Do you necessarily need a metal skeleton to make cuendillar? What if the armor pieces were made from something else that's lighter, and possibly thinner? That's what I would want to test. The Salidar AS were making stuff into cuendillar with the objects sitting on a table. That implies that...
Honestly, I don't remember if he described it. I'm just combining imagination with logic lol.
Ooh I had an interesting idea. Cuendillar Battle Armor :evil
I'm assuming they are referring to using the one power on cuendillar. If you were channeling into it, I would imagine you would feel the push-back and the strain of directing more into it.