Dragon scale bracers

[Nighthawk]

These bracers have a story to them:

I recently lost a very dear friend by the name of Rick Rhombo. A few days before he passed, he and I were working on a leather cover for my Scottish sporran flask, and he showed me a roll of leather that he had gotten. He told me that to his eyes, it looked liked dragon scales, and that he thought it would be really cool to make a pair of dragon scale bracers from it. Well, I thought it was a cool idea, but too much in the realm of fantasy for my taste. I put that leather out of my mind until a few days later, when I got the call that he had died. After that, all I could think of was that leather and those bracers that he had wanted. So I talked to his sister, who was handling the estate, and she was more than willing to give me the leather that I needed, so long as I used it for the bracers, and kept them for myself instead of selling them or whatever. Needless to say, I jumped at that. So here are the results:



The knife sheath. Those are Ricks initials- RFR- in Norse runes. He was after all a Viking reenactor! Farman was the name of his Viking persona. This is the left arm bracer, designed for a right hand draw.



I decided that a dragon on the right arm would balance out the knife on the left.



This is a patch knife that I made "for a friend." I posted a picture gallery of this knife a few weeks ago on my Face Book page. Rick was the friend I mentioned in that gallery. His sister was kind enough to give the knife back.



Here they are on my arms.





The scale leather is a 1 or maybe 2 oz cowhide leather. I used a tanners bond to glue it over the top of 12 oz saddle/armor grade leather. The sheath is made from 3 oz veg tanned cowhide, glued and stitched to the armor grade leather.

The thread I use to tie the bracers comes from a project that my friend apparently abandoned. Among the many (and I mean MANY!) things that his sister gave me was a box of remnants. It looks like Rick was making a pair of moccasins and gave up on them. The threads came from those mocs. The chain mail that the bracers are sitting was made by Rick. He was teaching my son to make chain mail. His sister again kindly let my boy take that section of mail. It was actually fairly interesting. I wore these to the Colorado Renaissance Festival this last weekend and had several people, including other leather vendors, trying to buy them from me! Didn't happen. Needless to say.

[RenRobin]

Nicely done and a great tribute to your friend.

[jcbanner]

they look very nice and are a nice reminder of your friend

[crazyrennie]

Very nice and a worthy tribute