Making an antler headpiece

Maybe you want to dress up your LARP or fantasy character. Or maybe you want to make a pagan inspired headpiece. Either way, antlers can be a great addition to a headpiece. However, because of their weight, they can be tricky to attach to a headpiece. Glue is rarely strong enough to keep them in place and their length will quickly cause them to wobble and get loose again.

The most sturdy way to attach real antlers to a headpiece is by screwing them on. The base of the headpiece needs to be sturdy and wide enough, both for the antlers to be attached properly and for the headpiece to be well balanced. 

Options for the base are, for example, a strip of metal bended into a headband, layered strips of leather or a hard cap/helmet base.

What do you need?

-antlers

-drill

-punch (optional)

-vice

-screws

-glue

-headpiece base of choice

-foam or other soft padding (optional)

-decorations of your choice

-hotglue

How to attach antlers to a headpiece:

Step 1:

Place the antler firmly in the vice. 

You can now drill a hole up the antler from the bottom. Antlers are fairly hard, so drilling into them needs a bit of pressure, but be careful not to drill too fast. This can split or crack the antler. 

The antler material will get hot during drilling, which can cause the material to stick to your drill bit. I can be advised to regularly pause your drilling, remove the drill from the antler and clear off the drill bit before continuing. 

Step 2:

Mark the placement of the antlers on your headpiece base. Use the drill or a punch to make holes in your base at the marks. 

Step 3:

Push the screws through the headpiece base with the heads of the screws on the inside of the headpiece. Drip some glue into the hole you’ve drilled into the antler and slide it onto the screw. Hold firmly in place until the glue has cured enough that the antler won’t start tipping. 

Repeat this for all the antlers you want to use in your headpiece.

Step 4:

Try on your headpiece. If the screws push into your head too much, you can glue a strip of foam or some other padding to the inside of the headpiece to make it more comfortable to wear. Don’t make the padding too thick, otherwise the headpiece can become too wobbly. 

Step 5:

If you attached your antlers to something that looks like a headband, you could leave it as it is and use it like that.

You can now also add more decorations to the headpiece, if that is the look you’re aiming for. Most decorative items you can simply glue on using hot glue. 

If you used a cap-like base, you can now start building up the rest of your headpiece. You can, for example, cover it with fur or a woolen fabric, or glue other decorative items on it until the base is no longer visible.

You can find our antlers here.