Thursday 31 May 2012

How to make a leather mitten and keep your fingers safe

So far I've only shown how to make weapons. This is well and good, but weapons will only get you this far.

In most LARP games that involve combat - hits to the head, hands and groin and ignored(/and/or penalized) and the vast majority of people prefer to wear only rule wise relevant armor, thus ignoring helms, gloves and cod pieces. For some - its a part of their costume, for the rest - its inexcusable . Unfortunately we live in the 21st century now, and while its tempting to clean the gene-pool of such people(or at least make sure they won't reproduce with a well placed groin hit. Don't forget to say Sorry after that!) its more trouble than worth. That of course doesn't mean you are one of them are you? If so you have a chance to redeem yourself partly if you follow this guide.  

 Chances are that the first part of your body to suffer would be your fingers, and bloodied knuckles are annoying. To avoid them, one must protect his sword arm. Here's a simple way to make a sufficiently thick leather glove for it. The model is sturdy and if you have tougher leather it works for SCA and reenactment as well.


Leather mitten





Budget:10-15$(depends on what you got)

Materials:2x Leather belts - look in second hand stores to find them cheap or use old ones ready for throwing away. If you can find an old army belt you scored the jackpot. A pair of leather workman gloves - these offer some protection, but in this case will serve only as a carrier.  Thread for sewing leather - normal one isn't strong enough.

Tools: Scissors, leather hole punch, strong needles.

Here we go!


 First we cut the leather into pieces, as many as necessary to cover the workman gloves with 1-2 extra since they will be overlapping.


 Then we start sewing them together, starting from the top. .Make sure they overlap.
 Measure carefully where you punch the holes - once you do it, you can't fix it.


 The first two pieces are sewn together.

 Now we simply repeat the same operation several times.  Once you get halfway there - its time to switch the direction of the overlapping. This is also the point where the thumb will go once we get to it.


Now the full length of the mitten is finished. Next thing on our list is to get the first strap on.


Again, measure the length of the strap carefully, then cut it out and sew it on.

Now that we can zero it in -  we can attach the thumb of the mitten. We are almost there now.


With this done, only thing left is attaching the mitten more firmly to its base - the workman glove.
Once we sew it firmly to the workman glove, with some quick glue to help keep things together, we are done.





4 коментара:

Vague Raconteur said...

This is awesome! I think I'll have to try this :)

Anonymous said...

Looks awesome! if only it also didn't look so warm.

Anonymous said...

you should make leather pauldrons using the same method

Anonymous said...

for more thumb protection take an old pair of Hockey gloves and cut the plastic thumb out of the glove and put it under the leather

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