A Detailed Detailed Guide Guide To To Building Building
The Tribesman Armour
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Table of Contents The Essential Tools Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Ball Point Stylus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 A leather workers mallet or maul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Cutting Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Two small hole punches for leather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Hammer tool for rivets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Edge Beveller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Edge Slicker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Utility Knife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Extra tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Stitch Groover. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
The Consumables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Vegetable Tanned Leather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Two Piece Tubular Cap Rivets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Surface Finishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Disposable Gloves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Leather Dye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Edge Finishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Buckles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Shoulder Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Edge Beveller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Wetting Leather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
The Drawings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Sheet 1 of 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Sheet 2 of 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Sheet 3 of 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Assembly instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Building the Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Building the Rear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Building the Shoulders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Suppliers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
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The Essential Tools Required Here at Lederkraft we have a workshop full of fancy tools not to mention a huge industrial laser for cutting out the leather, but to build the Tribesman Armour you won’t need anything like that, you wil l however need a few essential tools.
Ball Point Stylus To transfer the pattern to the leather the most effective method is to use a clean sponge to dampen the surface of the leather with cold water, making it soft and then trace over the pattern with a ball point stylus, if you plan to do a lot of leather work it’s better to have a professional stylus, but you can get away with using an empty ball point pen.
Fig 1.1 Ball Point Stylus
A Leather Workers Mallet or Maul Usually these have a synthetic plastic head though they also come in rubber and rawhide nishes, a mallet will have one or more often two at faces used to strike whatever tool you wish to hit whilst a maul has a cylindrical striking surface. For the beginner a mallet is both easier to nd and use since a maul requires a greater degree of accuracy when striking or it will glance off hitting the user. Do not use a steel hammer, this will damage the various tools that you are going to be hitting, do not use a wooden carpenters mallet since the tools you are striking are metal and they will damage a wooden mallet head.
Fig 1.21 A Poly Mallet
Cutting Board When cutting or punching holes in leather use a cutting board underneath, a white plastic chopping board such as you might nd in a kitchen will sufce, this helps prolong the life of your tools, but please don’t use your kitchen board.
Fig 1.22 Poly Maul
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Two small hole punches for leather The armour is fastened by many rivets, you need to punch out the holes for the rivets to go through, now you can buy a revolving head or interchangeable head hole pliers punch from almost any good hardware store, but you will typically nd it impossible to punch a hole much more than 25mm (1 inch) from the edge of your material. Instead we suggest either a single hole punch of 3mm diameter (1/8th Inch) and one of about 4.5mm (3/16th Inch) or if you prefer a set of punches two of which must be this size, you will be using these with your mallet to prevent damage to the rear of the punch. The 3mm punch will be for rivet holes, the larger punch is used to make holes for the buckle pin to pass through.
Fig 1.32 Set of Punches
Hammer Tool for Rivets We will only be using two piece tubular single cap rivets for this armour and to set them properly requires this simple tool, typically these come as a set with the tool and a small disk of metal to be used as an anvil.
Fig 1.31 Pliers Punch
To use, the rivet is inserted from the inside face of the armour through all the layers (typically two or three) and then the cap is pushed onto the projecting shank, the rivet length should be chosen so that no more than 1.5mm (1/32nd inch) of shank projects beyond the front face of the armour Now place the small anvil on a hard surface, if you don’t have a good solid worktop use a concrete oor, the back of the rivet sits on this anvil and then you place the hammer tool over the dome of the cap, the tool has a recessed face so that when you strike the tool with your mallet, the rivet head will not atten, one or two good strikes are all that is required to set the rivet rmly, the back of the cap will lie ush with the face of the armour.
Fig 1.4 Rivets and Tool
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Edge Beveller To give a nice professional nish to our armours we always bevel any exposed edges with an edge beveller, A number 3 size is the one we use most frequently.
Fig 1.5 Edge Beveller
Edge Slicker Once you have bevelled the edges of your armour you need to smooth them, there are a wide variety of tools on the market for doing this, but there are essentially two types, the rotary edge slicker, a wheel like form which can be mounted on a shaft and powered by a motor or an electric drill, or a purely manual one. Often stick shaped with one or more grooves in its side, with either you rub the edge of your cut leather smooth, applying a little Gum Tradacanth to the edge of the leather before using the slicker will give a beautiful smooth nish.
Fig 1.61 Wheel Slicker
Utility Knife You want a good heavy duty knife with a really sharp blade a well made Utility Knife will suf ce but not one with snap off blades, replace the cutting blade regularly as leather is very good at blunting knives.
Fig 1.62 Traditional Slicker Fig 1.7 Utility Knife
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Extra Tool Whilst not required to produce the armour the following tool may be useful
The Stitch Groover Although the Tribesman armour has no stitching anywhere in its design this handy adjustable tool allows you to create shallow grooves parallel to the edge of your leather, normally used to set the stitches slightly into the surface the tool can also be used as a way of adding a decorative groove to the armour.
Fig 2.1 Stitch Groover
Using the tools of the Trade. See Fig 1.5
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The Consumables Vegetable Tanned Leather Commonly called Veg Tan this is what we at Lederkraft use for all our leather body armours, it’s fairly easy to work with, can be etched or embossed for additional detail, dyed to a wide variety of colours and is tough and hard wearing. For the pattern as required you are going to need a minimum size of 1150mm x 750mm (46 x 30 inches) approximately 3.5mm thick (also called 9 oz) this is for the main armour plates, for the side gussets and various straps we typically use slightly more exible leather approximately 2.5mm thick (6 oz) you will need a piece 600mm x 250mm (24 x 10 inches)
Two Piece Tubular Cap Rivets These are typically bought in packs of 60 or more and are quite inexpensive, you will need a selection of shaft lengths and these will depend on the thickness of the leather you buy, but in general allow for the following approximate sizes • • • •
Twice the thickness of your strap material plus 1.5mm The thickness of your armour leather plus the thickness of your strap leather plus 1.5mm Twice the thickness of your armour material plus 1.5mm Three times the thickness of your armour material plus 1.5mm
The last one may be difcult to obtain, in which case there is a work around, buy the longest rivets you can and then use your mallet to pound the rear of the armour where there are three layers of armour to pass through, this will bruise the leather making it a little thinner allowing the rivets to pass through, we prefer this to skiving (cutting the leather thinner) as it seems to give a better result.
Surface Finishing We use a variety of surface nishes to give a good long lasting waterproof leather, dubbin is a good, inexpensive and effective wax like nish excellent for more rigid sections of armour, but neatsfoot oil or mink oil can also be used especially where a slightly softer leather is required.
Disposable gloves Get plenty of these in plastic or latex, for use when dyeing and nishing, your skin is remarkably similar to the leather you will be working with and just as easy to dye, trying to explain just why your hands are a fetching shade of blue can be difcult.
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Leather Dye We use Fiebing’s Leather dyes, though there are other brands available, either the oil based or the alcohol based versions give very good results, you will need some applicators or daubers to apply the dye. Dyes can be mixed to get new colours, but NEVER try to mix oil based with alcohol based dyes as they are not compatible, to ensure this does not occur accidently, try to buy only one type of dye.
Fig 3.1 Leather Dye
Edge Finishing For a really good nish to the cut edges of the armour plates you can apply Fiebings Edge Kote, this dries to a semi gloss water resistant nish, but should for best results only be applied to slicked edges. It can be used to give a contrasting or matching nish to the body of the armour.
Fig 3.2 Edge Kote
Buckles There are 8 sets of straps on this armour each will require a buckle so you will need 8 ¾ inch sized buckles (to take a ¾ inch or 18mm strap), we have found solid oval buckles are ideal for this.
Fig 3.3 3/4 Inch Buckle
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Shoulder Plates In the picture of the Tribesman Armour on the front cover you will see we mounted a celtic style metal plate to each shoulder, these are actualy Celtic knotwork plate belt buckles, you can nd them on ebay but you can also obtain them in the UK from Le Prevo Ltd http://www.leprevo.co.uk/plate-buckles.htm Alternatively you could substitute large D-Rings or have no hanging metalwork, you may need to adjust part S6 to get a good t dependant on what you decide to do, we would advise you to not pre punch the holes in this part but leave it until you assemble.
Fig 3.4 Celtic Buckles
Waiting for the dye to dry.
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Techniques
Edge Beveller The edge beveller is easy to use but care must be taken to ensure that only the leather is cut and not the users ngers, to use hold the tool as shown in the image below, make sure that the hand not holding the tool is always behind the tool, keep the tool sharp, use a strop frequently to keep the edge sharp, once it’s blunt it is a difcult tool to properly resharpen.
Fig 4.1 Using the Edge Beveller
Wetting Leather When wetting Veg Tan leather to transfer a pattern, you only need to use a little water, just enough so that the surface darkens is ample, if the surface starts to dry out just wipe it again with a wet sponge.
Fig 4.2 Wetting Leather
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The Drawings Sheet 1 of 3 All drawing sheets should be printed out at A1 size, this armour is designed to ft a 40 to 44 inch chest
F1 Front top plate F3 – F4 Chest Plates F5 Front Body Plate S5 Shoulder Detailing Plates S3 Left Under Shoulder Plate S4 Right Under Shoulder Plate
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The Drawings Sheet 2 of 3
F2 Chest Plate R1 Upper Back Plate R2 Mid Back Plate R3 Lower Back Plate
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The Drawings Sheet 1 of 3
S1 Upper Right Shouder Plate S2 Upper Left Shoulder Plate G Gussets from thinner leather 8 pairs of straps from thinner leather
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Assembly Instructions First cut out all of the parts we suggest that you lay them on top of the paper pattern so you can keep track of each part.
Building the Front You will need Parts F1 to F5 and 6 of the long straps For parts F1 to F4 you will want to run your edge beveller along each of the upper edges but not the back, in addition for part F1 you will need to edge bevel the rear where it is not sitting on part F5. For Part F5 edge bevel the uncovered edges on both the front and back. Edge slick all edges for parts F1 to F5 Note that we tend not to edge bevel the straps or slick them, though you can if you prefer. Now Dye your leather panels and straps At this point if you have bought Edge Kote, now is the time to apply it Assemble all the parts so that the front looks like the diagram below.
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Building the Rear You will need parts R1 to R4, both Gussets and all 8 of the shorter straps plus all 8 buckles. Edge bevel the front of all Panels R1 to R4 and the rear of any edge not lying on top of another panel. Edge bevelling the gussets is optional. Slick all edges. Note again that we tend not to edge bevel the straps or slick them, though you can if you prefer. Once again dye all panels and straps and use Edge Kote if you have it. Assemble each of the buckle straps rst it’s much easier to do this before joining to the armour. Now assemble all the parts as per the diagram of the rear below.
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Building the Shoulders These can be a little difcult Edge bevel both sides of panels S1 to S4 and the top surface only for Panels S5 Only pre punch the holes in panels S1 and S2 plus the centre holes in S3 and S4 Curve the shoulders to t and then mark the additional holes through S1 and S2 onto S3 and S4 Place the two S5 panels in place and mark the upper two holes, then place your Metal buckle or D-Ring in place and mark the other two holes. Slick all edges. Note again that we tend not to edge bevel the straps or slick them, though you can if you prefer. Once again dye all panels and straps and use Edge Kote if you have it. Now assemble all the parts as per the diagram of the shoulders below.
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Final Assembly Instructions Attach the two shoulders to the front panel using the remaining unused holes in each shoulder and the top of the center front panel. Now use your choice of top coat to cover the inside and outside of the armour before you connect all the straps and buckles. Your armour is now nished.
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Suppliers Le Prevo Ltd Le Prevo, Dept W1. No.1 Charlotte Square Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4XF. Telephone: 0191 232 4179 Fax: 0191 261 7648
http://www.leprevo.co.uk/index.htm Tandy Leather Factory UK Ltd Unit 2, Crofton Oak N Portway Close Round Spinney Industrial Estate Northampton NN3 8RD Telephone: 01604 647910 Fax: 01604 647951 Toll Free: 0800 0856765
https://www.tandyleather.eu/en-gbp/home/home.aspx Lyon Leathers Ltd. 4 William Street Northampton NN1 3EW Telephone: 01604 639346 Fax: 05601 252563
http://www.lyonleathers.co.uk/ J T Batchelors Ltd 9-10 Culford Mews Balls Pond Road Islington London N1 4DZ Telephone: 020 7254 2962, 020 7254 8521
http://jtbatchelor.co.uk/
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