The .5mm works the best for the alcohol based dye. Be aware, the alcohol based dye dries quickly and thick in the needle tip, which is why the .35mm doesn't work well. It has great control for detail, but after one use with Fiebings, I couldn't get anything else through it, nor could I get the dried dye out.

Great stuff man. I can't wait to see the armor.

O, and for belt blanks: http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/en-usd/home/department/Tools/Knives-Cutters-Splitters/3080-00.aspx Soooo easy... Just sayin'

[Thorondor]

Thanks Burke & Derian. My dad has an air compressor I can use, so I don't need the whole thing, just the air brush part.

Oh...and the strip cutter would require extra hide laying around

[Derian]

Here's the section where the color is much closer to final. I can't remember if this is the actual end or just near it, but whatever.



I don't have a picture because you wouldn't really see anything on it, but used masking tape to cover only the very front of the belt. I then hit the sides and back with black dye.

Here's the edging after paint. It's metallic gold, though it looks a bit white in the picture because of the lighting.



This picture shows the edging a bit better as well as the black on the Tzeentch symbol and chaos star:



Up next is the glossy finish and riveting on the ring to finish it up.

[Derian]

Completed belt. The detail at the bottom is difficult to make out because of the glare the high gloss finish gives off. I adjusted the picture's colors just a tad to make it more representative of how it looks in real life.

I have to go back and touch up the gold edging again, but my paint pen ran out, so it'll have to wait.

[Ticonderoga]

WOW Derian thats amazing!

[Black Cat]

WOW Derian thats amazing!

QFT

[Sieglatan]

I saw a simple leather belt at a store in the Bellagio that was priced at 1,200$, and this looks way better!

Great work! I especially love the Chaos influence.

[Sir Anastasia]

*...that belt has everything going on. I appreciate all the step by step pics. I might be able to make something nice using similar methods. Thanks for helping all of us and for inspiring us all to make beautiful art. (Although it will take me a long time to make something that pretty!)

[Arrakis]

Sick, D.

[Aimish]

Fantastic.

[No'Vak]

Looking at this belt cured my cancer.

[Derian]

You should go get some other terrible disease then, because what's coming up next is even better.

[Derian]

Here's a teaser. This is the right elbow cop of a pair of full arms I'm working on after tooling. It will have the same color scheme as the belt.

[Thorondor]

Very nice Can't wait to see the completed pieces...

[Derian]

Here's the a test fit of the shoulder assembly:

[Arrakis]

[Kyrian]

Here's a teaser. This is the right elbow cop of a pair of full arms I'm working on after tooling. It will have the same color scheme as the belt.

Derian, how did you do the filigree work? I've been wanting to do cutouts similar to these and perhaps put a thinner, differently-colored, leather underneath. I'd imagine a chisel and mallet would work pretty well but I haven't really researched the technique very much.

[Derian]

It was actually much easier than I anticipated. I used my utility knife to cut through the bulk of the leather just by pushing straight down (rather than with a cutting motion). After I had this, I used a very sharp Xacto knife to saw through the remainder of the leather.

[Solusar]

You arms are going to be way sick.

[Arrakis]

You should harden and float the shoulders instead of hard-riveting them.

This kit is gonna be nasty.

[Brutus]

Derian, this armor is going to look awesome. The tooling is really great and turns a good design into something that really looks professionally done.

I agree with Arrakis, don't hard-rivet the pieces together. You get really great flexibility if you attach the outer armor pieces to straps underneath the plates that run down the arm. This way the armor pieces can slide over each other but can't slide enough that there are gaps. Here's a picture that probably illustrates this better than I'm explaining:

[Dacian]

totally gay.


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</lie>

[Derian]

I thought about floating articulation but decided against it. On shoulder pieces such as this, I've found personally that this method of riveting works just fine. I do have to rework the very top piece on each arm as it's not going to work as is.

The cross-body strap shown below is also going away; I'm going to set up a gorget or torso piece to accept the arms, I think. I'll probably simply attach that piece to whatever I go with as it causes a bit of a problem with cross body arm movement as it is currently.

That said, Here's a few pictures of the finished right arm:




From Oktoberfest (Credit to whoever took it, naturally)

[Grey Ogre]

Looks really good on the field, cant wait to see the rest.

[Arrakis]

Wish there was more shaping on the vambrace, but it does look nice as hell.

Re Attachment: You can also just point the top lame/shoulder cap to a base garment; a heavy tunic would work fine, so long as you put both arms on it at once (so it didn't drag it sideways on you), but a gambeson or pourpoint would be better. It does move great when you do that, though; my SCA legs are pointed and move awesomely.

[Brutus]

Arrakis... re: attaching to an undergarment. Can you do that and have the armor be removeable from the garment? What would you use for that?

[Derian]

I think he means more like a D-ring or something like that sewn to the garment that you tie/buckle the armor to. I'm hesitant to do that because I like to have flexibility in what I can wear beneath the armor.

[Brutus]

Definitely. Maybe a gorget that straps under the armpits would be best. I'd love to see a helm that matches these. The color combo is sweet.

[Arrakis]

Actually, you just sew a pair of eyelets (like perfectly round buttonholes; I've actually just used the buttonhole setting on my sewing machine for them) into the base garment at the point of attachment, then take a short length of cord and tie the piece on by running the cord through the eyelets on the garment and then through matching holes on the armor and tying it off. Like so:

http://youtu.be/XP3LiwNWrk0?t=2m15s

(She's pointing on her rerebraces right then, but she shortly points on her pauldrons, as well. Check it out!)

All of those strings hanging off of her pourpoint in the earlier part of the video are "points" (so called because the tips of the cord were capped with metal or sharpened and waxed to actual points so that they could more easily be pushed through the garments/grommets/holes/etc. Like modern shoelaces have a pointy bit on the end.) that her armor ties on with. It's a heck of nice way to arm yourself because all of your armor essentially just floats where it should; it's basically tied onto your skin where it goes, thanks to the tight-fitting undergarment.


Affixing arm armor to a gorget, in my experience, is a good way to jerk your neck around all day.

[No'Vak]

Someone needs to take this pictures, print them, and goto a childrens cancer ward.

[Solusar]

Your kit makes me sort of hard Derian.

[kree]

Saw it in person, sexy as hell.

[Plithut]

* it Derian, now I have to work on some sort of armor. Well Done.

[Solusar]

Did you use a pattern for the arm harness or did you kind of know what you were doing already? I'm really curious about making a shoulder piece like that.

[Derian]

I disassembled a standard arm piece about 5 or 6 years ago and copied it. I've been modifying it since. This is probably the 7th or 8th set of arms I've made, I think.

Using either cardboard or funfoam and brass paper fasteners to pattern things out beforehand is really helpful.

[Forkbeard]

3 times from beer boxes or posterboard. Thats my rule.
I make anything new(that I haven't made before) 3 times from beer boxes before even drawing it on leather. Works the bugs out.
lookin good, Derian.
You need a nice helmet.
FB

[Solusar]

Cool, thanks for the advice guys.

[Remdawg Killionaire]

Bump. Sale going on for xtra lg belt blacks (64") at Tandy right now. Using this tutorial to make my belt! Got a airbrush so I'm pretty excited to use that. I'm using the Eco Flo dye from Tandy which is supposedly water soluble; should I be worried about this not working in my new airbrush? I also got a giant **** tank air compressor, so yeah, stoked to start using that.

[Derian]

The Eco-Flo kind of sucks, but as long as you seal it, it shouldn't be an issue at all. It should work without any issues in your airbrush.

Edit: Also, I'm going to be hurt if you don't post pictures.

[Derian]

This bump reminded me that I have a new torso piece that goes along with these arms. I would post pictures of it, but I'm not really happy with where it's at right now. It's going to need a pretty significant rework before I'm happy. That said, strapping the arms at the shoulder to the torso is amazing. I am never going back to cross-torso straps again.

[Arrakis]

This bump reminded me that I have a new torso piece that goes along with these arms. I would post pictures of it, but I'm not really happy with where it's at right now. It's going to need a pretty significant rework before I'm happy. That said, strapping the arms at the shoulder to the torso is amazing. I am never going back to cross-torso straps again.

Glad to hear it!

Fix up your torso piece, because I want to see it!

[Shino]

3 times from beer boxes or posterboard. Thats my rule.
I make anything new(that I haven't made before) 3 times from beer boxes before even drawing it on leather. Works the bugs out.
lookin good, Derian.
You need a nice helmet.
FB

Good rule. Good excuse to get some more beer.

[Derian]

Here's a teaser of the new kit in progress. This is one of the knees on one of my greaves:

[Caleidah]

Sweet Jesus. You'd best show all of how you're articulating that.

[Derian]

That's actually not going to be articulated. In case it's not (it wasn't on my phone), the picture should be horizontal. Those pieces are just going to be riveted straight to the greave. I should have more pictures today.

[Derian]

[Caleidah]

Aaaah. When you said "knee," the first image in my head was that you were somehow going to make that band and the shield part of a knee cop. Thinking about it now, that would have been rather silly.