Wooden Scale Maille Choker Necklaces That I Made In The Last Week Or So After Having Made Some Bracelets

Wooden scale maille choker necklaces that I made in the last week or so after having made some bracelets with smaller wooden scales.

I laser-cut the scales out of marine plywood, which tends to be a very nice material, and is rather strong. (If these were made out of straight planks of hardwood, they would break immediately along the direction of the grain. But the plywood is made with 3 layers of veneer laid cross-wise, so it's much stronger.)

Baltic birch plywood is one of my go-to materials for wood. It's the lighter blonde wood with a very clear grain. I also got a small amount of Okoume to play around with. It's a medium-dark wood with a red tone and a more pronounced grain, a bit similar to mahogany. I like it. For both, I finished the wood with tung oil before cutting it. I'm liking the oil finish more than a varnish or something. It brings out the grain, gives it a bit of luster, and helps waterproof it a bit. But I think it feels more natural and pure than varnishing it, which feels more artificial to me.

I really want to make something large with these scales. Like a dragon tail or a shirt. Also, if people show interest in these, I may also see about acquiring more types of woods.

Newly completed scale dragon tail with mottled red stripes on a black background, plus a full line of spikes down the spine. The last photo I really liked because it showed off the swinging motion of the tail so well.

I also just finished writing up my tail ordering guide and posting it on this blog. If you're interested, check it out: http://armoreddragon.tumblr.com/tails

Just a quick necklace in a weave I haven't used before. Generally I haven't much liked spiral weaves, because the default pattern only looks good when it's kept twisted open. If you just let it hang, it untwists and looks untidy and bad.

But it turns out that if you double all the rings in the pattern, physics makes it hang neatly. The chain as a whole has a nice round spiraling profile.

This weave doesn't work in a ring size that I currently have many colors in. But I like stainless steel. In theory I could start stocking more sizes of colored rings, but for now I'm still happy with what I've got.

Wooden scale maille bracelet I just made. I've been meaning to do this for years, but the arrival of the clear plastic scales finally goaded me into CADing up the dimensions and laser cutting the wood.

This wood is .8 mm thick plywood, so it's actually a good deal stronger than you'd expect. This first batch of scales I just cut quickly out of a scrap piece the laser shop had lying around. The next time I do it I'll be finishing the wood before I cut it, probably using tung oil. It'll deepen the color a bit, draw out the grain, make it a bit more lustrous, and help it avoid getting dirty.

I'm seriously contemplating making something big like a shirt out of wooden scales, and doing stuff like varying the size and shape of the scales along the piece to give it different textures. I may also look into getting veneers of fancy woods to laminate onto the wood before I cut it. (I need plywood because I don't trust planks of hardwoods not to split in the direction of the grain.)

Oh, and you can follow the link at the beginning to find this on my Etsy store!

A quick photo of a black sea dragon mask that someone requested. They say they'll be wearing it at Dragon Con as part of a costume. This mask design I have listed in default colors of green and blue, but as with all of my designs I'm more than happy to make it in different colors.

I guess I haven't posted many photos of masks on hats. When I have a booth set up at a craft fair, it's normally the way I prop up the fancier masks I make.

Dragon Tail commission info

I spent some time and updated my overview of options for the scale maille dragon tails I make, to post it here on Tumblr. It's over here: http://armoreddragon.tumblr.com/tails I may end up posting some sets of photos from slightly older tails to show some examples of different patterns and materials.

I'm mostly liking this theme, except that it kind of hides pages like that behind a little drop-down menu button at the top-left of the blog's main page. Maybe that's OK though.