Seeking help and advice for armor materials

Well, the project is slowly coming along. What I am looking for is materials to make the armor out of. I have a online friend who is willing to make the armor for me, and to my specifications out of leather. However, she wants eight hundred for it. I thought the price too steep, but I didn't burn any bridges.

One of my best friends father knows his way of making armor very well as the whole family are members of the SCA before they moved from Wyoming to New York. There, the transit authority would allow them to use old and beat up street signs that were taken down for whatever reason, and reused after a good bending with heat, a hammer and an anvil to make armor out of, plus paint ect.

However, the rochester ny transit authority will not sell it to the individual, but companies, and if you do want to get signs, you will have to go buy them on ebay. The prices there aren't really fair either. I've seen a stop sign run for something like 900 dollars.

I did find a site: store.hallsigns.com/Aluminum-Sign-Blanks_c_255.html which is amazing. The signs are cheap, without paint or lettering, just the shapes, and you can decide how large you want them, and with or without their mounting holes. I picked two 60' x 24' .063 gauge Aluminum signs blank, for 20.00 each. However, the shipping is just... through the roof. They want to charge you $200 dollars for shipping! I assume this is because it's an over sized item and must be shipped via LTL freight.

This is something that I could fit in the back of my car and drive off with it, so that's really unreasonable. I'm currently following up some different leads locally in the Rochester NY area, but does anyone know where I could get the metal for to make the armor?

I'd really appreciate it!

Look up scrap metal buyers in your area. See if they will sell you small amounts of aluminum & such. Large cans of Red Bull can be sliced open & folded/shaped into other stuff.

Aluminum sheets can be bought at a lowes or home depot for pretty cheap. not big enough for a breast plate, but any other piece should be doable.

Phage,

Thank you so much! I was able to go to home deopt and get pretty big aluminum sheets. I will also be able to go back and get some steel sheets that they have there too if I ever do run out of materials while we are making the armor. That really payed off, and I thank you so much!

Glad I could help!