Well musketeers cosplay planning requires the uniform of course. 

Honestly this is mostly for my own record of progress and in the hope it’ll encourage me to keep on track with this project. But also posting incase anyone wants to follow along and I’ll do a bit of leather working 101 while I’m at it. Which may interest people wanting to make other leather things (and ask box open so feel free)

Anyway these things are clearly a pain in the arse to make lets go

I was going to put design in this first post also but it’s been sitting in my drafts way to long so I’m posting this bit up and design post will follow shortly (and maybe someone can come prod me if I leave it too long)

some terminology might differ by place, or even just different people

(long post so under here)

I’m trying to add pictures of tools to this for other people’s reference but a lot of mine are in Nottingham and I’m at my parents so I’ve sourced some pictures from google.

Materials list

(also, for me to check if I have everything…)

Leather (surprisingly)

For tooling and shaping leather you need to use full grain vegetable tanned leather. Tandy leather has outlets in lots of countries but local suppliers will probably be cheaper, ebay can be good, if you’re in the uk I usually use leprevo – very helpful, based in newcastle (I think) and have decent postage charges. Theidentystore is also good, I’ve only shopped there in person as it’s near my aunt and uncles but they also have a website – if you can get somewhere physically you’ll be able to get reminants and quite a few pieces for this can be made from reminants.

Anyway it looks something like this usually

Advice on buying leather:

It comes in various thicknesses, measured in mm or ozs. As leather armour goes theirs looks reasonably thin and it’s a costume peice so something between 2.8-3.5mm (7-9oz ish) is probably good as that’s thick enough to hold shape but not too thick its difficult shape in the first place. You can go thicker (and part of my choice is cause that thickness also suits another project so I can do it from the same skin) and historically it would probably need to be to offer proper protection – I think it would have also been boiled? (I’m probably not going to do that)

Its usually priced by the square foot and will come in hides, sides, shoulders etc I’ve also seen it in cut sheets which might be more useful if you’re just doing one. I think you need about 2 sqf ish for this (including the elbow cop) but probably do a pattern and figure it out from there and obviously if you’re doing any more of the leather bits yourself it’ll make sense to get it in one go.

As you’re probably going for a more lived in look you don’t need to worry too much about getting grade A/1 leather but you do need something that’ll take a reasonably even dye.

Tooling equipment

(the tooling on these is actually not ridiculously complicated – although fiddly and time consuming in places, you’ll be pleased to hear, I’ll get to that in a bit)

you’ll deffinitly need as a minimum:

• A swivel knife
• Stylus for transfering designs
• Stamping tools: bevels, backgrounders. exist in a variety of sizes and patterns (other common tools you’ll see that I don’t think I’m going to use on this are pear shaders, vieners, seeders and camaflage tools. the last three are almost certainly unesseccery looking at it now a pear shader might be useful in very small amounts. Also, d’Artagnan’s doesn’t have any background work)
• (reccomended but you can probably do without: carving spoon)
• a mallet
• tracing film or equivilent
• water and a sponge
• a block to go under where you’re working

Rivets/Studs

Rivets fix leather to other bits of leather. To set them you need the imagintively named rivet setting tool you can see in the middle

You’ll also need a hole punch set (this is the one I have I think, though I didn’t buy it here they just have good pictures)

(you can also use one of these, they apparently require a bit of strength so if that’s not a strong point probably use a punch). They come in a few different designs and shapes but these are the most common. Studs sometimes look the same but are more for decoration, again lots of different types. How many you need depends on which uniform you’re making – for example Porthos is very big on decorative bits of metal 

Snaps/Clasps

Snaps are similar things but can come appart again, come in bigger sizes with patterned snap caps available for the bits at the top on athos, porthos and aramis’ guards (we don’t actually need them to come appart but I was hard pressed to find things the right shape that didn’t). You need the (equally imaginitivly named) snap setting tool -in the right size for your snaps and a snap setting anvil as well as the hole punch again.

Buckles

Three per guard one at the shoulder one under the arm and one at the back of the elbow. Get the buckles first then do the sizing of the straps to fit through them

Dyes and Finishes

I’m going to get on to types of dyes and finishes when I start using them because I don’t actually know what I’m going to use yet and don’t have anything to show you. So I’ll go through them in more detail a bit later

But self explanitary: dyes make the leather a different colour finishes do a variety of things but more or less all of them keep the dye on as a start point.

Leather glue

useful but probably not particularly period accurate

Design post to follow which will include more detail on what you need and techniques you might want to research for each specific character. After that tooling, dyeing, shaping etc and anything else people want to know if anyones read this far and carrys on reading these posts

(Vegtan leather is toolable and shapable because of the celuous structure and cause it can absorbe water (and probably some other stuff). Unfortunately this means there is no real alternative material that’ll work in the same way, that means you pretty much have to use an animal product. Pleathers/vinyls/etc are usually made from oil or similar so wont work (and are also worse for the environment). You an buy leather from naturally deceased animals, but expect to pay a lot more, otherwise leather is a by-product of the meat industry. If that’s a problem you might want to look into cork fabric -which’ll take pyrography type tooling bt I’m not sure about dye, worbla -never used it, might work for some of the designs? or clay perhaps? craft foam will shape (sort of, and become toxic when you heat it) but wont take tooling, it can take leather stamps (badly) and fluer de lys stamps do exist?, in thoery felt might work as if you wet it compress bits and leave it to dry it’ll keep its shape? but you’d need to not use synthetic stuff and we’re back to an animal product)