New Tube and Yoke

[John Conyard]

There are lots of methods of hardening leather, little general agreement and a few tricks worth trying. Some serious research on the internet will help you collate the various methods. This is interesting:
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-car...er/hl.html

Cuir Bouilli is a method where leather is boiled in water or wax, then moulded to shape. Fine for interesting bits of medieval armour, but small scales can be treated the same way. The leather will shrink to a degree, and coloured wax can be used to colour the leather.

But a tube and the yoke are big bits of leather and I do not want them to shrink too much. I do not want to immerse them in boiling water or wax, but pouring boiling water on the leather would toughen it. Tricky to get an even finish though.

I want to toughen the leather, without shrinking it or making it too brittle or liable to cracking. Think of a good pair of vegetable tanned leather shoes that become too wet. If you let them dry slowly they will dry stiff. If you put them close to a heat source they will stiffen even more. How wet they are affects how hard and stiff the leather gets. So for the tube I will soak the leather it for a few hours before putting it out is hot sun to dry and stiffen in the approximate shape I need. Leaving it in the sun in Yorkshire I need a really hot day and good sun trap. But any heat source will do. The tube has to bend around me and I do not want it too brittle, just hard. The yoke was made from two pieces of leather, sole leather and thinner leather. They were soaked in milk and pressed to naturally glue together, while being forced dried in my airing cupboard. The result was very hard and I had to gentle soften the yoke to get it to bend over my shoulders. I suspect the sole leather cracked in a few places but the thinner leather hid any cracks. I may have sworn during this process. The yoke was a project all of its own since I was trying out processes which were new to me. To bind the edges of the armour I made the holes with an electric drill rather than an awl. It was much easier.

The time the leather soaks for does help dictate the resulting hardness. As does the speed of drying.

In effect this is how we would make a scabbard, soak the leather, dry it and shrink it to the scabbard or knife blade. A chum uses baking powder to help the process. I suspect using ammonia would also help.

Have fun Cole!