How to Make Leather Armor

Choose your leather. Any kind can be used, although the harder the leather, the more it will have the appearance of armor. A good way of getting armor to appear stiff is to get wax coated armor.

Measure the widest part of your chest or midriff and the length of your body you want the armor to cover. Generally, this is from just below the collar bone to just above the belly button. Divide the width measurement by ten and the length by four. This will generally end with an end value set of around 4 inches by 4 inches. These will be the side of the panels on your armor.

Cut your leather into 40 panels of the size determined in the previous step.

Lay your panels into the front and back section of your armor. Each section should have a 4-by-4 square that will cover your back and chest and one extra piece on each end of the bottom two rows that will connect the two sections.

Rivet all the pieces of your leather armor together. This will take about 160 rivets, but it's easy to do once you get the hang of it. To do so you will need to prepunch a hole in the leather and place the rivet.

Place the grommets connecting the two pieces. This will allow you to easily put the homemade armor on and take it off. You will again have to prepunch the leather before placing the grommets.

Don your armor and establish now long you want the shoulder straps to be. Once you have established this they can be cut from the scrap leather and riveted to the tops of the armor plates.