Perpetual, what you said made a lot of sense and really helped me a lot. Thank you so much  
 
I've given up on chain maille, it seems a bit too difficult to chew. Maybe some other time. I figure that even if I opted for a vest, it would take a long time. Hell, getting all those itsy-bitsy loops would take a long time. Instead, I've settled on making a brigandine vest, or a two layer leather vest with small steel plates riveted in between. I figure that I can do that within decent time. I'm not sure what the exact designs are, but so far my idea is to simply drill holes in the metal plates, and have holes punched in the leather. I can then just put a single rivet through the entire sandwich, maybe 4 rivets per plate. Of course this seems very weak for use against actual weaponry, but it's a start as an idea.  
 
Cooking...well I can somewhat cook, I'm not hopeless but I'm not a big fan either  

Quote from xxkid123 on May 8^th, 2012, 10:05pm:

Approximately 300 hours

Quote from slingbadger on May 9^th, 2012, 6:35am:

 
What might that be?

Quote from slingbadger on May 9^th, 2012, 6:35am:

 
Well, I was thinking along astronomical lines as well. Astrolabes are reasonably obscure but fascinating things with a very long history. Lots of math should you be excited by such aspects
 
A variety of sundials is certainly a fun project, there are so many different kinds. Lot's of nice geometric constructions possible.
 
Quote:

You need it because the Earth's orbit is elliptical rather than circular .  
 

Quote from HurlinThom on May 8^th, 2012, 12:11pm:

 
my thought as well.  
make a small tennis ball treb.

Thanks for all the ideas guys! I settled on the brigandine vest, typed out my proposal last night at 12pm, and turned it in today.  
 
Thunder, I'm in MYP right now. In 11th and 12th grade I'll be able to enter actual the actual Diploma Program (although everyone just calls it IB)
 
As for metal plates, I know for sure that my local hardware store sells steel sheets, around 16 gauge. I also have a few old steel yardsticks, with the ruling on it pretty scratched up and hard to see. I can always cut those up into 1"x3" plates.
 
My dad is a big astronomy buff, and I have all the materials to do so. Unfortunately I haven't quite taken the same interest in it as my father.  
 
300 hours for a chainmaille shirt? I know what I'm doing for retirement now (hell if I still have my eyesight I'll try to make a riveted hauberk....assuming I still remember to do it)  
 
My official statement of intent for the project, is to recreate a brigandine vest, in order to test the ease or difficulty of making one, and to determine it's viability as an affordable, poor man's armor during the middle ages. Basically, while the vest is what I personally want to do, the official reason is to make it so to test whether or not a poor man could have been able to afford and utilize it. I recall somewhere that brigandine and leather armor in general was designed with cheapness in mind, so that a poor man at arms could afford it, and so what I'm doing is asking "Was it really all that cheap and affordable or not?".  
 

Quote from perpetualstudent on May 10^th, 2012, 1:57pm:

 
Yep, I will. The bulk of the project is in a log/journal thing, which is why I wanted a somewhat longer topic so that I would have more quantity (my teachers are unfortunately more interested in quantity than quality). So I'll have a journal for each day I work on it (probably in a vlog form) and plenty of pictures.