Here's what I came up with...
I used 1/8" Sintra (expanded PVC) or also refered to as FoamX I believe as a base. I gave it the cup shape in the oven *pssst, don't tell my wife* I used heavy piping from the fabric store for the raised areas and leather from the jackets sleeve that was cut off. I know it's not "screen accurate* but does the job for me. I have a strong belief the the movie version was part of max's sleeve over the knee portion of a cricket pad as stated by another member here. So far I have not been able to find a pair of pads that fits the bill. I still need to weather the pad and add a strap.
I've never seen any convincing evidence for the idea that Max's knee pad is made from a cricket pad.
And I think that the leather of his cut-off sleeve is too thick compared to what is on his knee pad.
But regardless of that, nice job. That is a very passable knee pad. Bear in mind that many Max costumes don't even have one, or they have one that looks wildly innaccurate, so yours is a cut above.
The knee pad is pretty tricky. It's one of the reasons that it's the only part of my costume that isn't complete yet.
Remember, when it comes time to make your strap for it, the strap for Max's knee pad was one of the straps from his Rossi boots. They're about 1.5 cm wide.
And one more confounding thing: In the scene where Max gives the music box to the Feral Kid, you can see the top edge of the pad and it's very thin. It looks like one solid, molded piece. But there's definitely a seam in the middle and it has gouges in it that look like gouges in, well, leather.
No actualities claimed here, but this is what I believe was used for Max's kneepad. It is an example of what is known as a Wicket Keepers glove, used of course by the wicket keeper in a game of cricket. It seems at least plausible given that some of the warriors in the compound were wearing cricket batsmen's gloves in various configurations.
The wrist protecton areas shown on the example pic are in the correct shape and rough size, I remember during my school years gloves that were like these. It is easy to cut these half circle pieces off, sew them together to form a circular shape, and then sew in the lengthwise ridges. I am sure I recall older types of these style gloves came with the piping pattern ridges on them. These are Kookaburra gloves, I am sure they made a line that had ridges in them.
Who knows? Maybe a good area for more research?
280px-Wicket-Keeping_Gloves.jpg (17.23 KiB) Viewed 6700 times
Dragonforce wrote:No actualities claimed here, but this is what I believe was used for Max's kneepad. It is an example of what is known as a Wicket Keepers glove, used of course by the wicket keeper in a game of cricket. It seems at least plausible given that some of the warriors in the compound were wearing cricket batsmen's gloves in various configurations.
The wrist protecton areas shown on the example pic are in the correct shape and rough size, I remember during my school years gloves that were like these. It is easy to cut these half circle pieces off, sew them together to form a circular shape, and then sew in the lengthwise ridges. I am sure I recall older types of these style gloves came with the piping pattern ridges on them. These are Kookaburra gloves, I am sure they made a line that had ridges in them.
Who knows? Maybe a good area for more research?
The attachment 280px-Wicket-Keeping_Gloves.jpg is no longer available
I did a google image search and did find a pair that had sewn ridges at the wrists, but they don't look they could be used for Max's knee pad (even if they could be found in the correct rounded shape).
ist2_9889944-wicket-keeper-gloves.jpg (67.41 KiB) Viewed 6662 times
And here's a photo of some older gloves, they don't look like they'd work either.
Still, I still think that this theory is plausible if there are some other old gloves out there that fit the style of his pad better. We'll see if something turns up.
wicketglove1.jpg (34.46 KiB) Viewed 6662 times
Last edited by Max Replica on Thu Apr 22, 2010 8:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
Here are two more shots I have of the knee pad. These show the very thin edge that Madmaximages was alluding to. Almost making it look as if the pad is one molded piece or something.
And as he said, it's possible there were two knee pads. After all, we know there were two holsters in the movie, and I am now pretty convinced that there were two different spanner pouches (possibly even a different spanner in each one) why not two different knee pads?
I used heavy piping from the fabric store for the raised areas and leather from the jackets sleeve that was cut off. I know it's not "screen accurate* but does the job for me. I have a strong belief the the movie version was part of max's sleeve over the knee portion of a cricket pad as stated by another member here. So far I have not been able to find a pair of pads that fits the bill. I still need to weather the pad and add a strap.
I'm going to try and re-work it and post some more pics when I'm done. 
