Exercising that leather fetish... or more likely not.

When was my last post?  I am not sure, as I am too damnedabally lazy to go and look.  I can only say for certain that it was sometime before yesterday.

In the mean time I've been adding improvements to my stronghold and honing my various skills to a razor's edge making me one of the most dangerous men on the planet... is what I would be saying if I hadn't in fact spent the last period of time between posts playing video games and wanking while crying myself to sleep.

Good times.

I have since discovered that leather crafting is an expensive hobby/trade to take up.  Sometime over the course of the last few weeks I decided that Leathercrafting would really pair well with chainmail in some sort of twisted nerdgasm.

So, I returned to that wonderland that the kids call 'the information super highway' and did some research on mastery of leather, which returned interesting results that took some time to sort through and got me well off of track.

When I left behind that magical kingdom I finally began to learn about making objects in leather.  Because this is me I started with a book.  Followed by paradoxically greatest paradise and cesspool that the nets have to offer, Youtube.

Youtube is fantastic resource as passionate and talented people make helpful videos about nearly every subject on the face of the planet.  Of course there are the clueless retards that  you have to wade through as they spill their dreck all over your electronic 1s and 0s.  But that's the price you pay for free knowledge - getting covered in the flung feces of the denizens of Moronica as they crawl out of their dank basements.

According to the people who make and sell leather goods, as well as those who supply the tools and materials, Leather is a fantastic, almost magical, substance that can be used for just about anything.  In my zombie uprising series, I clad several of my characters in leather clothing in lieu of heavier armor.  Leather seems perfect for such a scenario, as many bikers can attest to.  Besides, it just looks cool.  So this is something that I have been thinking about for a while.

Onto step two.  Finding the tools to do the job.  Here's where we call back to the opening.  Leatherworking is expensive.  When I started chain mail, my toolkit consisted of two pairs of needle nosed plyers, a good pair of wirecutters(an absolute must - my first set hardly worked and I bruised my hands while cutting my first coil), a 3/8th inch steel dowel to wind the wire, and a clamp to hold the wire onto the dowel(also used as a handle to wind the wire) and finally at least one heavy duty leather glove.  Throw in some wire and you got yourself the basics of a hobby  - I added additional dowels of various sizes, as well as wire in various sizes and metals.

All in all, even with a quarter mile of galvanized steel wire, the set-up cost around $100.  Mind, I didn't get top of the line gear.  My wirecutters cost a whopping $4 - but they do the job(I took a coil of the wire to Sears to test prospective replacements).

I got my kit half off and it still cost $200.  I will be up front and say that you can easily find cheaper kits that come with the basics.  But I wanted something that was comprehensive and complete in its own right.  I struggled with the decision as I know myself and I am unreliable with things of this nature - who knows how long I'll keep at this new hobby.  Isn't that right Mandolin?

The day after I ordered my kit I got a call from my local Tandy Leather Location.  They can ship the goods to me, but since I had a address here in town, I could come pick it up and save the $20 on shipping!

Fuck yeah I'll do that!  I'm a cheap bastard and they're on my way home from work.  Unfortunately Tandy Leather keeps banker's hours - and I got a late start.

I arrived and after wandering around and looking lost (part ingenious ploy, part inherent stupidity) I was asked if I needed help.  Indeed yes I did.  She brought out my kit and I rediscovered that old truism "Everything is better when given to you in a bucket!"  Yep, the Tandy Pro Leatherwork Tool Set comes in a five gallon plastic bucket - putting it in the same bracket with those other bucket dwelling commodities Pudding and Chicken.

Leathercrafting has arrived in the big time.

With more wandering around and looking lost, and then getting help(I refuse to ask damn it!) I was able to acquire everything I need to get a project started.

So far I've done nothing.  I'm approaching this in a different manner than my normal "Jump in and do shit!" method that works well enough on other projects.  Leather seems to take foresight, as it appears that the process is a one-way street and when a step is passed, you cannot back up.

When I was making chainmail, I had a project in mind.  Making a chainkini bottom for a beautiful woman(a specific beautiful woman - not some random chick off the street).  I need this sort of inspiration to overcome the gravity of my laziness.

My first goal is to make gauntlets. Sweet looking gauntlets that the zombie hordes cannot bite through.

The masterful art of Weaving.

Here's what you need. About ten thousand little metal rings of the same diameter and a couple pairs of pliers. With that, a lot of time and a truckload of patience, you can make yourself a shirt of maile. I mean a lot of time. A whole shitload of it. We're talking about the following the timeline for monkeys to come down out of the trees and then build starships. Unless you have a lot of superglue and low expectations for quality, we're not talking about a quick process.

Honestly, in terms of materials and tools, a shirt or two might cost you around $50. That's assuming you need to buy the pliers, and wirecutters and steel rod, as well as the wire. Besides the obscene number of hours spent, winding coils, cutting the links and then putting rings into rings, hours that you could more effectively put into a nine to five making money and buying a shirt, making chain is an inexpensive hobby.

Besides, weaving chainmail isn't too difficult to learn. I picked up the basics with the help of tutorials on youtube and other places on the net. The process is slow going, and I've yet to make much of a dent in my major project goal. But I have a couple of snappy sheets of chain cloth to show for it, a handful of necklaces. All sitting around doing nothing. Chainmaile isn't very useful in our modern era. Who knew?

Chainmaile, chain mail, chainmail, maile. However you wish to spell it, is one of the oldest and longest serving forms of metal armor that humans have yet to devise. Made from said steel rings, it protects well against cuts. And that's about all. Someone using say a hammer, or arrows, would effectively transform your expensive armor into a heavy shirt with a narrow list of functions that can be related here: 1) Chafe nipples. That is all.

So why learn such a trade? Well, it may come in handy at some point in the future. Who knows? Armor is always good to have, especially if we're all reduced to using pointed sticks, and maybe swords. A second skin of steel might be all that you have between your soft and supple skin (by the way, what sort of moisturizer do you use? So touchabally soft!) and large gaping wounds in your flesh. And there aren't that many people out there who can make it. So it's time for a little self-reliance, and get the job done right. Or at least get it good enough.

Global Warming – Well, here we go. Wearing tens of pounds of metal while operating on the open ocean. What effin genius came up with this idea? Why not just tie an anchor to your ankle and call it a day? An anchor is a lot cheaper than even a shirt made from chain mail. Wait, there's more! More than a free trip to Davey Jones' locker you say? How can it get better than that? I'll tell you... Honestly, chainmail might be more useful at sea than one expects. Providing that you use the right material. I'm thinking aluminum or Titanium. Preferably the latter. Chainmaile has found a new use in these last few decades in the form of shark proof suits. Full body of suits, made from very tiny rings, that will reduce the chance that a hungry shark walks off with one of your favorite limbs. And no doubt that these very suits will come in quite handy when standing up against invading pirates as they wave their cutlasses about and brandish empty muskets. 4/5

Zombie Uprising – Well, here we have a major up and down side. Zombie use their hands and teeth to do most of their damage. Grab and bite. That is the whole of their tactical bag of tricks. And after a few weeks/months/years of being a walking corpse, zombies will no doubt boast a set of teeth that will make your average meth addict cringe. Having a cloth of steel between your hide and that mouth full of chipped chompers is quite an appealing thought. Until you take into account that a shirt might weigh up to forty pounds. That makes for a long ass hike though the dead infested city streets as you scavenge for food. That'll build stamina, which is good if you manage to keep your strength up for weeks straight as you self-inflict death marches. After all the weeks that it took to make the damn thing in the first place. Until then, you're moving slower and tiring yourself out un-neededly. Finally after weeks of sweating through unbearable heat in your portable oven, summer will fade and winter will return, and your nipples, after having chaffed for months, will learn a new form of torture. Freezing and sticking to your shirt. Fun times. That's why I'm sticking with leather. Sure, I'll look more like the biker from the Village People – can't be helped, but it'll be warmer, and less heavy. 1/5

Nuclear War – I've done a lot of thinking here, and the only practical use that chainmail might have for a wanderer of the thirsty wastelands would be to give their NukePoc wardrobe a little extra pizazz that the other nameless mercenaries and bandits are totally lacking. Leather jackets and football shoulder pads will rule the day, but at the same time become rather cliché. Time to start a whole new trend here...

I can't keep nattering on here. To hell with all the above concerns. I have two words for the lot of you. Chainmail Bikini. 5/5 Recognize.

Go out and weave little monkeys, daddy has a major chicks in chain fetish, and he wants to share it with the rest of the world.