Leather colours
Standard colours are Black & Brown (mid, dark). Other colours are available on request and include red, green, purple and blue. Multi-part pieces such as gauntlets, or items with edge trim can be made with leather in two or more colours.
Special Finishes
All leather items can be given a metallic finish. Colours include bronze, copper, pewter and steel. For example, greaves finished in copper and bronze.
Tooling
The standard finish of most leather items includes edge bevelling and burnishing, and simple border tooling. Full tooling is an optional extra, upto custom-designed patterns and stamps.
Fittings
As standard, studs, buckles, eyelets and rivets are brassed finished for brown leather, bright nickel for black leather.
Buckles
Buckles are pressed steel - brassed or bright nickle plated. Many other buckle patterns and designs are available, including ornamented buckle sets.
We can also provide solid brass buckles at cost. These are attractive and durable, but they are single-piece cast and therefore bulkier than pressed buckles.
Studs, spikes and eyelets
Eyelets are available in three sizes.
Studs come in three patterns: round, conical and pyramid, and are also available in larger sizes.
Spikes are half-inch as standard. One inch and one and a half inch spikes are also available.
Spikes are not recommended for armour decoration in live-action role-playing. Although the spikes are not particularly sharp, their points can puncture latex weapons to the annoyance of their owners. Studs, with flatter, rounder shapes, do not do this and still look good. Spikes are only available in bright steel finish.
Finishing and Care
Our leather goods are finished with a neutral coloured water-resistant sealer, then waxed to give a soft, mellow shine. Optionally leather lacquer can be used for a high-gloss finish.
After cleaning you can gently treat leather with one of a range of aftercare preparations such as neatsfoot oil, hide food or mink oil. If you don't have access to such products, liquid wax shoe polish is a reasonable substitute. Take care with more fragile items such as the masks, where dyes and paints may suffer from too much cleaning.
Chain mail will tarnish with use, and soft steel finishes may also rust. Although ordinary metal polishes can be used, the nature of the chain mail weaves means this is going to be a slow process and it can be difficult to remove dryed-on polish.
Various home-grown remedies exist, including rubbing, or even-tumble-drying, with sand, or other abrassive methods. This of course is quite harsh treatment in itself, and there are other, gentler methods of cleaning.
Bronze can be cleaned by soaking for a few minutes in mild acids such as vinegar or lemon-juice. Zinc-coated steels may also be cleaned the same way. After cleaning rinse the chain in water then rub the metal with an oiled cloth when dry.
Fitness for Purpose
Leather, especially hardened leather, is a durable and robust material. However, none of our armour or equipment should be relied upon to protect you from real or reproduction weapons, dogs, small children or while showing off. If you're going to let other people wack away at you with lumps of metal, that's your concern. Role-players and re-enactors are generally realists about the risks of their pastimes but we thought we'd mention it anyway.
Web Images
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