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General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
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Author:  bigbisont [ Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:42 pm ]
Post subject:  General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
After building a few sets of scratch-built armour from various materials, and especially after my latest video-documented aluminium build, people have asked where I get my patterns.

In short, I basically drew some out on regular copy paper, taped them together, cut them down and evolved them with each build. After my first metal build, I was able to compare them to a TE set and saw I was actually really close. I tweaked them a bit further after that (mostly just cutting some things smaller). I don't really have the ability to do 1:1 scans and make files of all this stuff, but maybe the below info could be helpful if you are trying to scratch build your own.

*I want to stress this is a STARTING POINT. I am not taking multiple measurements from multiple angles because because these are not undisputed gospel. They are not "Terry English's patterns". They are not necessarily a good size and shape for every body type. You WILL need to play around with the shapes.
For example, even just measuring from the neck down the centre to the belly area of a breastplate, a TE set is 15 inches. A fibreglass cast of the screen used Dietrich armour is only 13 inches. My own 'final' set ended up 15.5 inches and I find this my most comfortable set yet. I know my shoulder bells are overall a bit wider than a TE set and this is because I myself have fairly large shoulders. I am 6ft, 250lbs and this is what I decided was best for me after 5 builds of guess-and-test. So seriously, this is just a starting point to hopefully help people get going. All that said.... on to the shapes.

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A- Tailpad - 14.25 inches
B- Ab plate - 11 inches
C- cod piece - 4 inches
D- Shoulder Pauldron - 18 inches
E- Shoulder Bell - 13 inches
F- Shoulder Tab - 4.4 inches
G- Rt Shoulder buckle plate - 4.4 inches
*not pictured- Lft shoulder top plate - 3x4 inches (piece between breastplate and backplate, hidden by shoulder assembly)
H- Helmet bump plate - 10.75 inches (I like mine to butt right up against the camera. if you want a space it needs to be narrower)
I- Lower Lobster plate - 10.5 inches
J- Center lobster plate - 9.4 inches
K- Ear flap Top - 3 inches
L- Ear flap lower - 2.9 inches
M- knee pad - 7 inches
N- Shin guard - 13.5 inches (truly variable! How tall are you?)
O- Calf plate/guard - 11.5 inches (on center. left and right mirror each other for higher peak)
P- Breastplate - 15.5 inches
Q- Back plate - 24.5 inches (neck to tail a tad taller than breastplate measurement of same area)


Hopefully this is useful to my fellow scratch-builders with their "trashcan armor", Pepakura, and all other builds from all other types of materials.
Author:  Ice [ Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
That is more than one can ask for! Thanks for this!
By the way: I'd love to see your next video!
Author:  martinr1000 [ Fri Apr 03, 2020 10:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
I thought I would trace this out in cad so that I could mirror symmetrical pieces and be easier to print. I'm scaling it to the proper sizes but I'd appreciate comment before I finalise it. cheers

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Author:  martinr1000 [ Sat Apr 04, 2020 12:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
thinking I got the shin guard wrong (n). Is it supposed to be symmetrical?
Author:  martinr1000 [ Sat Apr 04, 2020 1:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
I've added the 1st sheet. Hopefully it can be hosted here.

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i'll do some more tomorrow but it's bed time.
Author:  seven [ Sat Apr 04, 2020 2:44 am ]
Post subject: 
this is what everyones been wanting for years.
Author:  martinr1000 [ Sat Apr 04, 2020 11:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
Still need to tinker with the lobster plates so that'll come later. Not fully sure how to accurately map out the breast plates but I'll figure something out. Anyway here are the rest for now. Any feedback would be appreciated, especially from the main man bigbisont.

cheers

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Author:  Ice [ Sat Apr 04, 2020 4:04 pm ]
Post subject: 
Excellent work! Thank you!
Author:  martinr1000 [ Sat Apr 04, 2020 8:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
crotch plate and lobster plates

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Author:  martinr1000 [ Sat Apr 04, 2020 8:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
one thing i'm not clear on, and if I had time I would re-watch BigBisonT's you tube videos. But i'm thinking you will need extra material around the edges of the templates for round overs.

anyway moving on to breast plates.
Author:  bigbisont [ Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
martinr1000 wrote:
I thought I would trace this out in cad so that I could mirror symmetrical pieces and be easier to print. I'm scaling it to the proper sizes but I'd appreciate comment before I finalise it. cheers


That is nuts!!! Awesome job. The one thing I will say (too late?!) is somehow to me the ab and tail plates look a bit tall. I feel like in my head and on my pieces they are not as wide (top to bottom). Might have been a funny angle of the camera? Or maybe just seeing it in black and white feels different.

martinr1000 wrote:
thinking I got the shin guard wrong (n). Is it supposed to be symmetrical?

My goal was to start out symmetrical. Looks like you corrected it for the better. I can tell you they don't exactly stay symmetrical after hammering. Both my shin and calf guards needed some trimming up after hammering in order to fit up nicely. I think this is another good example of these being considered a 'starting point'.

martinr1000 wrote:
one thing i'm not clear on, and if I had time I would re-watch BigBisonT's you tube videos. But i'm thinking you will need extra material around the edges of the templates for round overs.

...


I am pretty certain the "hammer down" room is built into the shapes EXCEPT where parts need a true "rolled edge".

For example, outside edges that need to be hammered down on the shoulder bells and shoulder pouldrons to lock in the shape are more or less built into the template*. However you will need extra space on anything requiring a full 'rolled edge' for comfort. Prominent areas needing a full 'rolled edge' (and therefore 'extra' space beyond template) are INSIDE edge of the pouldrons against the neck, the arm pit areas, and neck areas. Hope that makes sense.


*you will get a sense if you like its size after you make your template and compare it to yourself.
Author:  martinr1000 [ Tue Apr 07, 2020 10:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
bigbisont wrote:
That is nuts!!! Awesome job. The one thing I will say (too late?!) is somehow to me the ab and tail plates look a bit tall. I feel like in my head and on my pieces they are not as wide (top to bottom). Might have been a funny angle of the camera? Or maybe just seeing it in black and white feels different.


Hey bud, thanks for the reply. Well it's never too late to make changes. I've checked the drawing scale and it seems accurate to what I traced out. I've attached the same drawing with dimensions (metric mm sorry) and i'll have another look at the tracing.

I've had a rubbish time trying to trace the main chest pieces. I figured since it is traced on dome shaped surfaces I could model it in 3d and then unwrap it to a 2d image but unfortunately this seems impossible without buying expensive software. Might have to take a stab at it and see if members can help me refine it as we go along.

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Author:  martinr1000 [ Thu Apr 30, 2020 1:20 am ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
Hi all, I have, what I would term a best guess of the breastplate trace using BigbisonT's original photo. I had to make an assumption about the centre height of the sled (I went with 6 inches) so if this isn't too far off I think it should stack up. My process for doing this was as follows.
1) model an approximation of the sled in 3d
2) trace the lines from the photo into the 3d model
3) cut the traced out lines to create a mesh and then flatten it out to get the 2d pattern

so as you can tell if the sled model was about right then the pattern should be about right.

DISCLAIMER: what ever happens please don't cut any metal without first checking the pattern against yourself

I need to do the same process with the back plate so maybe I can upload that tomorrow

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Author:  martinr1000 [ Thu Apr 30, 2020 7:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
and here's the back.

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Author:  Einherj [ Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
These patterns look great. Could you post the cad files in some format so I'd have access to the vector data?
It would be easier to test and scale that way.
Author:  martinr1000 [ Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:37 am ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
Einherj wrote:
These patterns look great. Could you post the cad files in some format so I'd have access to the vector data?
It would be easier to test and scale that way.


Hi, I think you could just convert the pdf to vector data with online tools. Go2convert comes up in my search for this but i haven't used it personally.
Author:  Einherj [ Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
martinr1000 wrote:
Einherj wrote:
These patterns look great. Could you post the cad files in some format so I'd have access to the vector data?
It would be easier to test and scale that way.


Hi, I think you could just convert the pdf to vector data with online tools. Go2convert comes up in my search for this but i haven't used it personally.


Sure, I could do that. I was just thinking that if you made them as vector files there would be no need to convert them through a different format. Raster to vector conversions usually miss some stuff.
Author:  XanderLunix [ Thu May 12, 2022 4:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
I apologise for posting on an old thread, I'm sure that's bad forum etiquette!

I am going to go for an aluminium build, mainly using bigbisont's videos as a guide and he helpfully pointed me at this post for patterns!

Aluminium sleds are almost impossible to come by here in the UK, so I suspect I will have to start with a flat sleet.

My question is, will the pattern provided by martinr1000 work on a flat sheet at all? Maybe I might have to make some kind of alteration?

I'm an *absolute* newbie at any kind of metalworking or prop building, so any tips on this would be greatly appreciated.
Author:  bigbisont [ Thu May 12, 2022 5:25 pm ]
Post subject: 
Actually keeping one thread going with relevant info is very GOOD forum etiquette!
Bad etiquette would be a hundred stray 'new' posts about the same thing but scattered over dozens of pages that drop off the earth and never get read after the first few days (like facebook!)

To answer your question, I believe those patterns should be pretty good on flat surfaces. From the way I formed them to the way they are translated from photos of the round surface, it is all very generalized. Round or flat, they should be considered a guide or a starting point and not something requiring strict adherence. Good luck in your build and look forward to seeing your final results.!
Author:  martinr1000 [ Thu May 12, 2022 7:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
when i did the cad drawings i modelled the patterns on to a dish shaped surface and then i unwrapped and projected them to a flat surface so i believe that they are a very good approximation of the original pattern on a flat surface. I must admit i haven't used them myself though. good luck
Author:  XanderLunix [ Thu May 12, 2022 9:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
That's reassuring (on both points :lol: ) thank you guys. I will post some updates as I go and hopefully have something I'm proud of at the end to show off!
Author:  Ice [ Sun May 29, 2022 6:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: General shapes/measurement for Scratch Building Armour
I am in the same situation! Please post pictures and keep us updated!
Thanks a lot and good luck!
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