In the spring of 2008 I made a pair of hardened leather cuisses for heavy combat. I re-used leather I had from 2007 originally as water hardened thighs for use in combat archery. But they weren't hard enough or well padded enough to take stout blows to the thighs. The cotton fabric I added in '08 also tore pretty easily and by the end of Pennsic they were in great need of repair. The first thing I did was obtain some durable navy colored cotton duck and comfortable linen to make the shell. I also purchased a roll of 1/8' fused cotton batting to make the padding. I purchased new larger washers (mirror escucheons) to make backing for the brass rivets to prevent them from pulling through the leather. I set about wetting and glue hardening the old leather legs. This adds the necessary rigidity to disperse the force of a blow on the leg over a greater area. The end result is 3 layers of canvas, 1 layer of linen, 5 layers of cotton batting and the 13 oz. hard leather cuisses. In addition to adding metal grommets at the pointing locations, Leather backing was also added so that the polyenes (knee cops) would stay attached. On the old cuisses, I had one point failure where it pulled through the fabric.

Knees are by White Bat Armory (NLA).