DIY Hand Crafted Fantasy Armor - Full suit with patterns!

Bracers are a perfect first project.  Even if you are excited to get to more advanced components, use the bracers as a playground to decide on decoration theme, color,s and other details and practice the basics.

The helmet is a great feel-good early project for a big dose of instant gratification. The design is just the right balance of design complexity and ease of assembly to make for a great beginner project.  And enough repetition in components to drive home basic skills of cutting, edge beveling, and basic tooling (if desired).

These are the classic stand-alone spaulders. If you're making the full suit, consider the style II option instead though.

Shoulder armor to attach to your breastplate!

Buckles are an integral component of any leather or metal armor ensemble.  Use this primer and example PDF to get you well on your way.

This is the male or unisex torso armor for this series.  Breastplates use a lot of leather of course so do make sure you make a paper mockup first and get the sale right before committing materials!

This is a feminine variation of the breastplate for this series and is compatible with all other components and fully interchangeable with the male/unisex cuirass.  It also has a few alternate configurations you can explore for different looks.

If you want neck armor you'll want to make this gorget which will rest under the breastplate.  Here too, make sure to make a paper mockup and ensure fit because you don't want anything ill-fitting and something either too snug or large and cumbersome in the neck and shoulder region.  

Full armor assembly with articulation in the elbows with connecting lames, elbow cop, vambrace, and rerebrace.  Not meant to be compatible with bracers.  I would suggest bracers as a good accessory item or an armor-light configuration.  Go with full arms and gauntlets for the full armor experience.

Tassets will attach to the breastplate and really flesh out the torso look and feel.  Scale and position them according to preference.

Learn how to make scale armor to cover the crotch area that is often left vulnerable.  You can also apply the techniques you learn here to make scale armor in other areas too if you wish.

When making leg armor I suggest starting from the bottom with the sabatons and working your way up.  You will generally want to scale the patterns to fit according to whatever shoes or boots you plan to wear.  A little planning upfront will make sure the fit is great and you don't have floppy toe caps or have them too smal.l

Work your way up into the greaves next.  Fitting these can be tricky given their complex shape but as always use a paper mockup first to make sure the scale is right first, then tweak the buckle placements from there.

The knee cop should rest dead center on your knee while the greave should extend down to rest gently upon your sabatons.  The weight of the full leg assembly should be distributed fairly evenly throughout the leg, not just resting on the feet.  I also suggest adding a buckle strap loop at the top of the leg to suspend some of the weight from a belt, or if you have a gambeson or arming jacket some gromets and lace to attach it in a more traditional way would also be excellent. 

You don't have to save the gauntlets for last but I position them here because they do have a lot of small parts and might be one of the more tedious projects, but at the same time also one of the more interesting and rewarding.  They're a great way to finish your full armor suit.

Although this is a recap video with bonus tips, I highly recommend you watch this early in your crafting journey of this suit as I try to provide extra tips that will help you and address some of the questions I received while I was producing the series initially. 

Here is one of many possible options for tooling a decorative border in your projects

Here is a bonus video demonstrating some work on a custom project. I suggest you check out our youtube at www.youtube.com/princearmory for much more of such content and our custom work website www.princearmory.com for more inspiration and examples of works we've done in the past.  But please do -not- directly copy our past custom works outright as each one is meant to be unique for each client - but please do draw inspiration and ideas from them. And please do feel free to copy any academy content and tips as you see fit.