Recently, we’ve been working on expanding our range of technologies, to provide armor-design option nobody else does. Here is a fresh update on technologies and options available, to boost your own imagination and creative thinking
Our most common options are stainless and mild steel. The choice is obviously yours, but we normally recommend stainless for everything but strictly historically accurate pieces when you want to be as close to the original as possible. Mild steel is generally a little bit softer than stainless, easier to make, and harder to maintain rust-free
Etching is one of our signature technologies, we etch stainless steel using a combination of chemical etching and electroplating. Our etching is deep, very clear, and practically indestructible. Etched mild steel is very vulnerable to corrosion, etched stainless steel sometimes might show some minor signs of oxidized spots on the surface but they are very thin and could be easily removed.
We also like combining etched stainless steel with brass accents, and we etch brass too.
We make direct (when the pattern is etched) and reverse (when the surface is etched and the pattern is flat) etching and they both look extremely clear and deep.
Another great option, when you want to get the best of the two worlds, i.e. relatively light-weight and at the same time functional and combat-ready armor, is spring steel. Spring steel is very hard, it should be forged hot, but it allows to build armor that is 30% lighter than its stainless steel analogues. Making spring steel armour is hard, steel hardening is one of the most technologically complex processes, and hardened spring steel is not rust-protected, so our choice is to oil blacken our spring steel armor after it is hardened. A lot of armorers use chemical blackening, which is easier, and at the first sight it looks very solid, but it is just a thin layer that rarely lasts long. Oil blackening is way more time-consuming, but you can see the difference right away, as tempered steel oil blackening creates a shimmering effect on the surface.
Another interesting option is artificially weathered, hammered and blackened metal, this one was the basis for our “Wayward Knight” kit but it also can be applied to many of our designs. Our first full tempered spring steel armour kit was “Dark Star” and the “Dark Wolf” kit is built on the aesthetics of a black and silver elements combination.
Our next move was making golden steel. There is a well-known technology of titanium oxidation, though it is expensive, applicable to a certain range of shapes only, and creates a very modern-looking golden color glittering, so we postponed our experiments until the last year. When you do things you also learn things, so with some experiments and luck we learned how to combine steel polishing with mechanically transforming the surface of the stainless steel into the brass-covered surface. The nice thing about this technology is that it is still metal, either hardened spring steel or stainless, so no armor protective properties are compromised. The “Evening Star” and the “Morning Star” kits were born, and again, this technology can be applied to any of our kits but etched…