Crocodile Print Bracers
by Mark Charke
You can't get crocodile in Canada. Well, maybe you can, but I haven't seen it and it would probably cost a fortune. The crocodile you see is all cowhide. Take a good look at Rumpelstiltskin in Once Upon A Time. He's wearing some wonderful cowhide croc print. The trouble is that the stuff is all soft and dyed. So when Tandy got a hard, undyed vegetable-tanned croc-print in with a very deep embossing, well, it needed a project.
Tandy Croc-Print (picture is linked)
Now, the Tandy stuff is really nice and it's about 4oz thick but appears thicker because of the embossing, but it's still not that stiff, especially if you want to use it for armor. I decided on a second layer of 9oz vegetable tanned leather. It keeps it from being too heavy but gives it enough weight to provide some real protection. In the first three models I did not harden the leather. If someone wants something more combat oriented, I could switch to Soul Bend, at 16oz and wax and/or water harden it into something with the best protective properties.
Layers drying
Laminating layers of leather together has wonderful side effects. First, it holds it shape because of the mechanics of gluing something inside something else. (There probably a wonderful physics term for this.) This same properly makes the leather much more rigid, combined with the fact that you've got two layers of material now, running around 12oz. Also, I propose that it's harder to get, say a knife, to stab through multiple layers as they pull apart in gaps which allow the previous layer to resist the penetrating blade. Most leather armor is layered and I'm betting this is part of the reason why. Finally I decided to glue in a deerskin lining you can see there under the first two layers glued together.
Close up on Coloring
For coloration, I've only used Tandy's Tan colored Antique. It turned practically orange on the very light colored vegetable tanned leather and it makes the details just explode. I used quite a bit of antique to get a dark color in all the grooves. Then it's just finished with Atom Wax.
Final Product
In finishing the project I hid the rivets under the deerskin, choosing again the 9oz vegi-tan leather for the straps. Some people go with a 4oz or 6oz leather for straps because it lies down nice and flat. I think the straps should be as strong as possible. Now I've never tested the buckle, but it doesn't hold a lot of weight. I've used dozens of them over the years on all kinds of armor and never had one break yet. It has Rapid Rivets but it would be easy enough to switch to Chicago Screws or Copper Rivets for greater strength but again, they don't carry much weight. For the edge I considered edge coat or wax, but decided to go with the more complicated pig skin suede. It has a hidden stitch on the surface and then a visible stitch on the inside. If I were going to produce a lot of these, I'll either want a machine or I'd use a single visible stitch. It doesn't change the durability but each stitch adds another hour to craft time and that has to translate to cost.
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