This instructable is promissed continuation to How to Make Scale Armor From Bottle Caps, so I recommend to go and check it up to have an Idea of what I'm talking about here. There'll also be two more I'bles on attaching scales in other ways, so stay tooned.

So the way I attached scales on the original test piece was something, I came up on a go, and after that I had a few thoughts on better, or just alternative ways of doing that. This is one of them and it implements lacing the caps to the padding with a rope, paracord or a leather strip.

Step 1:

To prepare the cap for lacing you need to make the hole. It can be just drilled, if you don't want to bother, but I decided to make something more advanced with it. As you can see the hole is formed in few steps. I'm showing the process in more detail in the original instructable, so I'm not going into that here, just go there and look.

The hole made this way has minimum of a sharp edge of metal contacting with the lace, so there's less opportunities for it to cut through it, thus it will make the armor more durable and long lasting.

Step 2:

The scales can be attached to the padding that is made of few layers of fabric stitched together. It can be felt or leather, or something completely different.

In this project I'm using a piece of leather to make my life a bit easyer and to make things a bit more visible and clear on photos.

If leather is used, the holes are should be punched out. If it is a padding made of fabric, using a thick awl is a preferable option, because the awl spreads the fibers of the fabric instead of cutting them, thus retaining the strenght of the material.

The position of holes can be premarked for greater convenience. Use the template I'm providing. There's two holes for each cap; I'm going to call them the bottom one and the top one.

Step 3:

As I said earlier, different stuff can be used as a lace. For this demonstration I'm using a pair of disfunctional shoelaces.

Tie a knot at one end. If it's made of something synthetic, melt the other end and form a stiff conical area for more convenient lacing. If it's made from something natural, you will seve youreself a lot of time if do something like this:

Frayed Shoe Lace Fix

To start lacing, pull the lace from behind the padding onto face through the bottom hole, than through the hole in the cap.

Step 4:

Than pull it through the top hole to the back.

Step 5:

On the back, make a loop around the knot on the lace and return to the face through the top hole.

Step 6:

Than go around the edge of the cap through the bottom hole and pull the lace through the loop on the back.

Pull everything tide and snug.

Step 7:

Now go through the next bottom hole to the face for attaching next cap.

Step 8:

Here everything is basically the same, just instead of makin the loop arond the knot, it goes around the incoming lace (photos make it clear).

Step 9:

Now it's just a matter of keaping adding new caps row by row. I had to break the pattern of lacing at the top area because one lace I used run out short.

You can see that attaching caps to the padding this way is way more accurate than what I suggested initially, and using a lace is more durable and long lasting option in conditions, where sharp edges of caps are constantly rub against it.

As I said, I think of two more ways of attaching caps, so I'll add links here later:

- CapScale. Attaching scales by stitching.

- CapScale. Attaching scales by riveting.

This is it for now. Thanks for your attention, and have a nice scale.

But also... If you feal like I'm doing something useful and you want to see me doing more of that, please, concidere to support me on patreon. I always have new Ideas and willing to explore new crafts and stuff, so even with some humble extra budget I'll have more directions to explore and efforts to spend on my projects.