Wesley's Weekly HOW TO: Gauntlet

POSTED BY Wesley Scoggins, 27 February 2008

You asked for it, and this week you get it, Gauntlets! We all love armor, but we don't like selling our souls to questionable people to obtain it, well fear no longer, you don't have to spend possibly hundreds of dollars getting "authentic" replicas, you can now build your own, for almost nothing, and with just a little work be on your way killing dragons and defeating the Normans.

First, start out with a basic black work glove. This is one of two PVC gardening gloves that I got at my local hardware store for about 4 dollars.

And get some Soda cans, and a bread pan.

Take the bread pan, and cut the bottom out of it, and cut a slit in it, so you can twist it like this...

This will be the wrist guard section of the gauntlet, but first...

Cut the top and bottoms of the soda can's, and slit them vertically, so you can flatten them out, and you get these nice strips of aluminum, it's much stronger and thicker than foil so it's easier to work with for a build like this.

Cut some smaller strips like this from the sheets, to get the texture on the strips, roll the strips up tight, and when you unroll them they'll be nice and textured like this.

Start pulling them around your wrist in segments like this, one overlapping the other. You can start hot-glueing the pieces on, start with the one closest to the wrist and work your way up with the segments, gluing each one.

Next, cut out the main hand guard, this will go on top of the glove, and be the 2nd largest piece after the wrist guard. But as you can see, I cut indentions for each finger, and a curving section on the side for the thumb.

Next, just hot glue the main hand guard on top of the segments from the wrist section. Then..

Cut some trapezoid shapes from the sheeting, and..

Glue them onto the ends of the finger tips. Then, take some more of those strips you cut earlier, and segment them on top of the finger tips, gluing all the way.

And keep segmenting all the way up, and go ahead and glue on your wrist guard, and your gauntlet is almost done.

I added a thin layer of black and silver acrylic paint mixed together, you might want to add another layer depending on how ancient it is supposed to look, and also, buff it on with a paper towel or a cloth, like you would car wax. You also might want to do some detail work on it with some gold acrylic paint, to give it some extra pizzaz.

So there you go, a basic gauntlet that cost only 4 dollars, just save a few soda cans and you'll have more than enough to make your own.

Some quick advice, adding in some rivets at the joints could help add additional realism to it, get some tiny nuts like in the second "Futuristic Armor" tutorial I did, and just glue them on.

Also, remember, GET PHOTO REFERENCES! If you want to try to replicate a specific gauntlet, get photos of it, and work on it. For Oriental style gauntlets, find images of Samurai armor and work off of it to make it look less European. If you want some kind of post-apocolyptic armor, or a gauntlet on a cyborg, adding some doodads onto it like in the Raygun episode, and having some wires coming out of the joints can add to the "realism". 

One last thing you can also add raised imprints onto your gauntlet by using clay and forming the images then inlaying them with gold paint.  

 Hope you enjoyed this and can't wait to see some Knights out there going crazy with their new armored gauntlets!