Thursday, May 13, 2010

So,... you into leather?

I promised that I would tell you guys a little more about the work I do for Alliance LARP. About 5 or 6 years ago my girl friend had been taken to play the live action role playing game (at that time called NERO, now called Alliance). She had a great time and loved it; and there for I gave it a shot.
She had gone all out and bought a nice set of leather armor from some site online for about $400. I was surprised at the cost and decided to make a suit of leather armor for my character by learning how to do it myself.
I went to the local Tandy Leather Factory here in Harrisburg, Pa. They were great and helped to answer my questions about how to work and tool leather and the suit of armor in the left side was my first suit of armor for Alliance.
Since then, I have become much more active in the game and I have gone on to make myself a second suit of armor for myself. I am much happier with the second suit and I think It looks infinitely better than my first basic suit of leather. The original edition (MK I) was colored, but still rather plain. The newer suit (MKII) has embossed scales in each of the plates and I highlighted and shaded the scales and felt that this design is just as maneuverable as the previous set and both sets of leather armor have been silenced so they make virtually no noise at all. (leather armor normally sounds like a tall tree creaking in the wind with the slightest movement and very un-sneaky).
This new set has extra pockets set into the armor for all manner of cool rogue gear. (Batman would be proud) It is also really comfortable and I am very happy with the new set of armor. Yep I am even nerdier than a blogging modeler. And I would not have it any other way. - Bossman

2 comments:

  1. The armor looks nicely done, though it likely would not hold up to the riggors of what I do. Fear not about being a geek, I grew up in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms)... Similar to the larp but based in history rather than fantasy. In the SCA we actually beat on each other with large rattan sticks, so our armor tends to need to be a bit sturdier and more protective.

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  2. LARP != SCA :)

    I know that I'd never step into the ring with my LARPing /reenactring armour on. The "armour" together with my abysmal swordskills would make me a bloody pulp in seconds.

    The leather armour looks stunning. How many manhours did you put into it? I made a leather jerkin 10-15 years ago from 3-5mm leather IIRC and it was a b*tch getting together. And didn't look nowhere as cool as yours do! Great work!

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