And then, following naturally, I thought, “Just also having a spear would be copying. I want a shield. I’ll make it from actual planks so it won’t just be plywood. It’ll be a cool prop to get people’s attention (though I'm no longer a fighter), and it’ll be easy.”
You will notice a theme on this page as I go along: I plan projects like a starving man walking into an all you can eat buffet.
My primary source for this reconstruction is this excellent breakdown of a whole lot of shields and their surviving components.
Actual goals (as conceived on a hardware store trip later that day)
My general goal for a historical project isn’t to replicate the thing exactly, and this is the case here. I will be limited by my facilities, modest budget, and parts availability, but within those constraints, I want to stay as true as I can to the concept in general.
Ornately shaped iron handles with copper trefoil terminals and the like were beyond my capabilities, but I could use a reasonably accurately-shaped wooden handle and emulate the important hardware. I wasn’t going to try to make an exact depiction of one shield (fragmentary finds being what they are), but I could amalgamate them into something that fit me physically and aesthetically while looking plausible. This would not be a combat shield, but it would be dimensionally accurate and assembled more or less properly.
My handle would be wood, my front face would be canvas (which was mentioned in a later document regarding kite shields as an inferior facing material, but by its mention, that meant at least someone did it), and the edging would be rawhide. I could hide a front facing being canvas by using my previously-acquired house paint, which I had used on heavy combat shields. This would save weight and cost, and I could make the unpainted back from leather.
The sources online commonly referred to “rivets” fastening everything into the wood, but I didn’t find any great ways of acquiring solid rivets in the proper material and length, or a good way of using them without splitting the wood. Ultimately, I settled on clinch nailing. I was familiar enough with it for government work, and it appeared to be what was meant by "riveting" in some cases for at least one article.
After getting some rawhide strip, I could glue and tack that down with carpet tacks. Nice thing about those, they have irregularly shaped heads and square profiles, so they look more like hand-forged nails than regular nails do.
The handle would be carved from a 1” square dowel; a reconstruction of the Trelleborg shield I hurriedly googled showed a simple round handle with a faceted grip, which sat in a small indentation in the shield blank. This I could do.
Materials, round 1
Canvas - 1 yd, natural color
1/2x6x4 poplar planks - 6 ea. With some careful cutting, I could skimp on the two outer boards to save a couple bucks, and still get a 32” shield. Poplar was available at a good price, which was mentioned in the sources as being a used wood, amongst oak and linden.
1” poplar square dowel - 1 ea. Good size, fits pleasingly in hand.
Assorted nails
Wood glue
1/4” doweling pegs - left over from chests earlier
2-3 oz economy leather veg-tan shoulder
1" square dowel
Planks, round 1
A Norse craftsman could have hewn down whatever tree he wanted and split it into perfectly sized boards, planed to the desired thickness. A city-bound reenactor in an apartment might have some difficulties doing the same, so one makes do with Lowe's as necessary. I made a pattern in poster board, then laid out my wood, marked it for doweling, and started by cutting out my center hole. I have no jigsaw, so the easiest thing was to cut each half of the hole from its respective board, assemble the shield, then clean up later.
By all indications, my original counterpart would not have doweled the boards, but I had less faith in my Lowe’s boards' ability to produce a solid butt joint. With my clamp lengths being what they were, I assembled the first four boards in the center, then put the outer boards on last, clamping from the inside of the hole.
With that done, I took the scroll saw off its table and cut out the perimeter. The hard part was getting the correct thickness. My boards were 1/2” thick (12mm), but the originals were 8-9mm (3/8, more or less), working down to 4mm at the edges. I got the edge taper done while cleaning up the perimeter - the shield tapers most dramatically near the edge - but cleaning up the center area was the hard part. I eventually located some 36 grit sanding belts and finished the job in an hour. Because most of my tapering was on the front face, I had a couple of dowels poking through the surface by the time I was done.
The core weighed 5 lb, 3 oz by the final taper, down from around 6 at initial assembly.
The handle
The handle ended up as a hybrid of Birka graves 736 and 886. The shape
derived from 736, with its long, tapered and flared profile, while I
took the rope work ornamentation from 886. Without the metal to emboss
into, keeping the detailing simple would be the most reliable route. The
original plan was to emulate the Trelleborg handle, but with that handle being ostensibly short, and my boards looking like they
would want a bit more support to prevent taco-ing, I used a longer handle.
Shaping on the the scroll saw was simple, and was followed up with
sanding and hand carving. For strap retention, my original plan was to
make what my source described as a “staple” by bending wire into a key
shape to then pass the strap through, as in the Torshov find. Upon
further realization, the Torshov staple appeared to have been
constructed a different way, with a single spike of metal, in which a
hole was drifted open and the base flattened. When the tip was folded
over to hold it in the wood, the end result would have been excellent at
opening paint cans.
Instead, I looked to Birka 644, the survivors of which are a shield
boss… and two actual staples with rings in them. I was going to use a
pair of fence staples, but I was unimpressed with the length of those I
could get in reasonable quantity. Instead, I got some rings and a pair
of steel cotter pins, which I backed with washers hidden inside the
handle. This gave me ample security, though the cotter pins were too
stiff to bend over completely, and I had to trim them.
I wanted to put them near the ends of the handle, but I was concerned about removing that much wood, so I went nearer in.
Oops
And then, high on my own progress one weekend, I got the handle finished
and hardware mounted, and I debated whether I needed to face the shield on
both sides, or only the face and not the back. Based on the impression
in the back of the Trelleborg shield, which had a faint divot where the handle had been, my guess was no; a depression that
shallow would seem to be obscured by the leather.
So I attached the handle, clinched the nails, hid them in the shield, and glued up my facing leather with liquid hide glue.
And then I went to start my write up, and staring me in the face was
Birka 850: both sides were faced. And I had just used my good leather on
the paint side.
Time to spend $50 again.
Materials, round 2
2 stainless steel cotter pins
2 steel washers
Liquid hide glue (the last three bottles in the city)
2-3 veg-tan side *again*
270x7cm rawhide shield edging, because the local Tandy had no rawhide at all
Replica Telemark shield boss, 200mm
Yellow house paint
2 bulk bags cheap spring clamps
Danish oil
Mink oil
Sno-coat
Sheet of 20ga steel unused
Planks, round 2
In a world where I hadn't screwed up, it seemed the correct way to assemble the shield would have been to face both sides, thus securing the boards together, before attaching the handle. Since I didn't live in that world, and I had an unfaced shield with the handle on it and two pieces of leather, I would have to cut the handle out of the leather and drop it over very carefully.
Facing the front was simple. Coat both the wood and the leather with liquid hide, lay it down, smooth it out, and put something heavy on top overnight. The back was less so; I measured where the handle sat on the shield in relation to the center hole, traced out my cutting pattern onto the leather, cut that out, and then same gluing process as before. Would have been perfect if I hadn't put the leather on backwards, leaving a gap on one end and a bit of trimming on the other. Oh well, not too noticeable. A coat of mink oil followed by some sno-coat would keep the unpainted leather safe, and a hit of danish oil would protect the wooden handle.
Having used an entire bottle of glue, I had enough structural parts on that my shield looked sort of like a shield. After some waiting, it was time for...
Edging
Once my rawhide strip showed up from Germany, I could get down to business. Having found little definitive information on stitching down the rawhide, I opted to glue it. Time to don gloves and break out the liquid hide. Once the rawhide had soaked overnight, I could begin clamping. Tapering the shield extensively towards the edges bit me hard here, because this made the clamps want to slide off and take the rawhide with them, rather than hold. After getting the first eight inches or so in place, it started holding on better, and I could make real progress. What worked best for me was giving it a little bit of stretch, then holding it in place every three or four inches with a large clamp. Then I could fill in space with smaller clamps and crush down any folds. Once I had used up all my clamps, the glue had generally set enough on the early sections that I could start pulling clamps away from there and reusing them, leaving a few behind to tack down.
I had calculated a bit of spare length for my rawhide, but it seemed I had compacted it a little in the early stages of installation, so I ended up with very precisely the amount I needed to cover my shield, with little to no overlap.
My ultimate goal was to make some metal edge clamps, as had been found on many extant shields. Given the inconsistency in the number of clamps per shield and their location, these may have just been repairs, but I figured adding a few would look good and help hold the rawhide in place. However, after rigging up a dummy section of shield and cutting out a test clamp, I lost the test clamp immediately. At that point, some parts of my plan were coming into doubt, like whether I could peen over the nails I wanted to use as rivets, and whether I even needed clamps at all. At this point, months had gone by, and project fatigue was setting in, so I abandoned the idea entirely.
Interlude: What if I did everything again
As I was shopping at Walmart one night, I spied a cat bowl that had a nice flanged edge and a mostly round bottom, and I realized that it would make a convincing shield boss for someone with tiny hands. I have a sister, who at the time of writing is three years old. I've garbed her for the renfaire, and since her garb still fits... what if I made her a shield too...
Materials, round 3:
1 cat bowl
1/4x6x24 poplar boards, 4 ea
1/2" square dowel
Two colors green craft paint
Pull rivets
Blind rivet puller
XL rawhide dog bone
Assembly
After taking the drill press at work to the cat bowl, the process for this shield largely mirrors mine. In this case, I only butted the planks since I got to gluing them as soon as I got home, and they wouldn't have a chance to warp. Her shield is faced on the front only, and with the canvas I had meant to use for myself. Her shield is notably a bit flimsier than mine owing to the relative lack of support, but as a photo prop, it'll be fine.
The interesting part was the rawhide. First, it took three different pet stores to find a rawhide bone big enough, quite a lot of soaking to get it unknotted, and about three seconds to realize it was too distorted to get good strips out of. However, there was a smaller, thinner piece on the inside that was a nice rectangle, and if I cut it out slightly thinner than I had initially wanted, it was enough for the whole shield. This was an even less cooperative gluing experience than my shield, partly because of the narrow strips, and partly because pet rawhide has been processed so hard that it's not a very good crafting material anymore. But, after using twice as many clamps at once as I had before, I got a good enough clamp job, and with a quick hit of 400-grit sandpaper, it looked and felt pretty good too. I chose pull rivets for attaching the boss so they would be relatively unobtrusive, both physically and aesthetically. Best to avoid rough edges with small children involved.
Painting
For a pattern, I opted not to go entirely with my heraldry, but instead do something similar to it. Since my heraldry has a centered charge that would be obscured by the boss anyway, I could be evocative, but do whatever I wanted anyway. So, I went with a gyronny arrondi of four for the background, with the gold orle from my heraldry rendered as a pattern from the reverse of the Heggen weathervane, which I've pulled from before.
Boss fight
At this point, it had progressed from early February to early May, and having taken about a month to produce, my shield boss finally arrived from overseas. This meant I could have my shield finished in time for faire, which was also a factor in not making edge clamps. It came with some very nice, heavy-duty rivets, and I quickly realized that given the size of the boss relative to the hand hole, they would blow the wood out if I tried to buck them. So, I compromised with Chicago screws, which fortunately the holes in the boss were already perfect for. While this leaves some obvious slot-head screws visible on the back, the front has nothing of the sort. Should be good enough for anyone taking pictures.
Materials, round 4
Chicago screws, 5/8", 6ea
1" Economy veg-tan belt blank, 2ea
Brass rivets, 2ea
Waxed cotton thread
1" belt buckle
1" belt retainer loop
Strap
Nothing I had found on extant shield bits included anything regarding hardware for the carry strap. We know there were straps, because we have a couple different styles of mounting point, and they were written about, but I haven't seen a buckle or anything else. In an ideal world, I would go to Raymond's Quiet Press or Armor and Castings and get a period buckle, but the former's shop was closed to new orders, and the latter has a bit of a war going on, so that ruled them out from timely delivery. So, the snake buckle from Tandy at least doesn't look like shiny polished modern hardware. Good enough. I bought a retainer loop because I couldn't be bothered to make my own at this point. That still left the elephant in the room: how to attach the strap to the shield itself. I would like to be able to replace the strap with something else eventually, and getting the shield up to an anvil to set rivets would be hard at home (or I could bring it to work and invoke the rivet gun, but that's its own minor headache. I settled for making a tab and slot loop, in lieu of a rolled toggle like found on the Jorvik shoe - the belt blanks I bought were far too thick to roll anything. To make it look a little less clunky and also ensure security, I bound the base of it with thread. Sturdy, removable, and wouldn't leave a remnant.
Conclusion
The final shield weighed 9 lb 13 oz with the strap included. The Project Forlog reproduction shield (from the beginning of the article I've been sourcing pictures of individual shields from), by comparison, weighed 9 lb 14 oz for a diameter of 35 inches as opposed to my 32. So theirs was definitely lighter; I probably could have tapered mine a little differently, or more than likely, used different wood and leather. Their lamb leather was probably thinner and added significantly less weight. However, my version being limited by the time, budget, and effort of a single poorly-focused individual, I'm satisfied to have gotten as close as I did.
