Maille and Plates Armour

Step 3 Making the plates 3

now it's time to curve the plates.

curving the plates should be as simple as bending the plates over a round object. pallet banding however, can be stubborn since it is usually made from medium to high carbon steel and tempered to be a bit springy. Ideally I'd form these around a T stake, but i cant do that in my apartment, so i had to find a different way.
The method I came up with* was to lay the plate on my hand with one end resting on a solid surface. Then using a rubber mallet to act as a roller and rolling it along the plate while sliding my hand out form under it. the mallet should force the plate to curve between the edge of your hand and the surfaces it travels down, putting a curve along the whole length of your plate and not just the middle.
it took a few to get it to work smooth for me, and it still didn't work perfectly for every plate, but it worked good enough.
make sure you use a surface that can get scratched up. I used one of my shields.
now go curve a hundred or so plates.

*looking back on this i realized that it was a needlessly difficult way of curving the plates. for later plates i just used the curved edge on my kitchen counter.*