First of all, I'm going to try a new blogging schedule, which will hopefully be more consistent: new posts will be once a week on Mondays - for now at least.
And here it is: at long last, a finished project! This is a harness for use by a fire department circa 1905. My next post will be a bit of history and more information on the design of these harnesses. The biggest difference from a normal harness is in the design of the hinged collars with attached hames.
In
Part One, I showed how I made the collars themselves. The hames, though, were the really tricky part. They were made from brass strips, jump rings, wire, sewing pins, and gold thread. They are attached permanently to the collars.
The main part of the hames were shaped by bending with two sets of smooth-jawed pliers, a difficult task as they have to bend along the width as well as the length. I did try hammering them on a small anvil, but in the end careful bending with the pliers worked best.
Next, I punched some holes in the hames. The way to do this without a drill is to pound a nail (of a metal harder than the brass!) carefully through the strip. Hold the nail with a pliers and place the brass strip on a scrap piece of wood, then hammer away. Be careful to keep the nail centered on the brass. Eventually you will get a small hole.
The hole can be widened and smoothed out with a round file. I also used a flat file to get rid of the burr on the back side of the hole. There is a small hole on the top of each hame and a larger hole (for the latch) on the bottom of the right hand side.
All sharp edges are rounded off with a file and sandpaper. The hames were then lightly sanded with very fine sandpaper (600 grit) and rubbed down to remove any tarnish. Craft brass will tarnish fairly easily and fingerprints may show up much later if not cleaned off.
First, I had to peel off the chamois lining from the back of the collars, as I had gotten ahead of myself. Then, the hames were attached at the top by a sewing pin bent at the top and pushed all the way through the collar. The pin is drawn all the way through and the end trimmed short, to create a sort of rivet. If you've ever made a Rio Rondo kit saddle, it's exactly the same idea. The small rectangle of chamois in the picture below is covering the end of the pin, for extra security and protection for the horse.
Using a round-nose pliers, I made a series of rings with long ends out of wire - you can see two of them in the upper right corner. I made holes in the collar (hidden under the hames) with a large sewing needle, then pushed the wire through and attached jump rings. This made the collar terrets for the reins, and the ring to attach the pole chain (seen here with a lanyard hook attached). The left hand side of the collar has a piece of wire attached under the hames for the collar latch. Thinner flat brass strip was used for the trace attachment. The ends go through the collar and bend flat on the back as with the other parts. It is also sewn in place with a few loops of gold thread. The lower ends of the hames are sewn down as well. Then the chamois lining was glued back in to cover everything. I rubbed down the brass one more time, and coated the whole thing with clear leather sealant to keep it from tarnishing.
The collars close by passing the wire from the right hand side through the hole in the left hand hame. The wire has a bend in the end to hook the latch.
The best part of this harness is that it works exactly like the real thing: it is ridiculously fast to put on! Simply slide the breeching under the tail, and hook the collar closed. Everything else can be adjusted ahead of time. I'd even leave it attached to the vehicle, except that the bridles are hard to buckle if left til last. The pole chains and trace chains all have working clips, so everything snaps together.
Next week: history and design of fire department harnesses!
No comments:
Post a Comment