Shredder Armor

I made this costume after making the helmet. I have always wanted a shredder helmet from The Secret of the Ooze, once I had that, the costume just seemed like the way to go.

I didn't make the costume totally screen accurate, but then again, my helmet wasn't screen accurate either really... I hope you like it.

Step 1: Research and Development

The first thing I did was make the bases from Worbla.

I wanted to do a 100% Worbla build for the armor on this costume because of the amazing work that I have seen done by other cosplayers, but I just wasn't happy with how it was turning out...

These are photos of my first pieces that were all Worbla. The details were put in with puff paint and then primed over. The issue with this was that I just wasn't happy with the finish and I knew it wouldn't suit my needs...

Step 2: Leather Wrapping

While I drive around the city of Los Angeles, I often come across furniture that people have just left in the street... Every now and again, I come across an old leather couch or arm chair. I have a TON of this reclaimed leather laying around so I decided to use that to cover my Worbla bases.

The leather was cut into 1" strips using a metal straight edge and box cutter.

I began attaching them to the bases with SuperGlue brand CA glue and "basket weaving" as I went along. The nice thing about doing it this way is that it can be pulled up and reglued as you go along.

The excess was trimmed off of the edges using scissors.

Step 3: Trim

When I originally made my armor pieces from the Worbla, I made templates so that I could have my pieces be identical as I cut them out.

Using the same templates, I cut out pieces of ABS plastic to the same shape and then I cut the same shape in from the outside cut at about 1/2". This gave me a trim piece that I was able to lay on top of the leather weave and I held this down with pop rivets.

Step 4: Blades

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I decided to make the blades for this armor.

The master shapes are made of 1/8" styrene. There are 2 different sizes of blades that I used for this armor.

The masters were then taken and molded, copies were cast out of polyurethane casting resin.

Step 5: Blades....

So this part kind of sucked....

only having one mold for each size, it took a long while to cast enough blades for this costume... this costume has a TON of blades.

The blades are attached by drilling into the bases of the blades and they are held in place with pop rivets from the back side. I had to be careful not to fully expand the pop rivet as that could have cracked the blade base open. The nice thing about the pop rivet method is that it pulls the blade closer to the base of the armor as it expands in the base of the blade.

The edges of the armor were sealed with more Worbla and the pop rivets were covered up with furniture tacks to look a bit more like hammered rivets.

Step 6: Painting

The painting process was very simple.

I masked off all of the leather bits and sprayed the rest with Krylon metallics silver. I really love this paint because of how quickly it dries.

The weathering was done first with a black acrylic wash and followed up with a brown acrylic wash.

Step 7: Straps

The armor is held on with more of that couch leather and cheap metal buckles I bought off of Ebay. They are held onto the armor with more of that SuperGlue brand CA glue.

Step 8: The Finished Product

Hope you like it.

While I know it's not traditional leather work, I hope it inspires you to make something cool with found items too!

Soon, I will make another instructable on how I made the helmet.