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Knight
 
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I'm looking at moving up from leather armoured characters to metal armoured characters.
I've got a lead on some chain to buy, but for plate segments, is it worth going out and buying some, or going the home made route?
If home made is worth it, what tools do I need, what gauge metal do I need?
(And how do I roll the edges to make it safe?)
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Power Corrupts.
This is only a problem for the powerless.
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I do talk a good fight
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The Living History Library is a good resource for this kind of question -- they have a few tutorials to get you started:
http://www.livinghistorylibrary.org/
Rolling edges -- basically hit the edge with a hammer till it's not sharp any more. It's a little more complicated than that, but not much.
Useful tools -- well, I was able to make a brigandine at home using:
Small ball-pein hammer
Large ball-pein hammer
Dremel
Angle grinder
Bench grinder
Anvil-like surface (ideally, an anvil; alternatively, a heavy-duty vice, or a stump of wood, or a big hunk of copper; I used a heavy-duty vice, heroin or gambling would be ideal  )
A guillotine for cutting sheet metal
The latter is the only one that might be tricky to get -- I managed to blag mine. You could use tin snips or a hacksaw, but it'd take longer. You could probably do most of this with just the hammer, if you used bifurcated rivets rather than clout nails (which you then turn into rivets by cutting them off with the angle grinder), but bifurcated rivets are so expensive (& kinda naff-looking), and power tools so cheap (and very cool-looking) that it's probably worth shelling out for the tools if you want to do a proper job...
http://www.hyboriantales.com
PD: Ghostdance ("The most irritating curse I've ever encountered" -- NPC played by H.)
Riftworld: Rossar Kuug ("Clearly mad, because he thinks he's a Com-Trow Skirmisher" - Aela)
Hyborian Tales: Crew, cook, dogsbody, general labourer, toilet cleaner ("Dangerously overoptimistic ref" -- Tom Nowell)
Otherwise usually crew ("Quite spry & fit, & willing to wear a big costume & run around a lot" -- various event organisers)
"My other oversized foam weapon is THE LORD" -- Questionable Content
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Heroic Knight
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I'd add a sandbag to the list of tools, a strong one. Used to hammer curves from the inside as well as the outside.
The Great Larp Conspiracy
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Knight
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Thanks.
My next questions, which despite being obvious, I completely forgot to ask;
Which metal should I look for? (One person recommended 16 gauge steel)
Where does one pick up the metal to work with?
----
Power Corrupts.
This is only a problem for the powerless.
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Champion
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Another good site for lots of advice, patterns etc. is
http://www.armourarchive.org/
and there are some interesting/useful essays at
http://www.livesteelarmor.com/
"Rolling edges -- basically hit the edge with a hammer till it's not sharp any more." Are you sure? I've seen thickening/blunting the edge that way called something else, but I don't remember its name just now. "Upsetting" maybe? Anyway, in my experience "rolling" means bending the edge over, a bit like making a hem when sewing cloth. There are articles on how to do it at the web sites we've mentioned.
An alternative to a sandbag is a dishing stump: a big piece of wood with a shallow hole gouged into it.
Whether it's worth doing is up to you to decide, once you've had a read about what's involved. Personally my feeling is that it's probably not worth it unless you're going to be making quite a lot, or have some other reason for wanting to gain the tools and skills.
It's different if you won't be doing anything with compound curves though: if there's no dishing/raising involved there's no prolonged high-skill hammering. E.g. you only need to do cutting, drilling and a bit of simple bending and so on to make a "coat of plates", or most kinds of brigandine, or Roman-style lorica segmentata, or some simple vambraces or greaves.
An important addition to that list of equipment above: ear protection, because hammering steel with steel is bad for your hearing. The damage is gradual and you won't notice until it's too late. (Also gloves to protect against sharp fresh-cut edges, and maybe eye protection for some operations.)
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Knight
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Well the only tools I'm missing are the bench grinder, the anvil, and the guillotine.
I suspect I can get away with that for vambs and greaves.
My main reason for going the home made route is that I want something different, and custom costs £££.
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Power Corrupts.
This is only a problem for the powerless.
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Christopher Tookey's lovechild.
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| Thickness: 16 gauge is about 1.6mm. 18 guage is about 1mm. 14 gauge is about 2mm. If you want re-enactment grade armour you usually make it from 16 gauge with 14 gauge on the helmet and anything else you want reinforcing. If you want it purely for LARP then I'd say stick with 18 gauge - it won't take hits from full weight weapons, but you don't need it to, and it will be a lot lighter to wear and easier to work. As for buying vs making, if you don't have that much experience but you do have a scientific approach and a reasonable understanding of forces then with the right tools you should be able to make anything that is only curved in one direction. That means you could potentially make plates for the forearms, plates for the upper arms, a brigandine lamella armour or some sort of splinted thing for the chest, some cuisse (thigh plates), tassets (hang from your torso covering and protect the tops of your legs) and potentially some not very good greaves (good greaves have an awful lot of shaping, but you can make something functional but ugly to cover your shin). If you add in the possibilities of multiple bands of metal (like the early roman armour) then you could get some shoulders in there too. If you extend the greaves over the knee and the forearms over the elbow* then you could potentially cover everything except your head and feet. Of course, your plates will only cover the outsides of the locations, but then that's where you get hit. *though safety checkers might not like it. Of course, now my mind is full of armour patterns instead of work. The easier way would be to make the simple plates yourself and buy in the complicated ones. I haven't done a totally conclusive study, but armchair armouries had some 18 gauge kit that seems cheap and functional. Do yourself plates for your arms and add their elbow joint and spaulders (shoulder plates). Similarly, buy in the articulated knees. Oh, and buy a helmet. Really. You can't really make one, and not wearing one isn't worth it unless all the systems you play disallow head hits. Finally, and this is important, remember to file all the edges smooth. I have some legs which were originally guillotined, and when I got them the edges were sharp enough to cut my fingers. Left like this plates will a) be inconvenient, b) probably fail safety check, and c) possibly hurt another player. So file them.
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Eos: Diego Gatito, Shard tank. Still alive!
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Champion
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