By Violante
Made of mild steel and painted before hammering the rivets in place so no nooks go without rust protection. The padding will be added when the other knee is finished.
This style of knee features a wider fan on the outside of the knee for protection. The cop sticks out a fair bit, but is much sturdier than other designs.
Many thanks to Lord Mikhail for teaching me how to do this. I had no experience with metalwork up until now. I’ve outlined the process we used below.
- Trace and cut the metal pieces out. We used a jig saw, and then sanded the edges down.
- Dish and roll the metal. The lames can go through a roller, but the knee cop has to be dished. Our method of doing this was to place it in a rounded hollow inside a stump and repeatedly slam it with a replica cannon ball welded onto a rod. Use it as a round anvil for smoothing edges.
- Weld the two knee cop pieces together.
- One by one, figure out where to place the rivets, then drill holes. If you mess up a placement, weld the hole away.
- Wash off any markings, then rust proof and paint the individual pieces.
- Insert the rivets and hammer in place.
