Buffalo Rumblings
If you’re following me on this journey of turning cat litter buckets into a reasonable cosplay approximation of Mandalorian armor inspired by the Buffalo Bills, you’ve likely seen how the breastplate shape has come into its own. Mandalorians need more armor than just their chest though, so let’s build spaulders and tassets!
What are those, you ask? Well, you’re in luck if you read on below!
Yep. At least I think I have the terms correct, but there are a lot of words for armor types and I’m not an expert by any means. Spaulders, per the internet, are shoulder plates. While the Armorer in The Mandalorian refers to Din Djarin’s shoulder armor as pauldrons, I’m not convinced. And mine for sure are not.
Pauldrops typically are larger and provide more coverage, including accounting for the armpit. The shoulder armor in most Star Wars sets don’t provide that same coverage and to me look like the smaller spaulders.
Why the boring language lesson? I keep saying I’ve been overthinking things and my armor isn’t haphazard. I formerly was a pretty avid martial artist and have some firearm experience, so if I’m designing armor for me, it’s going to work for me. That means getting details right, including mobility and use cases. Let’s get a first glimpse at my spaulders and tassets.
This is my left shoulder spaulder. I’ve marked a line down the center and I’m holding it over something with a long flat edge (dehumidifier if you’re interested). Once the center line is heated, I was able to bend it down the line, creating something like a crease rather than just a smooth curve. Either would work, but I liked how the crease looked.
The piece with rivets and layers at the top is for my right thigh and I think this would be best called a “tasset.” You can see the spaulder from above thanks to the line. We’ll come back to that one in a moment as there’s another piece that needs to be attached to it. The two simpler pieces are the other tasset (left leg) and spaulder (right shoulder).
Don’t worry, I will be making vambraces to cover my forearms, but those will be a different story entirely when it comes to build and I’m saving those for later. How much thought went into this armor? Let’s discuss the term “haute-piece.”
This is the left spaulder, that if you looked closely had a second piece laying on it in the picture we just looked at. Here I am inserting a support piece to reinforce the attachment of it to the main piece of the spaulder. It kinda looks like a little wing jutting off the side. What’s the point of that?
That’s a haute-piece. Imagine a weapon like a sword or lightsaber hitting my shoulder. Let’s say it hit me right in the “with glade” logo. Let’s further imagine that the blow was not perfectly perpendicular to the armor....
