Finally got started painting my shield. The photo below is my first swing at getting the blue right. I was relatively happy with the paint itself, but I think there's too much dust in my work area to lay it down perfectly and I keep getting little dust specks on the shield. I've stripped it since then and painted it two more times and I'm going back and forth on whether to strip it once again. In any case, I've masked the shield and am getting ready to paint the red. If I decide to redo the blue, I'll just mask the whole thing except for the blue area and give it yet another go.
Also attached are a few pics of the brackets in an in-progress state. I've smoothed them down considerably since this photo was taken. They're not perfect, far from it, but I'm happy enough with them. The other picture is a really quick sketch of what I'm ultimately hoping to do with the brackets. I've always wondered why the brackets have the extra leather that makes the "X" shape, so I decided to try to put them to use. What I'd like is to be able to detach them so that I can use the existing extra leather for shoulder straps. I've been hitting some roadblocks on figuring out an attachment mechanism that will be sturdy but also easy to detach. Right now, the plan is to try to use flush mount clips to mount the metal clips. We'll see if that works at all.
It's a weird thing: as frustrating as it is to not get the paint perfect and to run into other issues, it's so much fun trying to get it just right.
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