Leather Scale Armor Pattern
If you are going to be making armor you are going to need leather scale armor patterns to base your work on. These will server as a guide when cutting the individual scales out of leather. It is also important to have patterns so that all holes can be punched in just the right place on each scale.
This first pattern is what we will show in most of our examples of how to connect scales together. Its a pretty good layout.
This second pattern may be slightly more optimal than the first but isn't used in as may examples. If adapting this seems like it would be easy to you, this might be the best choice.
There are many different shapes to choose from. They are all valid choices and depend completly on what you prefer and how much work you want to put into your armor. Anything with a curve may take slightly more effort. Most of the hole punching patterns will work great with any of these shapes. Some may require minimal adjustment to the holes.
People use a variety of different layouts when punching holes in the scales. Below are some examples of what people use. Some of these would obviously work great. Others make take some imagination to come up with a good way to thread them together. Stick with the first two examples we showed above.
This is how they look when they are all stitched together. Note how easy it would be to just use a slightly different pattern.
