Finished This Dragon Tail Commission Last Night. Its Got Brown Anodized Aluminum On Top With A Yellow/gold

Finished this dragon tail commission last night. It’s got brown anodized aluminum on top with a yellow/gold anodized aluminum underbelly. The commissioner wanted it based on an alligator character, so I could call it a gator tail, but I still think of these as dragon tails.

I added some backwards-turned scales into the pattern to mimic the double row of bumpy armored scales that gators have down their spine. I think it turned out pretty well. It’s a subtle effect from certain angles, but when the light catches it from other directions the inverted scales catch the light really well. 

31 inches long, so slightly shorter than my standard pattern. It weighs in at 2 pounds 10 ounces.

I’m currently not taking more commissions for these until I get through my queue of outstanding orders, but you can still check out my page of information about them if you’d like.

A hat band I made for a friend, which will be a gift to his father. Made of stainless steel rings in a European 4-in-1 pattern.

Hi! I was curious, what size scales do you use for your tails? The all look so amazing btw!

Thank you! I use the Large sized scales from The Ring Lord. (Though I just got some of their Extra Large scales that they made a batch of, and I’m super excited about making something with them.)

I assembled that shark head mask design last night! Here, have a whole bunch of progress shots of me making it! Putting it behind a break so it doesn’t take up 5 pages of your dashboard:

Got no shots of it being cut, oh well. Here are all the pieces stained and laid out. I used blue and turquoise stains, with sparkly stuff mixed in. The manufacturer calls the color/additive “pearl.” I haven’t had much chance to use it yet.

That really long Y-shaped piece at top is the part that goes all the way from the nose to the back of the neck, and it’s where your head goes through. I put in a bunch of grommets into it to make the lace-up closure work nicely.

The first big thing is to test-assemble the whole thing, in case I messed something up with the design. I don’t want to start riveting it all together only to find halfway through that I messed something up.

So! Time to soak all the pieces in water to soften them up, and get going!

Starting at the center in the back.

Adding the next piece on the side, with the gills over where your ears go.

The next piece, with the side of the mouth. The eye is starting to make sense. Next comes the detail I was most worried about: the turning point at the nose.

And it worked! The leather flexed and curved just right. I had not expected it to work out this well.

Here’s what the interior looks like at this point.

Starting up the next side, in the same order. Here we see the closure, now starting to hold itself in place. 

The second side. It’s really starting to hold its shape well now.

About to deal with the second side of the tricky nose joint.

Looks great! Now just need to do the front of the neck.

Yay! Time to try it on, because I couldn’t resist.

OK, so all the parts fit together, it looks good. Now I have to do the harder part of actually hammering all those rivets closed so they’re permanent. The tricky thing about this, is you can only hammer something down from above onto a flat surface. Basically, if you’re trying to assemble a sphere out of small pieces, you can easily re-position the pieces to do the riveting while the assembly is pretty small. But you run into problems as you get close to closing it up.

What that boils down to is, I need to re-evaluate the design and figure out an order that I’ll be able to assemble it in. To get it done, I’ll basically need to disassemble the whole thing and re-assemble it.

I start with the nose...

And everything’s messy and floppy. The rivets right up in the nose area have been pounded flat. The ones down by the neck I just left in place from the test assembly to try to keep things a bit tidier while I work.

Pound it in, hammer it out. Gonna speed up the telling a bit, because it’s basically just “once more with feeling.”

Here I’ve got both sides done, and am starting up the center.

And it’s assembled! Now it just needs to dry. How do you hold something like this in place so it doesn’t flop or squish while drying?

Carefully. It’s sitting on a roll of tape wrapped in a towel perched on the tip of a strip of wood cantilevered out from my shelves. It’s actually stable. Kinda jank, though.

Thanks for reading! Sorry for the somewhat non-professional workshop environment (being, my basement bedroom). But I figure it’s more important to make cool things at a high level of quality. I often try to maintain a professional image when presenting my stuff, but sometimes it’s good to see how the sausage gets made.

I haven’t gotten nice photos of it yet, I’ll try to do that tomorrow.

I posted this other Bowser-spiked collar the other day, and someone asked for one in a different color scheme. This one also doesn’t have the soft lining layer, so it took considerably less time to stitch together. The commissioner also wanted a D ring in the middle, which was pretty straightforward, and a locking buckle, which I happened to have a couple of on hand.

I also decided to use vinegaroon instead of black dye for the base. It’s a super cool and hilariously old-school chemistry process where you rust some steel wool into some vinegar, and when you put it on the leather it reacts with the tannins in the the leather and turns the leather black. Since it’s chemically bonded to the leather, it can’t rub off, which is pretty cool. (Though to be fair I’ve been very happy with the dyes I have, I have never noticed dye any transfer problems with them.) And it soaks all the way through the thickness of the leather, which is pretty cool.

The collar is currently sitting soaking up a last coat of neatsfoot oil on the spikes, which should even out the discoloration seen here at the base of the spikes. (That’s from the oil in the black strap, which I oiled before assembly, soaking up into the spikes.) Then it’ll ship out tomorrow.

I was wondering if you have a pattern that I can follow to make one myself. I will really appreciate it.

I don’t really have a pattern to give that really fully explains how to make a tail. I suggest learning to make chainmail first, then attacking it once you’re comfortable with doing some moderately complex things. I think tackling a project without having plans laid out ahead of time really forces you to learn lots of things and improve your skills. I do have a couple links that might help though.

Here’s a progression of me building a tail. It’s not really a step-by-step tutorial, but if you’re comfortable with chainmail you ought to be able to work on it for a while and fill in most of the gaps.

Here’s a template for planning out a pattern of different colors of scales.