The Making of a Breastplate

 

A few posts ago, I introduced you to the model of my book cover, Makeda. You saw a picture of me wrapping her in duct tape. In a later post I told you I got an idea about making the breastplate in leather. Here is the picture of the raw leather.

     I put a pair of my reading glasses on it to give you a gauge  for the size. This is one full calf’s hide. I know, it sounds awful. Rest assured, I had nothing to do with taking the life of the animal unless you count the hamburger I ate.

Remember the picture of me wrapping Makeda in duct tape. Here is the shell it produced.

I taped that to the side of a bucket for two purposes 1) to hold it’s shape while I 2) lengthened it and covered it with plaster cloth wrap. As you can see, it was a very messy process. After it dried, I removed it from the bucket and this is what I got . The next step is to fill it with a slurry of plaster that I’ll make from the  powder in the container on the left. Once it dries and hardens, it will become the mold for the leather. But that’s different post.

Now you're caught up with where I am in the process. It’s work, but lots of fun.