Samurai Armour

This suit of armour took me around two months and was mostly made of scraps from building sites. Here's a list of the tools and materials you need to make your own!

Tools                        Materials
-Dremil                    -Leatherette
-Belt sander           -Drain pipe
-Knife                       -Rope
-Heat gun                -Builders hat
-Pliers                      -Belt
-Glue gun
-Clamps
-Rivit gun

Step 1: Starting the Shoulders.

1. I first started by cutting the pipe once along the side and then used the heat gun to melt it down into one big sheet.(to get it really flat I used a plank of wood and just pressed down on it when it was still hot) with the big sheet now you mark off each panel of the shoulders.
You need 10 rectangles, mine were 30cm in length and 8 cm high.when I had the 10 rectangles I clamped them all together and sanded them down so they were all the same size and smooth.

2. The black squares on the flat panels were my indicators on where I need to drill the holes. There are a total of 18 holes on each panel.

3.I used the head gun again on each panel bending them into a nice curve.

4.Spray them black.

5.Each rectangle has 12 pieces of leatherette attached to the top of it.you need to basically weave it all together.

6.Tie 5 of the rectangles together to make one of the shoulder pads and then do the same with the other.The top rectangle has 3 really long pieces of rope going through it.these 3 ropes connect the remaining 4 rectangles together. on the back i just glued a belt onto it to strap myself in.

Step 2: Leg Guards

1.This was probably the easiest piece. Get a big sheet of leatherette cut it in two  pieces. They should big enough to reach your waist to your knees, make a belt out of leatherette and attach both black sheets to it like the picture.

2.The next step is to cut out 24 small rectangles of flattened pipe using the step to flatten pipe and cover them in leatherette.then stick them to the two sheets of black leatherette using a rivit gun. These panels are 5cm wide and 8cm high.

Step 3: Shin Guards

For the shins I first cut out some more flattened pipe into my preferred style. For the knee guards I cut up a section of a gutter pipe and that fitted nicely over my knees so there wasn't anything to alter there. All the pieces were then covered in leatherette and glued together. Once all the panel pieces were finished I then used my rivit gun to attach the panels to a large piece of black leatherette. The sides of the black leatherette were lined with eyelets. when putting on the shin guard to your leg you string a rope through the eyelets to tie it to your leg

Step 4: Chest Piece

The chest piece is the largest part of the armour and it also weighs the most. firstly you start off with the chest. Its pretty straight forward exactly like the shoulders again. cut out 5 or 6 panels of flattened pipe and drill a group of 6 hole in the middle and another 2 groups of 6 on either side of that so in total you will have 30 holes in each panel and all in the exact same places, making them all identical. from this picture i ended up taking off the top part as it started to rub against my neck so i decided to leave it out. by weaving rope through each hole you can attach all 6 pieces make sure you leave a good 3 foot of rope at the end as that will tie on the stomach section.

The stomach is made of 48 small panels that are then covered in leatherette and the rivited onto a leather strap. there are 16 panels on each strap and when they were attached i used the extra rope from the chest piece to attach the straps to the chest. the back piece was the same as the chest but half way down your back the pieces get longer and hug around your waist. The longer pieces should have two holes in each corner to allow the front stomach part to attach together by using a piece of rope.

To attach the front and back together I used parts of gutter again and tied everything together. 

Step 5: Arms

The arms are made up of 4 panels on each arm. Each panel had 3 small curved panels sown on top of it. I then attached 4 panels together to make one forearm and did the same with the remaining 4.once I had the two forearms nearly complete i then put 4 leather straps underneath the panels so i could tie it to my arm. each leather strap had two eyelets on the end to pass the rope through. 

Step 6: Belt

For the belt I used an actual belt that already had holes through it and it just made things easier to work with. There are five panels that are made from the gutter and the sides are again flattened pipe with a slight curve.

Step 7: Helmet

The helmet was made using a builders hat that I altered. The first thing i did was draw an outline on the helmet of the parts that needed to be cut off or altered the shape with the heat gun. Once again I flattened pipe and cut it into 5 long stripes and attached them together using the same method as the chest and shoulders. once thye were strung together I attached them onto the back of the helmet. I drew up a design on a flat panel of pipe and then cut it out, then attached it using rivits.

Step 8: Finished Armour