duct tape bracer

Ehh dude you might wanan look a little further than that if it is to be affective in my own mind for some chest armour cable of taking a punch you would want cotton and chicken wire basicaly sandwich the cotton between chicken wire now cut the chicken wire to overlapi itself and keep doing this,It could possibly take a knife.

haha you can do anything with duct tape! you can use it every single day...until you run out

No a duct tape finish would look nice.If ya try it post pics and you can do some tests with it (put it against a pillow and stab it if the pillow is cut you would be if not then you would be fine also try it agains a water mellon as they bruise so it would be a good indicator of the strentghts

I dont think its too hard and there are plenty of cheap substitutes

[boxburner]

hey, i tried this out, i used the basic design, then cut up a few coke cans and made them into sheets, put that between layers of duct tape and cotton wool. (i designed it to be light, for use in paintballing) after readng thru this thred, i saw making body armour, i thought i would try and make a hinged full arm cover

[Necromancer]

Very nice idea. As to using chicken wire, it'd be wise to use a few layers of the screen they put on doors. Chicken wire has 1 inch squares usually, cuts easy, and is fairly heavy as compared to the screen. Plus with the screen, a few layers also acts as padding to help absorb blunt blows easier. And the Coke cans are a good idea too, I'll have to try it.

Another idea: if you could manage to implant some sheathes for thin blades (think long throwing knives), then they could acts both as armour (if placed correctly), and as a weapon you can pull out of the armour. It would be pretty damned nice if you got in to a fight with some jerk packing a knife.