In this article, I shall describe the making of what could be called a mogami kebiki haramaki. That is, a solid lame, close laced torso armour that closes in the rear.
This article is very unfinished. I'm only putting it in in this form because someone I know needs the infor right now! Picutres will follow later!To make your pattern, you'll need some measurements. But not just any measurements. For the method to work correctly, all horizontal measurements must be made in multiples of 5/16" of an inch. That's because our lacing is 3/8" wide, and we want just a bit of overlap. All the vertical measurements must be multiples of 2 1/4" because that's how high the lames will be, minus the overlap between lames.
The pattern you'll be generating is not literal, as with most patterns. It is schematic meaning that while it is not strictly to scale, it very directly reflects what you will be building.
Take the following measurements:
Our test subject is about 6' tall, with a 32" waist and a 40" chest. The height from his waist to pectoral is 11"
Adjusting the measurements to the 5/16" and 2 1/4" requirements we find that his chest is 128 * 5/16", his waist is 104 * 5/16" (we rounded up to the nearest even number here), and the height is 5 * 2.25" (we rounded up rather than round down, so this will be something like a quarter inch taller than ideal.)
In The Raito Method, the most important thing to know about any component of the laced parts of the armour is "How many holes wide is it?" Again, this is because we will drill holes every 5/16" of an inch. So we measure all laced pieces in terms of how many holes across it is.
So we now know that we will construct the main part of the dou so that it is 5 lames high, going from 104 holes wide to 128 holes wide. We can now begin to construct our pattern. We take a piece of graph paper and, using each square as 1 lame high and 4 holes wide, we draw a rectangle one square high and 26 squares wide, representing the lowest lame at the waist.
Next, we draw a rectangle one square high and 32 squares long, with 3 squares between it and the waist rectangle, for the uppermost full body lame. This will result (eventually) in a pattern 5 squares high, for the 5 full lames of the torso. But we also have to center the top lame over the bottom lame, so we draw it 3 squares over from the waist lame. Note that on the drawing I have also indicated the center line.
Now we have to put in the 3 remaining body lames. We know that on each side we need 3 more lames, and that on each side the chest is 12 holes larger than the waist. So we need to expand those 12 holes from the waist to the chest in 4 steps. Since 12 conveniently goes into 4 3 times, each higher lame must be 3 holes larger than the one below. (You fat guys may find the reverse to be true with your own measurements.) We draw the intervening lames.
Next, we deal with patterning the kusazuri (tassets). The first thing to decide is how many you want. For an armour like this, generally 5, 7 or 9 work well. I'll choose 7 here.
The total length of the top lames of all the tassets equals the waist measurement. Therefore, the total length of the top lames of the tassets is 104 holes. But 104 / 7 is 14 with 6 holes left over. So all but 1 of the tassets will be 15 holes wide, and the last will be 14. We will make the center tasset 14 wide. But, because we're cutting something the exact size of the waist insto smaller pieces, we'll lose 1 hole per piece, because we're cutting through where that hole would be. So even though we'll have pieces 15 holes wide, they will actually only have 14 holes. It sounds confusing, but once you cut a few pieces, it gets easy to remember.
Begin by marking a rectangle one square high, and just as long as the waist lame, just below the waist lame. Then we divide it into 7 pieces according to our figures above.
Each of the tassets will be 5 lames high, with each tasset getting wider towards the bottom. The tassets in the rear only get wider on the side toward the front. SO the rear tassets have lames that are 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 holes wide. We draw that in.
The other lames get wider on both sides towards the bottom, so we add 2 holes for each lower lame. We draw in one other tasset, and the center tasset (Because it is a bit smaller). We don't need to draw in all the tassets, and if we did, there would be some confusing overlap in the pattern. As you can see, the tassets overlap quite a bit, just as they're supposed to.
Now we'll pattern the upper pieces of the torso. Because the human body is not a cylinder, we can't just divide the chest measurement into quarters.
Unless you are very tall or very short, the upper front is made 3 lames high, surmounted by a piece rigidly laced to the uppermost lame. Measure the distance from nipple to nipple and normalize this to a n even number of holes,. keeping in mind that you want the front plate slightly wider than the distance between the nipples, to avoid getting hit and pinching anipple between the weapon and the side of the lames. For our armour, this works out to 36 holes. We mark out the 3 lames, centerd on the front of the armour.
Again, barring a severe difference in height, the upper rear is made of 4 lames surounted by a rigidly laced piece. Measure across the shoulder blades to the inside of the shoulder socket. Japanese armours classically are rather wide in the rear. Again normalize this to an even number of holes. Split this number of holes into 2, because we are making a haramaki, and it is split doen the back. For our armour, this works out to 26 holes on each side. Draw in the lames on each side of the pattern.
This leaves the underarms, which split the remaining hiles between them. In this armour, that's 20 holes each.
I wrote this from memory, and it might not be correct. Especially, I suspect that the front lames may have to be an odd number across, as we want an actual even number of holes. Patterning is a bit fiddly, and I usually have to redraw it at least once to work everything out. When I actually make the example armour, I'll update this article. But the basic method is sound.
This works out to the following pieces:
If you don't quite see how the pattern fits together, draw in a row of holes and make sure that everything matches up well. The time to correct the pattern is whne it's still on the graph paper, not after you've already cut everything out.