Repairing well worn armour - Bracers and Greaves

More often then not your costuming will take a beating at events and even though it might be made of metal or leather, it can still wear down and break over time. Veteran players know this pain all to well, even if they are taking care of their kits, leather can still crack and wear out, rivets can pop, and metal will rust. 

We get a lot of players asking for minor repairs at game, so much so that we carry a small repair kit with us, but most of the larger repairs we do here in the shop.

At our last event we have a player ask us swap out the old straps on their bracers and greaves, one strap had torn and the buckle was no longer there. They also asked if we could add a few inches to the straps to make them a bit more comfortable when they wore multiple layers. 

 We are not sure who is the manufacturer of these pieces but they certainly put a lot of care and hard work into them. 

We first started with the two main tools we used for removing rivets, metal sheers and pliers. The sheers cut through 18 gauge metal very easily and make short work of washers and most rivets. 

Taking a quick look at the rivets on these pieces we realized these were pretty heavy duty, solid metal rivets with washers, hammered into place. No way of cutting out these rivets without resorting to saws. 

As you can see on the outer side of the armour, the rivets are beautifully formed. 

We removed the washers on the inside with our sheers and took the pieces to our anvil. Most times if you can't cut the rivets out, you can pound them out with a hammer and punch, or in our cases a X screwdriver, its pointed tip digs into the rivet an help pop it out. 

You can see that after we punched out the rivets, this armour has seen a lot of action, rush has built up in the space between the rivet and armour. 

Once we pulled the straps out, we found that there was a lot of wear underneath them as well, this is most likely caused by the moisture that leather will absorb. A quick sanding was all it needed to remove. 

Here you can see all of the leftover hardware that we removed.

And finally here we have 8 brand new straps ready to be dyed and attached. We added several inches to each strap as well to give some more adjusting room. 

A quick dye and some rivets later and they were ready to go! we hope that we get to see some pictures of them in action at future events!

If you have gear that needs to be fixed or altered please let us know! we are at most Underworld LARP events and can pick up in person or you can mail it to us.