I’ve always been a big fan of Lord of the Rings, and really appreciate the design and craftsmanship on display throughout the movies. One of my motivations for learning leather craft was being able to make pieces using authentic materials, and Boromir’s Bracers were perfect as a first major project for me to apply my leather crafting skills to create a realistic replica.

Working from movie references and photos of the costume, I drew up the pattern by hand, using several paper mock-ups to get the shape correct and properly scaled. When I was happy with the design, I transferred it to tracing paper and marked the pattern on a 6oz. vegetable tanned tooling hide by placing the pattern on the leather and tracing over it with a leather modelling stylus.

The bracers consist of two layers of leather: the front layer has the Tree of Gondor and wing design, and is mounted on a back layer onto which the straps are attached. Once the pattern had been transferred onto the leather, these layers were cut out, along with the straps. Stitching holes were stamped into the pieces, and the bracers were temporarily stitched to ensure that all the pieces fitted together and that the straps aligned correctly.

Once I was happy that everything was sized and shaped correctly, I started the process of adding the designs to the blank bracers. For the Tree of Gondor and vine designs, I drew up and printed off blueprints, scaled correctly to my initial pattern. These were transferred onto styrene sheet, carefully cut out and cleaned up with files. The pieces were glued onto styrene backing sheets to make the stamps, including all 33 tiny leaf pieces! For each of the stamps, the leather was wet, the stamp aligned, and clamped in place between MDF sheets until the leather had dried.

I had traced the design for the wings onto the front layer of the leather when I was initially transferring my pattern, which I used as a guideline when embossing the leather. This was done by damping the leather, then drawing a bevelling stamp across the pattern’s lines while continually hitting it with a mallet to raise and sculpt each feather. I went over the wings in places with a pear shading stamp to add more depth, and the stars were marked in with the stylus and raised with the bevelling stamp.

All of the pieces were dyed with Angelus Leather Dye’s Dark Brown and left to dry before I burnished the backs and edges with Gum Tragacanth and an edge slicker. The indented leather of the vines and Tree of Gondor was painted with metallic acrylic paint and a steady hand, after which the bracers were assembled. The top layer was first stitched to the bottom layer and the buckles were stitched into the straps. The straps holding the buckles are doubled-over and were stitched to both the front and back of the bracers. Having test stitched the pieces and measured the straps to the correct length early in the process meant that I didn’t have any concerns about the straps aligning as I completed the final assembly.