Making Steel Gauntlets - One Year Apart

All right so in my last video I promised you guys I would give you a side-by-side comparison of gauntlets that I created a year apart. So just to give you guys kind of an overview of the improvement that you can make while trying out new hobbies and things like that. I wanted to show you this is the first gauntlet I ever made and then this is actually the second gauntlet I ever made and I made this a matching set because I wanted to practice doing symmetrical design in that. So I did make two of these but I'm going to compare these two because they're both the left glove. If we look at the original the the biggest thing to note is the size. The size of this one is much much less bulky because I will, I'll bring it up here this will make more sense, the actual plates are just riveted directly to the leather glove underneath. So there's no kind of lining for any of these plates at all. So the downside of that is whenever I put this gauntlet on, let me just get it on there, the overall look of it in this kind of state is really nice. I think it actually turned out quite well. The problem is with it being just plates directly riveted to the glove itself is I can feel the steel rivets backer. So in this case it was nail heads. So the nails come in through the back of the glove and that's all rubbing across the top of my fingers. So it's not horribly uncomfortable but the comfort level definitely could be improved. The other thing is articulation. So if we look at the articulation here, so moving my hand back is actually not that bad on this. I actually have pretty good range of motion backward. Going forward, again range of motion is not dramatically hindered but the problem is with the shape of these plates, because they're all built with this kind of aggressive point design, when I go forward all of the plates separate. So we end up with a lot of catch points on these that even though it looks interesting, it's not necessarily the most practical design. So how I was inspired by this was looking at fantasy armor. So a lot of things like Lord of the Rings has the ring race that have very similar kind of design and the issue with this is it's designed for aesthetics not for function. So it looks great but this will cause you a lot of problems of catching on clothing, catching on other things, and obviously these are weak points in the armor where a blade could get stuck on here. Anything can really get stuck on this and then rip you in the direction that's not effective for you. So I just wanted to make some changes to this. I learned a little bit more about armor making after making this one. So I'm going to show you the comparison with this one. So if I put this one on and a big difference here too, this is a much heavier steel. I'm using 18 gauge steel on the new one where my original one was 20 gauge steel because I just wanted to kind of get a feel for how steel moves and essentially learning that on heavy steel I probably would have been deterred because moving it with this was much much more effort than moving it on this. So that was a learning curve as well just getting into the second gauntlet and going oh wow this actually takes a lot more precision in my hits and a lot more just general force to be able to get this metal to move. So we can see here, so whenever I was comparing the finger plates on the other ones, these are segmented finger plates rather than like a kind of scaled finger plate. So these are measured directly to my fingers but the biggest difference here is these plates are riveted directly to a leather strip and then the leather strip itself is actually sewn onto the leather glove. So this is a cow leather glove. The old one is actually deer leather which is softer and nicer but it's less resilient than the cowhide is. So if we look at this, our articulation is quite good. I'm losing almost no range of motion. I'm only holding down at the back because you'd have a band brace or something like that to hold this strap to your arm and you'd have a gambeson and other other things that would fill up this area. So if I hold that down, we look like this. My range of motion is basically unhindered. I'm getting I would say 90 to 95 percent of range of motion without having anything stopping my hand. So I figured out that doing these kind of plates in an arc pattern backwards rather than the arc patterned forwards like this, so where these are kind of all triangularly pointed towards the center of the wrist let's say, that's what causes this separation. All right, where these kind of crescent shapes work with the actual shape of your body. So where this is the main wrist plate, the ones going back angle backward and the ones going forward angle forward. So that allows for this kind of organic movement and makes it so that there's very little to no separation. We get a little bit of separation but it's not anything that will cause any catching on anything. So if there was things that I could change on this, what I would do for the thumb plate would be make this a little bit longer. I initially had this as a much wider plate but it didn't work out as well. So I shortened it, made it, not shortened it, reduced the width on it so that it kind of angled around the thumb a little bit better and then had this kind of crescent pattern here so that if you're holding a tool it sits and rests in here without being hindered by the steel itself. So you look at that, the issue would be this plate if it could come back a little bit further would help protect the tendons on the bottom of the arm because on your forearm here where your tendons would lie here, you would have a vambrace coming here but it would only come up to about here anyways because you don't want to restrict the wrist movement with the vambrace because it's a solid piece. Where this is articulated but there would still be a weak point right about here. So what I would do is basically pull this plate back a little bit, essentially build it out a little bit more so that if a weapon was to come down in this area it would still catch this before it would catch my wrist. But that's something just to learn, kind of move forward. The next thing that I would like to improve for my next gauntlet if I'm going to make another one is the fluting. So the fluting on this is a very heavy fluting where if we look at the first gauntlet again we're looking at a very sharp edged fluting which looks very nice, it creates that very nice kind of contrast from side to side where this is a much more rounded domed kind of look. Now what happened with that was if I show you this, so this is the fluting tool that I made from a brick chisel. So for the first time whenever I was making this one I had left this quite sharp. So leaving it sharp allowed me to get those very sharp kind of flutes right. Now these aren't true flutes because it's not, it's only pushed down, it's kind of just a crease where this is a flute because you can tell it's pushed down on either side and it's raised in the middle. So this is kind of gradually pushed down into a shape. This is definitely a kind of ridge. So what I would do is I would actually sharpen this tool, let's get back into view, where am I? Yeah so I would not round this as much because this is a bit too round and that created very wide thick flutes. So if I round this a little bit more or not round it, so I sharpen this a little bit more, the sharpness of that is going to help the flutes in the new design, in any new design, be much sharper and more dramatic but without sacrificing strength because how I sacrificed strength in the first one was the creation of these was created by putting a flat piece of steel between this groove on the bench, placing the sharp chisel down and hammering directly down on it to create that crease. Now the downside of doing that is that crease now becomes a weak point on the steel because instead of pushing the steel around the fluting stake, I've now pushed the fluting stake into the steel. So pushing the fluting stake into the steel is actually pushing the steel to the point that you could cut through where hammering around this allows the steel to bend around it. So you don't lose a significant amount of thickness let's say by bending around the fluting stake but punching the fluting stake into the steel will reduce thickness of the steel in the area that you created that crease. So would I like the flutes on this to be sharper? Certainly, but I didn't want to sacrifice strength for aesthetics in that case. Can I get them a little bit sharper? Yes I can, I have learned that sharpening the fluting stake to be a little bit more pointed is still okay. I just need to be very careful with how I do that. I'll show you guys some process shots and things like that and kind of a video of me trying them on in between here. But as it is, well I should have been, I hope I've been doing that. But yeah, so that's a quick overview of them anyway. I'm quite happy with the progress. I'm very happy with a lot of the kind of comfort improvements that I did. This is definitely a much more comfortable gauntlet to wear. It doesn't wear anywhere on my arm or hurt my fingers at all because all of those plates are segmented exactly to the size of my fingers. Obviously it wouldn't be as comfortable for someone else. And then I guess other improvements is just getting the nicer rivets. I got domed rivet heads so that the rivets are a cleaner, more finished look. This is just using the nail heads, so as you can see they're a little less finished looking. I still domed them, sorry, I still domed them fairly well but that was just with a bulking hammer and I could have taken a little extra time to refine that. When we look at the ones that are nail rivets, so this one here is a nail rivet but you can see it still has that domed appearance to it because I figured out how to dome that a little bit better with the bulking hammer and then I also got a doming tool to help finish that. So yes, overall it's just generally nicer. I did actually take the time on this one to create a hinge. So let's get there. So these hinges are handmade. They function quite well and I didn't have a hinge for the first one so I it just wasn't within my comfort zone at the time to create so what I had done. Sorry, talking too much. My first thought on this was just to create a leather strip. So I don't know if you can see it actually, there is a leather strip in here. So this rivet to this rivet, there's just a very thin half inch band of black leather that holds this on so that it's not just flopping around but definitely a hinge is a much more mechanical and secure way of keeping this fastened to the glove. So all in all, the finish is a little bit nicer. I got a buffing wheel in between so I got this pseudo kind of mirror finish. Some of the fluting obviously has a little bit of hammer marks that I would like to be able to learn how to get out a little bit better. I think that's just time and patience. It's a very monotonous task but overall in terms of a set, these two turned out very well. I'm very happy with the symmetry. Creating symmetry is difficult. Yeah and this one as well, I mean the right hand articulates just as well and that's that. So I hope you guys like this. If you have other questions just let me know. I guess one last thing to say is the overall design. Some of this was inspired where the other one was inspired by like fantasy armor. This was actually inspired by practical armor. That's how I learned a lot of the things like about the shapes of the plates and things like that. So kind of from this point backward, we're looking at roughly a gothlic kind of 15th, yeah give or take 15th century, 15th, 16th century kind of gauntlet. And then if we look at the front, the front and the fingers because around the 15th and 16th century they were starting to go to a mitten style gauntlet in general. There's still finger gauntlets but there's a lot more prominence of mitten style gauntlets then. The fingers and kind of this hand plate are more inspired by a 14th century like an hourglass kind of gauntlet, things like that. Just because the knuckles don't roll over with it, it kind of stays rigid here. So that's the stylistic kind of differences there and the kind of change that I went as well of instead of doing something that's very fantasy inspired, try and actually put my own design kind of style with these flutings in here or flutes in here, but base it in reality in terms of actual practical armor. So all of that said, I think this is my second leaving of the video but if you have questions just let me know in the comments. If you like these kind of projects and you want to see more of this just let me know as well. I have a lot of things in mind to do, armor is among them and I'll see what else I can do. So thanks for watching and I'll see you guys again soon.