As I mentioned yesterday, if you plan to make your own brigandine, I recommend trying it in cardboard and scrap material first. In hindsight, use a stiff, canvas material rather than cheap cloth though, as this cloth was extremely difficult to work with.
To start, I cut out a paper version of my pattern and then cut out the material. The material was then sewn together. I traced the pattern of the pieces adding an inch all the way around on the cardboard so I would know what size pieces to cut out of the cardboard.
Now the fun part... figuring out how to attatch all of these squares to the material...
Using the reference of the brigandine construction site I referenced yesterday, I decided to try and make the cardboard pieces overlap, and thus I guess make a more solid protection for myself. Quickly I discovered that using the 15th century design as shown in his article that concept seems great! (Using much bigger plates.) But for this instance not so good.
Looking closer at Caspian's brigandine I realize the costume designer felt the same way. I am guessing that Caspian's armour is actually 2 in x 1 in plates (I think I actually read his were plastic plates) which are riveted in place...
Oh rivets... For my test run I tried my larger nickel rivets which I use for steel work... But they were way too big... so then I went back to my butt and cap rivets from Tandy Leather and they seemed to work great... Except that I did not pay attention to my alignment on the material. I will say again do a cardboard/cheap material run first as it saves you $$ for these simple yet potentially disastrous learning blunders.
No comments:
Post a Comment