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Hi, and Welcome to Rob's Cheapass Stuff Series. the Focus of This Series of Articles Will Be on How to Create Good Looking Costumes And/Or Armor to a Low Budget

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Hi, and Welcome to Rob's Cheapass Stuff Series. the Focus of This Series of Articles Will Be on How to Create Good Looking Costumes And/Or Armor to a Low Budget Hi, and welcome to Rob's Cheapass Stuff series. The focus of this series of articles will be on how to create good looking costumes and/or armor to a low budget. This will differ from the upcoming series I have planned, tenatively titled "Costumes and armor on the Cheap", which will be more of a laundry-list of sources from which you can get LARP gear that both looks good and doesn't suck. For reference, these are still going to cost money (usually around $25-50), but it's going to be a LOT LESS than you'd pay purchasing it new from an online store. Of course, you're going to pay for it in hours of work...but them's the breaks. Episode 1: Brigandine Armor Part 1: What the hell is Brigandine? A brigandine is a form of body armour. It's a cloth garment, generally canvas or leather, lined with small steel plates riveted to the fabric. The form of the brigandine is essentially the same as the civilian doublet, though it is commonly sleeveless. However, depictions of brigandine armour with sleeves are known. Many brigandines appear to have had larger, somewhat 'L-shaped' plates over the lungs. The rivets, or nails, attaching the plates to the fabric are often decorated, being gilt or of latten and often embossed with a design. "Technically", a brigandine is mainly differentiated from a "Coat of Plates" by the presence of rivets holding the metal plates to the facing/backing fabric, whereas a coat of plates can have said plates sewn with thread directly to the fabric, or even sewn into small pockets inside the material. For all practical purposes, they're identical. Hopology aside, a Brigandine essentially looks like this: The top image and bottom left image show the plate layout, while the bottom right image shows the completed product. The following image shows a reproduction image of an actual 15th century Brig: And this one shows a brigandine with a whole lot of extra kit. So what does it take to make one? Well, you're going to need duct tape, two T-shirts you don't care about, a marker, a soldering iron, a bag of rivets (copper or steel, your choice), a hammer, a heavy knife or a good sturdy pair of scissors, and a buddy to help you. Oh, and a Subway place or a Car Wash is gonna be really useful, but a Meijers/Walmart/Target will do in a pinch. Finally, go to Hancock Fabricks or JoAnns and ask for TWO yards of heavy "Duckcloth" in the color you want (I recommend hunter green, burgundy, brown, or black as more "natural" choices, but whatever). Part 2: Making your pattern Step 1: Put on the T-shirt you don't care about. Find your buddy. Hand him the duct tape. Step 2: Have him cover your torso with the duct tape. You don't want it wrapped too tightly (skin- tight=BAD), but you're not going to want it T-shirt-level loose either. Make sure he covers your torso down to about the belt line (or however far you'd like the Brigandine's armor protection to extend, but remember that you need to have a certain percentage of your torso covered by armor to get the NERO armor rating). Additionally, make sure he covers over your collarbones, but NOT over your shoulders or arms. Your T-shirt should have seams which connect the torso fabric to the arm fabric. Make sure those seams stay uncovered by tape at all time and you'll be good. Make a nice thick layer of tape (1/8th" or so). Once you think it's done, make sure you can move your arms without excessive binding from the tape. If you can't, pull tape away from the shoulders until you can. Step 3: Show your buddy the pattern for the plates illustrated in the last post. Have him draw those plate designs directly onto your torso with the tape/shirt still on you. A wide Sharpie is a good choice. The lines can totally be thick - having a little space between the plates is normal and a good thing (it'll help you move). If you're right-handed, try to ensure that there is no "plate" drawn over the T-shirt seam running from your right armpit down vertically (if you're left-handed, reverse to the other side of your body). I recommend you do NOT try to worry about the horizontal shoulder plates on the top of the shoulders - let there be no plates at all from the collarbone to the top of the shoulderblade behind you - it's WAY easier this way. Step 4. Have your buddy cut the T-shirt off of you. The easiest way to do this will be to take that seam where, in Step 3, I instructed you to ensure that there was no plate drawn upon it, and cut that seam down vertically. You can then be easily peeled out of the tape/T-shirt monstrosity you've created. Step 5: Take the scissors and your marker. You're going to cut out each of the plates that have been drawn on the shirt. The marker is to label on the back fabric of the T-shirt where each plate will go. I recommend a system such as (top-to bottom) FP1, FP2, FP3...(Front Plate 1, etc), and RSP1 (Right side plate 1, etc) to help you remember. Cut each plate pattern out and cut inside the lines...that is, if there's a 1/4" black line separating FP1 and FP2, ensure that you don't include that black line in your final pattern bits. Once you're done, set your plate pattern pieces aside. Step 6. Take your second Tshirt, and, following the shoulder seams, cut the sleeves off the shirt to form a "vest". Then, cut down each side seam to separate the "vest" into front and back halves. These will be your pattern pieces for the fabric parts. Part 3: Making your plates There are several options for plates in your armor. I'm going to go with the simplest one, then discuss others at the end of the document. Now that you have your patterns, you need to apply them toward making your plates. The neat thing about Brigandine is that, even though we WANT to be all "in-period" (or at least not as blatantly anachronistic as we currently are), you can totally make the plates out of modern materials, and because they're sandwiched between two layers of stuff that looks period, the whole thing will look good regardless. So what are we gonna use? Pickle Buckets. Yeah, that's right. Pickle Buckets. Heavy, plastic barrels in which pickles are often shipped to eateries. See, go to a Subway, and ask if they have any pickle barrels you can take home. Most of the time, they'll hand you a barrel or two, and voila! It's yours for free. Car Washes are good places to go as well. If you can't find anyplace that'll give you a bucket, hit up Meijers or Walmart or something and buy a pair. Just to ensure you have enough plastic to make this work, grab 2 buckets. The neat thing about these buckets is that their plastic is very tough, and yet pretty darn light, so you're not having to worry about weight. Secondarily, no matter how much you sweat into your Brigandine, the bucket plates aren't going to rust. So, once you've got your buckets, take them home and wash them out. Use soap & water. Then wash them again. Then again. Possibly a fourth time, if you actually got buckets from a Subway, because the smell of pickles will be strong with this plastic. Once you've washed the bejesus out of them, you're going to take your pattern pieces and glue them (using Elmers/PVA glue so you can pull them off later) to the outside of the buckets. Once the glue dries, take your soldering iron and trace around the pattern pieces with the hot tip - this will score a groove into the plastic that will denote the edges of the specific plate. Pull off the pattern pieces and either discard them or save them for the future (your call). Finally, take either your soldering iron or a saw of some sort (hacksaws are good choices, so are large jigsaws. Ripsaws and most other power saws are not) and start cutting out the plates. Again, make sure you label them as to where on your body they'll go. Once you've cut out all the plates, you need to take your soldering iron and press it through the plastic to create holes for the rivets. Put at leastone hole in each corner of each plate, between 1/4" and 1/2" back from any edge, or use the images above as a guide. Just make sure that multiple holes aren't too close together. Note that you will have sore arms from cutting through the buckets. This is normal, and not indicative of a defect in your process. Part 4: Putting the damn thing together OK, we're almost done. First, take your Duckcloth and lay it out on the ground. Remember that T-shirt you cut the arms off of and into a front & back half? Lay each half out on the Duckcloth (pinning it to the cloth may help).
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