Makin' Stuff

There are many reasons for making your own stuff:

  1. You can make it EXACTLY the way you want it
  2. Personal satisfaction of using something you made yourself
  3. Hand-made gifts are better than store-bought ones
  4. No concerns for "voiding the warranty" etc.
  5. Best of all, making your own stuff is usually a LOT cheaper!

The internet is a great source of plans, tips and resources for making anything. Many sites provide patterns and plans totally free for no reason other than the maker wanting to share the enthusiasm of their project.

Boats: A Yacht and sailing website contains some advice about choosing a boat: "Remember that most of your time on the boat will be alone. Your family may enjoy it occasionally and your friends will come along once or twice, but you are the only one who will TRULY love being on your boat." With this in mind I have decided the one-person craft is the way to go. Here are some of the boats I have made so far:

This boat is about 7 feet long, draws about 3" of draft and only cost about 25 bucks to make. It handles best with about 300 pounds in it; two adults or one with a lot of stuff.

 


urukhelm snagahelm ARMOR: I personally thought the coolest armor in the Lord of the Rings movies was the Orc armor. One of the things about making orc armor is that there is really no "finish-work" since non one cares if an orc looks good in battle, since they are only cannon-fodderand ugly anyway. So the armor is quick and easy to make, relatively speaking. Here are a couple helmets I have done so far. The first is more true to the book idea of orcs armor, (cheap, quick, plain) the second is pretty much from the movie. The main difference is in difficulty. The movie version looks "cool", but no one is going to put the effort into these 6 piece multi-joint troublesome-to-make helmets for 50,000 butt-ugly Uruk-Hai.



This next helmet is a basic "viking" helm. Four pieces, riveted to bands, basic nose/eye piece riveted on the front. Basic heathen protection for the ol' brain-pan. (and anyone who calls them barbarians should do a little research into their swords: They were doing folded high/low carbon blades the same time the Japanese were, but without the fancy robes.)

snagahelm


sallet

I am currently looking at all this stuff as "childish" and basic. Not that spending hours in the garage banging flat steel into shape, riveting those odd shapes into helmets that no one is ever going to wear (at least in battle) is useless, far from it! The reason is that I have stumbled on better information at www.livesteelarmor.com, and they are so chock-a-bock full of info on the real techniques etc. that I realize now how "elementary" my previous work has been. Rolled edges, proper fitting.... I have several projects in the works right now that make the above helmets look like kindergarten crayon drawings. I will post those pics as they come. For now, here is a pic from the above website showing what my next helm should look like. (mine is looking better than this one already, though it isn't complete yet.) I am also making several different styles of face/visor for this, and will either make them interchangeable or (if I like them all) just make several more of these helms with the variations.






I also have some breastplates, shoulders (pouldrons) and other pieces (parts is parts) that I am playing around with. Pics as they come....

I LOVE HAVING A BIG GARAGE!!!

Everyone needs some creative space, and sometimes that includes raw square footage.