Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Edymnion Jun 04, 2008 17:21:50	Not exactly Eberron related, but something I would like the opinion of the main eberron crew on. Hey all, for a while now I've been building a suit of armor. Why? For halloween, for conventions (hope to have it ready in time for Dragon*Con), and just because I can. Anyway, its got a base of chainmail, and I've been building leather armor to go over the top. I have nice thick leather sides that I've been making plates out of, and I've got some thin leather like you'd upholster leather furniture with thats got an almost perfect red dragonscale texture to it. Very nice. Going to make the base layer of the armor black, and then the accent panels are going to be in red dragonscale. My question is thus: Do you think it would look better with the rivets on the dragonscale panels showing, or with the rivets hidden? I've got some nice aged rivets that I'll be using all over the thing to hold the suit together, so they will be visible in other places (namely the straps). But, with how I'm putting a "skin" on top of the accent plates, I can hide the rivets under the skin so they don't show, and have those plates just sort of floating there. Or, I can put the skin down and then rivet through it as well, so that they show. I can see doing it either way, but I thought I'd ask for some opinions.
#2 snarky_monkey Jun 04, 2008 21:18:22	I would personally hide them. First off I think the floating leather plate idea will be a really good look, very red dragon as you described. Secondly, in a functional sense, I would think that an armorer would do his best to hide the rivets so as not to reveal possible weak points in the suit itself. Target the rivets, the plates would be compromised.
#3 revvecor Jun 04, 2008 21:25:47	I would agree with Snarky_Monkey that if you are going for an armor with a consent smooth flow, to it hide the rivets. With the exception that if the rivets are a different enough color it would look good standing out on the outside.
#4 Edymnion Jun 04, 2008 21:40:36	The rivets are pre-aged, and a sort of dark gunmetal gray color. They'll be visible elsewhere on the armor too. I guess another piece of relivant information would be how the skin leather would be applied. If the rivets are going to show, then I will most likely wrap the skin all the way around the plate so that it covers the sides as well as the face. That way, I can rivet the skin in place on the front and back to help hold it there. If I hide the rivets, I would have to trim the skin to cover only the face of the plate, since I would have to rivet the plates together before attaching the skin over the top of the rivets. Which would make it a bit more obvious that the dragonscale skin is just tacked on to normal leather plates. Also, I'd get greater durability if the rivets are shown. While I've got good strong adhesive that would keep the stuff down either way, the rivets going through the skin is just one more layer of anchoring. Which means no corners peeling up in a few years. So yeah, I'm currently leaning towards rivets showing.
#5 ChaoticGood Jun 05, 2008 2:00:14	I like the look of rivets, myself. Also, I think you should get a leather-burning tool and burn a House Cannith hallmark into that leather somewhere, just for the sheer uber-geekness of it.
#6 Edymnion Jun 05, 2008 12:14:19	I like the look of rivets, myself. Also, I think you should get a leather-burning tool and burn a House Cannith hallmark into that leather somewhere, just for the sheer uber-geekness of it. I could do that, actually. I don't do leather burning, but I can do tooling, and the cannith logo is easy enough (hammer and anvil). Perfect in joke!