Chainmaille & Leather.. Kinky?

Kinky.. pshh. no way. I'm not into that sort of thing.

But what I am into is creating armor. Yes, new burst of creativity. Wanna hear how it went down? Very interesting:

I was surfing the vids on YouTube and watching things of interest like making green screens, fireball effects with adobe Aftereffects, rotoscoping lightsabers, ... you know, basic geek stuff.. and i stumbled upon making lockpicks out of hacksaw blades. So i started searching for "how to" stuff, and next i hit chainmaille. looked relatively easy, so i stareted, as i often do, researching on google.

Two weeks later:

Well, you might be asking.. what about the leather?

That is a little different story, but along the same line. My friends Lone and Tony (I refuse to call him Goku) were sitting around late one afternoon and thought it would be fun to get some armor and make padded weapons and beat the hell out of each other. We thought tires would make great armor, ala Demolition Man. But the more i thought about it, used tires sounded dirty and difficult to cut.

So i started thinking of alternatives. Plate armor.. hell yeah. I need to be a blacksmith. Well, that was a little out of my reach, but i did talk my dad into teaching me about welding, so we'll see how that goes first.

Hmm.. no plate. what else would be hard enough to take a solid hit but be cheap enough to afford? And then Google, being the Internet God that it is, delivered the answer.

Hard Leather Armor.

My friends and readers, this is the holy grail of armor for the poor. Pieces can be purchased for a few dollars, shaped around bottles or similar -free- objects by wetting, then when they're dry, dip them in wax. Once they are cool, attach buckles/velcro, them to clothing, and you have inexpensive solid armor that will take a hit and keep your bones from breaking.

Now for the weapons. Muahaha!

For testing purposes, we started with some 1/2" pvc wrapped in foam insullation sheet bought at home depot for about 4$, then duct tape and electrical tape to keep the foam on. This is fine for just playing, but the pvc will shatter with a solid hit.

Now we're looking into Ash or hard Maple as the core, still wrapped in foam and duct tape. That will handle the swords.

Mace. Everyone wants to swing a mace at your friend's head.. hell yeah. Softballs are the size of mace heads. a broom handle and a hole drilled in the softball, then attach and cover in foam padding.

Lone wants a warhammer.. that one might be more difficult. He said sledge hammer, i said piss off. I'm all for mock combat.. i'm not for going to the hospital.

More updates will come when i buy the leather tomorrow and start on some bracers and chest plates.