Unprogrssive progress

So I have been making a lot of progress lately, but unfortunately i have been using up all the free time i have to make the costume and not work on the blog. Kind of defeats the purpose of progress blog if i never update it huh? Who thought working 70 hours, building a suit of armor AND writing about it would be this hard? I will be posting "old Progress reports" for a little while to catch up! And to kick that off, here's the first one!

This feels like a trip down memory lane writing like this. So about a month back, after completing the dishing on the shoulder cop. I started making sure that the lames i designed were going to fit and look good. The Lames are the smaller strips of metal designed to articulate joints and pivot points. *Spoiler Alert* The lame i designed was more cosmetic than functional and thus Failed at being useful.


Not only did it not line up, but it also made the shoulder look too round. I didn't count on the metal curving as much as it did when i dished the cop (as i had never done it before).


When i taped the two pieces together and tried it out of my shoulder, the Lame started to cut into my bicep as i lifted up my arm. The lame was obviously not designed with the shape of the arm in mind.


But, before i tossed the whole thing i tried to salvage it. I started to flair the top adjoining edge of the Lame to fit more snugly into the cop. I lined up the Lame on the dishing stump and used the smaller edge of my smallest tear drop mallet to raise its edges.




But in the end, its was just too poorly designed. Oh well you live and you learn! At least i was able to reuse the metal for the fingers of the gauntlets! But more on that later!

Shoulders- Part 2- Dishing

The Photos Pretty Much Speak for themselves, but i will give you a little color commentary along the way.


Everything i need to get started right here. The nice piece of sheet metal i recently cut, my largest teardrop mallet, Earplugs so i don't go deaf, and my Work gloves to lessen the vibration of the impact.


I centered the metal and started banging away!


I started by striking the metal once at a time in a circular motion around the center of the metal. You can see the small divots in the center. Those will smooth out as the metal gets closer to the bottom of the dishing stump.




Then i started a second circle around the edge of the first circle.




I repeated this process until i reached the outside edge, which by this point had become creased.


One quick run around the outside edge and the creases were gone! Beats ironing them out!






I took a few more laps around the metal, slowly "dishing" the cop deeper into the stump.


Eventually, it was nice and smooth!




In this picture you can still slightly see the creases, but those will will go away when i get to the next step...
PLANISHING!


DONE!
I think they look great! What do you think?

Tool Bananza!

So, following the advice of Eric Slyter (The Webmaster for Arador) in his Building Spaulders tutorial and "Losthelm" from The Armour Archive Webforum, i ordered a few tools from Harbor Frieghts website. My New tools are Pictured Below: