If you want to make leather armor, whether it’s for a costume or for actual protection, then you have basically two options for the type of leather to use. There’s vegetable tanned leather or chrome tanned leather. Each one has it’s strengths and weaknesses, and you should choose the one that will give you the result that you’re looking for.
So what type of leather should you use for leather armor? If you want to make hardened leather armor, then your only option is to use vegetable tanned leather. If you want to make armor that’s just for show, like for a costume, then you can use either vegetable tanned or chrome tanned leather.
In this article I’ll go over the properties of each type of leather and explain why you’d want to choose one versus the other. I should mention that I’m not an expert at making armor, and this is just a hobby of mine, but I hope that I can share some information and tips to help you with your projects.
Vegetable Tanned Leather
To give you a very brief historical overview, vegetable tanned leather is a type of leather that has been made since ancient times. Some sources say that it was first developed by the ancient Egyptians. It uses the natural tannin (or tannic acid) from parts of plants like the leaves, bark, and roots. A concentrated solution of those tannins is used to soak the raw hide and convert it into leather.
The process of vegetable tanning can take anywhere from a few weeks to multiple months. The end result is a leather that is quite firm and usually a very pale brown color before it’s been dyed. You can buy it in its natural, pre-dyed state, or you can get it already dyed.
So how does this relate to leather armor? Well vegetable tanned leather was the type of leather that was around in the times when real, functional leather armor was made and used. It is the only kind of leather that can be hardened into something that could offer some protection from medieval weapons. However, because it takes so long to produce, it is usually very expensive.
Chrome Tanned Leather
Chrome tanning leather is a modern technique that was invented in 1858. It uses chromium salts to convert the raw hides into leather, and it is a much faster process than vegetable tanning. Whereas vegetable tanning can take months, chrome tanning can take only a few hours to complete. The end result is a leather that is very soft and flexible, but also strong and durable. It can also produce a much wider range of colors than vegetable tanning and dying.
Chrome tanned leather is much cheaper and more readily available nowadays because of it’s lower cost of production and the speed at which it can be made, but there is one major drawback. If you want to make hardened leather armor, then this is not the leather for you. The chrome tanning process makes for a very nice, supple leather, but it makes it impossible to harden.
If you’re just looking to make costume armor, whether it’s for cosplay, larp, or any other armor that doesn’t need to offer protection, then chrome tanned leather can be a great option. It’s cheap, flexible, comfortable to wear, and it comes in a wide range of colors to match your needs.
The Hardening Process
If you want to make hardened leather armor, then you have a few options for how to harden it. In medieval times there was something called “cuir bouilli,” which means boiled leather in French. This was a type of hard leather armor made by either boiling or heating up some kind of leather in a hot liquid. Unfortunately, the recipes that survive for how it was made are all inconsistent, and we can only conjecture about how exactly it was done.
There have been a lot of experiments done on hardening leather, and there are generally three main methods that people use. Remember that all of these use natural, vegetable tanned leather that has not been finished with oils or waxes. These are:
1. Hot Water
To harden leather with hot water, simply heat up some water to about 150 – 180 degrees Fahrenheit, which is under boiling temperature. It’s important to not use boiling water, even though it was called “cuir bouilli,” or boiled leather. Boiling water will cause the leather to shrink and curl too much, so make sure it’s not too hot.
Simply soak the leather in the hot water for about a minute and a half, at which point it should be fairly flexible. Then let it sit for about 15 to 20 minutes, to let the water soak through and cool down a bit. After that it should be cool enough for you to handle, but still supple enough for you to form it into the shape you want. Once you’ve formed it, just make sure that it’s held in that shape as it dries.
After it’s completely dry it should retain it’s shape and be much harder. It can still have a bit of flex to it, which might be preferable if you don’t want your armor to be too stiff.
2. Hot Wax
This is a method that apparently has some historical evidence of being used, but in my opinion is not very good, mostly because it’s not very safe to perform. It involves melting a pot of wax and soaking the leather in the molten wax. Once it dries, it will be much harder than it was before.
There are multiple problems with this method. First of all, heating up wax can be very dangerous because of the low flash point of wax. Basically it can easily catch on fire, especially if you heat it up on the stove. Secondly, it only hardens the leather temporarily, because if the leather piece flexes too much or if it gets too hot, the wax will escape from the leather and it’ll lose it’s hardness. Lastly, it will make it difficult or impossible to add any dyes or paint to the leather after the process.
I honestly don’t recommend that anyone use this method to harden their leather. I only included it in this list because I know that some people do it, but I’d encourage you to try a different method.
3. Baking
This method of hardening leather is, I think, very similar to the water hardening technique. Instead of heating up the water first, you soak the leather in room-temperature water for about a minute and a half. Then let it sit for fifteen to twenty minutes, then form it, just like the hot water hardening method.
The difference is that for this technique, after you’ve soaked and formed the leather, you then bake it in an oven for about twenty minutes. Different sources say anywhere from 160 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. This heats up the leather, which is damp all the way through from being soaked in water, and causes a reaction just like the first method I described. Just make sure that it keeps it’s shape as it’s baking.
This method creates a very stiff, hard leather as a result. If that’s what you’re looking for then this is the technique you should use.
Tooling
Tooling is the process of decorating the surface of the leather, using stamps or chisels, to create a design in relief. In other words, you press down some areas of the leather so that other areas stand up, usually in a way that makes a nice design. This can only be done with vegetable tanned leather, so if you want your armor to have fancy tooled designs on it, then you have to go with veg-tanned.
However, tooling takes a lot of time to learn and get good at, so you might just want to stick with chrome tanned leather. Even though you can’t tool it like veg-tanned, you can still carve designs into it by gouging out patterns with a grooving tool. It’s not as intricate as tooled veg-tanned leather can be, but it’s still a form of surface decoration.
Final Thoughts
I hope this article helped you decide what kind of leather to use for your project, and whether or not you want to make hardened leather armor. Just remember to be safe with whatever you decide to do.