Another day, another ~/.plan. To re-cap the weekend in a succinct
manner, it went well. ;-) We visited lots of people over the course of
a few days, both friends and family. I even played UNO! I haven't
done that for ages! I would describe this more, but I put most of it in
my private journal and don't feel like rehashing it again.

I'm a little tired today. I spent the night working on armor with Gep,
again. I wanted to "redo" my "legs", knee cop and cuisse (upper thigh
plates), so that they both fit better and remove the necessity to use
duct tape to keep them in place.

Both the right and left thigh plates were cracked, so a quick repair job
was necessary. I drilled a large hole at the base of each "growing"
crack to stop its progress. Then I drilled holes to either side of the
cracks so I could lash them together with shoe lace. I also cut out the
"crotch" (finally) of each thigh plate so they don't rub together
between my legs any more -- a much needed improvement.

The leg harness, a standard weight-lifting belt with two "drop" buckles,
was done incorrectly the first time, years ago. The buckles were too
far to the outside of my hips. I drilled out the rivets and re-mounted
the buckles over my "hip pointers". I also re-mounted the straps on the
thigh plates to coincide with the new mounting point.

The knee cops were in grave need of a better way to secure them to my
legs. The shoe lace was replaced with actual straps and buckles. They
fit much more securely in place now. The next step was to hang them
from the thigh plates. The problem was that because of the re-mounting
and re-cutting of the thigh plates, they were now too short and did not
reach the knee cops. I had a couple plastic plates left-over from my
Brigandine coat of plates that worked perfectly as "floaters" over the
gap between the cuisse and knee cops.

All of this took me longer than I had hoped, keeping me busy into the
wee hours of the morning. The result is satisfactory, however. There
is one more improvement to the knees that I need to make to ensure that
they pass every armor inspection I enter. I need something below the
knee cops to protect the top of my shin bone when I flex my legs. A
thick leather "vambrace" may work out well in this case. Something
that'll float up and down the leg as it flexes and extends.

On the other hand, I could just foot the cash for a nice pair of
articulating steel "leg harnesses".

Anyway, time to get back to work.

^chewie