9-19-2009

the completed armour will involve:

-a scale maille shirt, all pieces etched and aged, zippers on the undersides of the forearms and up the length of the spine

-3 floating plates on the back that will clip onto the shirt, with a decorated deer spine riveted on

-a bronze mantle that will frame the bones on either side of the back and rise up beyond the head

-a bronze helmet with smaller decorated bones running along the top

-bronze segmented finger armour that will articulate over black leather gloves

-large, decorative pauldrons also made of bronze

-a leather belt upon which armour will be attached with rivets over the hips

-heavy cloth hanging from the front

-a heavy cloth skirt

in order to complete the scale shirt before the 12th, I have to etch, age, and weave approximately 30 scales a day. I will attempt to do 120 today, as I have missed a couple of days along the way somehow. we'll see how that goes. I got my mannequin in the mail yesterday and I still need to get some pins to start pinning the front of the shirt up. the forearms and about 1/2 of the front of the shirt are complete now.

9-18-2009

I am approximately halfway into the scale shirt. let me catch you up on what has happened:

six months ago, I bought 6000 bright brass scales and 12000 stainless steel split rings.

I put them into a bucket and washed them, and began dipping them into asphaltum and placing them in rows of ten on small copper "branches". after the asphaltum dried, I took the scales off the branches and stacked them in tens. I scratched my first designs into the shiny black coat to reveal the brass that would be exposed to the etchant, then placed them face down into ferric chloride and etched them for a few hours. after this, I cleaned the asphaltum off the scales. from there, I experimented different surface treatments. the one I ultimately stuck with involved placing the clean scales back into the acid to get any excess soap or mineral spirits off, moving them into a very hot solution of water and sodium bisulphate, and then into a bath of liver of sulphur and more hot water to blacken them. at that point, they were ready to have a light brushing over with steel wool on the tips to expose the symbol, and then woven together.

I have completed somewhere around 3000 scales using this process.

I have until December 12, 2009 to finish the scale shirt and until sometime before May 2009 to complete the plate armour that will be added to the outfit. I plan on going just a little more insane completing this project, and I will document that here, for you.

cheers!

~Kaz