Dying and articulation

I dyed the straps for my greaves with the ox blood dye I got from Tandy. This time I didn't soak the leather, and the resulting color was a beautiful rich, quite dark red; the kind of red you'd expect to find on the leather chairs in a haughty English smoking lounge, which was exactly what I wanted. When I died the belts I was working on earlier I'd soaked them in water first. Using the same dye, and the same leather they turned fuscia; the kind of red you'd expect on the thong of the most flamboyant guy in a gay Mardi Gras parade. It's a beautiful red for, well thongs and stuff, but not so much for a belt I'd be really into wearing. It's a shame too, because the water seemed to help the dye go on very evenly.

I've been tinkering with the patterns for my Black Prince arm harness now for a couple weeks. I've gone through eight revisions of the lames alone. Sometimes the articulation works out great, and sometimes it's an abysmal failure. If I just had to get it to work out once for me it would be no big deal, but getting this to be a fool proof design is proving to be tough. I did suceed in reducing the scissoring that the earlier designs had. The lame seems a touch on the long side still, and I think I'm dishing the lames too deeply, which is hurting my extension and leading to gapping. When it works though, I'm getting almost 90 degrees of bend from each lame.