Armour can be made out of leather. Gauntlets and other forms of leather armour for the arms are very useful for giving you protection in battle. This is currently a very basic run-down of options for hand and arm protection.
Hand Protection
Protective gloves are essential safety items. They should be close fitting, well padded and preferably armoured on the back. (The armouring should ideally protect your wrist as well as your hand and is essential for events run by certain societies, e.g. The Vikings!) Your gloves should not interfere with your ability to use your weapon safely. When making armoured gloves, you will probably want slightly different styles for each hand: the sword hand will need more protection and you can sacrifice the ability to move individual fingers to make better armouring.
Gloves are, as far as we know, entirely inauthentic. For shows, make sure they are inconspicuous (brown leather good, day-glo goalie gloves bad).
You might like to consider the following options for gloves:
Sufficient
- Gardening gloves, padded with camping mat or thick fabric and dyed brown.
- Some styles of motorbike gloves (non-bulky summer ones with sufficient padding/kevlar)
Good
- Gloves with padding and stiff/boiled leather attached to the back. This can be sewn or securely superglued on (e.g. Freya's quick & dirty "Hastings is in three days" glued gloves).
- As above, but with a layer of maille over the leather.
- Padded glove with a single moulded piece of boiled leather protecting the whole back of the hand (e.g. Heid's "mitten").
- A riveted and articulated boiled leather gauntlet (e.g. Duncan's cunning "armadillo"-style gloves).
Arm Protection
The basic form of arm protection is a bracer. This is a tube of boiled leather (around 4mm thick) which laces tightly onto your forearm with a thong. It should start at your wrist, preferably so your glove overlaps it, and extend to cover the outside of your elbow. Gluing sheepskin inside your bracer will aid shock absorption and fit. Most Wychwooders choose to wear a single bracer on their sword arm, as the offhand is somewhat less exposed to hits and is often protected by a shield.
Authenticity note: for shows, your bracer should be worn *under* your overtunic so it doesn't show.
Links
We are hoping to put up our own guidelines to making leather armour soon. In the meantime, these webpages offer good advice:
- The Perfect Armor Improved: Water Hardened Leather discusses how to make leather hard, and how to create forearm protection.
Body Protection
You can make various types of body armour in our period. Leather jerkins are good for most characters, or lamellar armour is good for Eastern Vikings and could be made out of leather.
