That is all continuing along very nicely.

Hope everyone had a great start to the New Year!

The ukebari (helmet liner) was interesting to build. Completely different than anything I had done before.

Following the instructions, forming the cloth into a dome shape by pulling the threads was straightforward. Making the liner edging took a couple attempts. The first attempt ended up too small.

Sorry, no picture. I was frustrated and forgot to take a pic of the failed first attempt.

I measured the leather strip around the edge of the hachi (helmet bowl). The excess I had left over matched what the instructions indicated. I stitched it to the rest of the ukebari and placed the assembled liner inside the hachi (helmet bowl). To test fit everything, I roughly flattened the edge around the koshimaki (brim of the helmet).

It seemed like a good fit. I went ahead and trimmed the excess. However, when I actually tried to pull the ukebari into place over the koshimaki it was too tight.

In retrospect, if I pulled the leather hard enough, it might have stretched around the koshimaki but I decided I wanted a bit more play instead of fighting to make it fit.

Fortunately, there was a second strip. This time, I used almost the entire length of the piece. The second ukebari is probably on the loose side but it looked decent and I was able to get it easily to the brim of the kabuto.

I cut an EVA foam oval and molded it to the shape of the hachi (crown) of the kabuto. I added it to take up the space above the cloth portion of the ukebari.

Not traditional, but I thought it might help stabilize the helmet on the stand.

Next, instead of attaching the kabuto cord rings and fitting the ukebari over them, I cut holes in the leather and pushed the base of the detached rings through the leather so that only the rings protruded from the liner.

After the ring base was pushed through the ukebari, I attached it to the koshimaki.

Also, instead of cutting a separate hole next to the seam for the back ring, I left a gap in the seam for the ring to protrude from.

Thanks, Phil and everyone for following my build.

Attaching the shikoro (neck guard). I punched holes in the ukebari edging using a hole punch. The punch I had handy was a #3. In retrospect, a smaller punch, perhaps even the one that comes with the kit might be better.

The holes made by the #3 hole punch were almost the size of the rivet heads. Because of the stretch of the material, the holes weren’t perfectly aligned. Parts of the holes are visible around the edges of the rivet heads.

In the event, I ever wanted to change/fix the liner, re-lace the shikoro, refinish the armor etc. I wanted a way to be able to remove the shikoro.

I used hot glue to hold the ukebari to the metal kabuto. The shikoro slips into a groove around the edge of the hachi (crown) and sits in place without the rivets but will fall off if the entire helmet is turned upside down. So I figured it wouldn't take much to keep it attached.

To make a semi-permanent attachment, I used hot glue to hold the rivets halves together. So far the bond seems strong enough to keep the shikoro in place even upside down.

For now, I decided to leave the rivets exposed on the ukebari. I kind of like the aesthetic of the exposed rivet heads and I figured it was something I could easily cover at a later time should I change my mind.

The last image below shows the helmet with the shinobi-no-o (helmet cord) laced through the rings.

Starting to pick back up on my blog. You can check out what's been happening with me on my blog here.

The amount of work to build the haidate (thigh armor) looked intimidating at the onset. Turns out, building it is more tedious than complex. It is comprised of 132 plates, each laced together in rows and then each row is laced to a backing. As with the other metal parts, I started by polishing the metal plates.

Polishing each of the plates individually would take a long time. To make the process faster, I taped the plates close together on a plastic backing. In doing so, I was able to polish several plates at the same time.

I used small squares of duct tape to temporarily hold the plates together. This freed me to use both hands for the lacing process making it easier to put the plates together.

I used a rounded toothpick to help keep the mountain folds out front and the valley folds in the back. It got a bit tedious at times but taking breaks between rows helped to maintain my focus.

When I began to attach each row to the backing I realized that the plates actually overlap a bit instead of butting up against each other. Since I taped them butting up against each other, when I attached each row to the backing there was a bit of slack in the odoshi.

The slack in the lacing wasn't too bad though. You can see the results in the final image. Other than that, the build for this section went pretty smoothly.

Amazing work you`re doing lovely craftsmanship all round well done regards Phil

Lovely work, very neat and clean looking build.....

Regards

Alan

The ties that go around the suneate were heavily creased from the packaging. I ironed each of the ties to flatten them out. I used iron-on fusing web instead of white glue or stitching to close the ends of the ties.

Often the suneate are displayed propped up against haidate which is draped over the yoroi bitsu (armor storage chest). The table I planned to display the suneate on was a bit shallow front to back. I decided to experiment with creating a stand for the two shin guards.

Thanks, Phil

BTW, if anyone has any information or thoughts about the differences in leather on the backing, I'd love to learn more about it.

Actually, any information about some of the smaller details of the Samurai armor would be great. It seems easy to find information about the major parts of the armor such as the shikoro or do but information about some of the details like the tehen-no-kanamono or baden-no-byo seem limited.

And finding information about the particulars of Date Masamune's armor is difficult. Specifically differences between the model and other depictions of his armor.

More to come soon. Thanks, everybody!