Maille and Plates Armour

Step 10 Strapping your armour

How you choose to hold your armour shut is up to you, and can range from something as simple(and ugly) as duct taping it to yourself, or as fancy as sneck hooks. I'm going to go for the middle ground and use straps and buckles.

I'm not going to show you have to make straps and buckles here, thats a subject that is better tackled with it's own instructable. Besides, if you've gotten this far I'd hope you can figure out how to make what basically amounts to a small belt.

I will however show you how i strapped my armour, and why.

to start with i ran a strap that goes from the small of my back around my belly under the breastplate. this acts to keep the backplate snug against my back, and in place while I'm doing up the breastplate. once the armour is all done up it doesn't really support anything, so it's only a single half inch strap.

On the breastplate i got a bit fancier. i put the strap mounts just below the top of the side plates and just above my hip bones. from there i ran short straps to D rings mounted on the end of the actual buckle portion of the straps. the pictures should make more sense than my descriptions.
strapping it this way is a bit more complicated than just using 2 buckles on each side, or using 2 straps like the belly strap across my back, but it means that i only have to do up one easy to reach buckle in the small of my back instead of 2 on each side, or 1 easy one in the small of my back and one pain in the ass one between my shoulder blades. also i think it looks cooler.

Comments

[comander01]

Have you ever considered making a solid breastplate or greaves to complement your maille?

[armourkris]

Actually my next few instructables will probably be bazubands, spaulders, cuisse and greaves. thats forearm, shoulder, thigh and shin armour, then i'll finish it off with a helm. i'm also thinking about making a center grip shield and some disc armour to reinforce the maille and plates.

[comander01]

Isn't Armour for the forearms called 'bracers'? A coif would also be cool, but that would have to consist entirely of ring maille.

[armourkris]

yes and no, it really depends on how technical you want to get. bracers are actually used for archery, they only cover the inside of your forearm and are meant to stop you from getting smacked by the bow string. european armour for the forearms is usually called vambraces, bazubands are a middle eastern and central asian armour, they are different from vambraces in that they have integral elbow coverage, wheras european armour would have the elbow as a seperate plate from the forearm.

as for a coife, the top half can be made the same as this hackey sack, but on a larger scale, then just add a rectangular patch down the back and side of your head and you'll get a basic coife.
http://www.instructables.com/id/chain-maille-hacky-sack/