Making Armored Sleeves (Kote) for a Samurai Armour
Navigation:
- HELMET: Making a Kabuto (Japanese Samurai Helmet) with Kydex
- MASK: Making a Men Yoroi (Mempo) for a Japanese Armour
- SLEEVES:Making a Kote and Tekko (Armored Sleeves with upper and lower plates and hand plates)
- CUIRASS: Making a Japanese Do (harness or cuirass) in the lamellar style with kydex kozane plates
Bauanleitung in deutscher Sprache auf halloland.de:
I decided to build an arm protection that reminds at Bishamon-gote. It consists of chainmail for covering the elbow part and plates in splinter shape for the forearm. I shows a solid upper arm protection, and solid plates and chain mail for hands and fingers. This is supposed to having been a common design in japanese medieaval times (12th century).
If you start to build armored sleeves yourself, be prepared to do a lot of sewing -most of it, by hand.
I purchased a thick solid canvas fabric for the basis of my kote. Additionally, I purchase a nice colored cotton fabric for the out outside of the kote. Then I designed a pattern on a piece of paper, first.
In order to make this patter, I measured
- the length of your arm (shoulder to hand),
- hand to elbow
- the circumference of wrist,
- upper forearm and
- upper arm
This gave me all data for designing a pattern for a sleeve. I tried the paper patterns on my arms -as good as possible- just to make sure it fits. Make sure you add 2 cm all around. this is needed nice you need additional fabric for sewing. So, make it a bit larger that actually needed.
On this picture you can see that I added some space all around.
After I had cut the sleeve pattern, I designed the splinter-shaped plates for the forearm – on paper. I cut it out and tested the paper drafts on the canvas.
I don´t have the equipment for working with steel, unfortunately. However, I will do my next amor in full metal. This time, I used kydex instead metal, since kydex is easy to saw and put in shape in an oven (140 degrees celsius).
After I had cut and prepared the forearm plates, I went for the upper arm plates. I cut larger parts out of kydex:
I decided to bend the upper arm plates and lace them together, then. I heated the plates in the oven (140 degrees celsius) and then formed them in a round shape but bending it in shape on the round side of a kitchen pot. The slight bend on the very upper plate just follows the natural form of the upper edge of my kitchen pot.
I rounded the corners of the very lower plate. I then drilled holes, following the traditional patterns.
I then laced the plates together just to see if they fit.
I sanded all edges, unlaced them again and then painted them with a nice black color.
Then, I designed the plates for the thumb and hand. I proceeded as usual: I designed a patter on paper, transferred this to a kydex plate, cut it out and sanded the edges. I bent the hand plate the same way I had bent the upper arm plates – on the rounding of a pot. I order to make sure that all plates will fit the fabric, I gave it a try:
Now, all is about sewing. I decided that I would want to use laces for later fixing the sleeves to my arm. So first of all, I prepared loops that will later on take the lace. Therefore, I tool a thin cord and sew it together so that a row of laces came into existence.
I sewed the chord of laces to the designed edge of the sleeves. It was sewed on the inside of the thin cotton cover fabric.
Here you look on to the inside of the cover fabric. Now, I sewed the solid, thick canvas on to it and then turned everything inside out. Finally, the loops sits on the inside, between canvas and light cotton fabric.
For optical purposes I added a golden lace.
Now, the fabric work is done and it is about sewing the plats to the fabric. Therefore, I painted all plates black and drilled all required holes.
All plates are painted and all holes are drilled. Now it is about sewing the plates to the sleeve. I also used chain mail. It went to the fingers as well as to the elbow part.
It was pretty tricky to cut the chain mail in the right shape without destroying the entire chain mail pattern.
I fixed toggle buttons to the inside of the sleeve. These are important, since the will serve to fix the sleeve to the shoulder pad.
I used a fine lace that goes through the loops, this way, the sleeve can be fixed to the forearm. On the picture below, you can also see the pretty large amount of stitches I needed to make in order to sew the plates to the sleeve. Also note the loops on the inside of the hand. There is a loop that takes the thumb and one that takes all other four fingers. This way, the hand protection will stay where it belongs, even if you move.
- HELMET: Making a Kabuto (Japanese Samurai Helmet) with Kydex
- MASK: Making a Men Yoroi (Mempo) for a Japanese Armour
- SLEEVES:Making a Kote and Tekko (Armored Sleeves with upper and lower plates and hand plates)
- CUIRASS: Making a Japanese Do (harness or cuirass) in the lamellar style with kydex kozane plates
Chris Gray on 31 Jan 2022 at 14:17 #
Very well done. Good job.
Torsten Wilp on 25 Sep 2023 at 07:20 #
Where can I find the sewing pattern, please?
admin on 25 Sep 2023 at 07:49 #
Hi
Check out http://halloland.de/ for more details on the „how-to“.
Check out https://sengokudaimyo.com for sewing patterns of all kind.
I hope this helps!
Chris