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The Yeoman’s Guide to Basic Leather Armor
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Care and Maintenance
If well maintained, leather armor will last for many seasons of hard fighting. Leather’s greatest enemy is water. Make sure your armor is dry before storing it. This is doubly important if you have been fighting in the rain. Wet leather will rot and grow mold in a spectacular array of colors, and soon fall apart.
When you’ve spent all day fighting in a mud pit, be sure to wipe off the worst of the mud. You can hose down the rest of your leather gear, but again let it dry completely before storing it. Don’t heat your armor in an attempt to dry it out faster. Heating will cause your armor to dry out hard and brittle.
You can help protect your armor with either oil or wax. You can apply either directly over dyed or painted leather. Periodically rub natural or synthetic neatsfoot oil into clean armor using a rag. This helps keep the leather from drying out and cracking and provides slight water resistance. Over time periodic applications darken and soften the leather.
Wax is much better than oil at stopping water, but it’s more difficult to apply. Warning: molten wax is dangerous. It releases carcinogenic vapors, and is a combustion hazard. Molten wax is very hot and when it sticks to your skin it will burn you. Take appropriate precautions. Although paraffin will work, I prefer to use bee’s wax because it has a lower melting point. Rub a piece of wax against the leather until you can start to see a white waxy film on the leather. Then you want to warm the wax until it melts and soaks into the surface. You might use a sunny window, a hair dryer, or a warm oven. Do not cook your leather, or it will quickly turn brittle and break when you need it most.
Eventually straps will wear out, and buckles will break. Keep a couple of rivets, buckles, and some extra strap in your armor repair kit for just such emergencies. On a Wisby style coat of plates, or other armor where a heavy steel plate is riveted to leather, the rivet hole will stretch, and the rivet may eventually pull through. You are better off punching a new rivet hole near by as patches wont last very long. If you need an emergency field repair, duct tape will stick to leather, but remove it when you are done for the day. If you leave tape on leather for a long time, some of the sticky glue from the tape becomes a permanent part of the leather.