Made some progress on my long-term armor quest! Here's a set of shoulder armor I made as a prototype. (Actually I made this over a month ago but kept forgetting to get photos of it.)

These have been on my mind as something I wanted to figure out for years. Then someone had asked about pauldrons/spaulders with scale maille on the shoulders, but then I was busy and stressed with things and haven't quite figured the scales part out yet, and then they postponed their request, so you know. Yeah. But here's a good first draft of this sort of armor.

The next step is to come up with more interesting things to do on the shoulder pads. I'm thinking about sewing down spikes made of leather, constructed similar to the horn masks I've been playing with recently ( http://armoreddragon.tumblr.com/post/76591173743 ). If I wanted to do something simple and punk-like I could just attach lots of spikes and studs into the surface. I could maybe also do something with the same sort of leather scale pattern as I used in my scale bracers. ( http://www.etsy.com/listing/150466982 )

This set I haven't even stained or finished. Maybe I should do that, but I kind of already did the important thing with these (being figure out the shapes and sizes and making sure it works). And staining and finishing over and around the rivets and buckles is awkward.

Anyway, in addition to the buckles to adjust the fit around the chest, the shoulder pieces are attached to the straps with removable Chicago screws, so the distance from the shoulders to the center rings can also be adjusted.

Some more photos from different angles can be seen on my Tumblr blog: http://armoreddragon.tumblr.com/post/78700557162