I just found these newsletters and I'm absolutely loving them--especially since they contain a lot of detailed images which, in the instances when they have been posted to the forum, have often disappeared due to an end of support from the hosting services.
I have to confess, you guys got me. I started out wanting to make a workable costume for a nerdy athletic challenge. A rayon tunic and a goretex cape ought to do, right?
Now I find myself putting serious thought into a MERS-level kit...for a nerdy athletic challenge. Just bought a
bunch of veg-tan leather that I'm looking forward to learning to work with.
In that vein, a couple of things stood out to me in the MERS standards that I wonder if someone else could shed some light on--specifically, rivets and metals.
The document says,
No two-piece rivets, or extraneous studs or rivets in clothing or leather ‘armor’
What exactly constitutes a 2-piece rivet? Obviously pop rivets and D&D "studded leather" wouldn't fit, but the only one-piece rivets I know of are used in metalworking--a metal pin slipped through two pieces of metal and then pounded out to deform and make a friction-fit. This doesn't seem viable for leather. Metal washers on either side seem like a bare minimum to grip leather properly.
Can anybody shed light on the historical usage of rivets in leather or cloth goods? Would a copper nail peened to a copper washer on the back be plausible? If not, are
any rivets acceptable outside of metalworking, or is stitching just the best bet?
Secondly,
Acceptable Metals: Iron, Steel, Tin, Copper, Bronze, and referenced precious metals.
Leave the mithril spork at home, sure, but brass seems rather conspicuously absent. It's hardly a modern alloy, and as near as I can tell was used a fair bit at least as far back as the Roman period in Europe. Is this an oversight, or is there a reason for eschewing it?