From Workshop
Share on FacebookI made the original mantle out of 7oz tooling leather. It's heavy and durable, but working with it was a bit tedious. I hand stitched all of the panels together, then painted and weathered it.
I started off drawing it out on paper, then when that template looked good I transferred the design to the leather and cut it with a utility knife.
Once the base was done I cut the various panels. I ended up replacing the shoulder extension with a larger one later on in the project.
The downside was that it was sized to the movie style chest armor. My animated chest armor is MUCH larger, and the old mantle looked silly.
The new one is marine vinyl with heat-shaped sintra plates.
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The edges of the vinyl are finished... I glued a piece of 14ga electrical wire to the underside of the material then rolled the edge of the vinyl over the wire, gluing that edge into place too. The result is that it has the appearance of being about 1/8" thick.
