Shields Part Two

We'll be making just about every type of shield possible in this one so we're going to skip the opening materials list and just list necessary materials under each type of shield.

Let's start with a generic shield "boss" since so many of these shields will use them. The "boss" is a raised, hollow projection on the front of a shield meant to protect the hand holding the shield in combat. Since a flat shield loses its protective value when the center of mass is placed too far behind the shield, the boss was pretty much always centered on a circular cutout in the shield face. By putting the shield's grip in the cutout, the shield's center of mass is perfectly balanced.

Load this link for a great article on a fullscale Viking shield with boss....then you and I will get down to recreating them in 1/6 scale.

Now that you've read through that article on wooden Viking shields, how do you suppose we could recreate them? I've used three methods myself over the years....actually beating them out of sheet metal (my favorite method but the hardest by far), vac-forming them from sheet styrene (a very easy and fast method if you want to set up a vac-former), and last but not least, those little plastic "acorn" thingies from gumball machines (also very easy but not as fast as vac-forming).

For the acorn thingies, we simply take one and press it edge-on onto a hot modeling sealing iron until the rim melts and spreads outward. You know by experience that hot plastic will form a nice rim and be extremily easy to work with. With these, multiple melting is the best way....in other words, don't try to melt it all at once! Press it edge-on onto the face of the sealing iron until the edge softens and begins to form a flange (lip) and then remove it and let it cool a minute or two. Once it's cool to the touch, lightly sand the back edge flat and file out the inside hole from behind then re-do the melting again. As you melt/cool/sand/file, the flange will get larger and larger until you end up with a quite passable shield boss. You can even use the edge of a spoon to flatten the rim as the plastic cools if necessary.



If you don't want to do the melt and form method, simply razorsaw the excess off the acorn and cement (Tenax Plastiweld is still my fav but Testor's Liquid Cement is a very close second) a 1 1/2" disk of 1/16" styrene to the rim as your flange. That will only work for a flat shield of course....but curved ones can be done just as easily. Skip on down to the "coffee can shield technique" and read up on curved ones.

Another simple technique for making bosses for flat shields is the "marble method". Basically, take a marble of the right size, a bit less than 1" in diam, and scrunch-form some heated styrene down over it. A plastic softdrink bottle works perfectly. Just cut a good 3x4" rectangle out of the middle and heat it carefully over a candle until it's softened. When it's just right, lay it over your marble or ball bearing and then press the soft plastic down hard over it with a pipe or some sort of tube that's the right diam. That's a standard size for pipe so finding a 6" piece of scrap is easy.

You want your boss to be approx 1" in diam, but with the marble method, it will be 1" in height, too, which is a bit too deep....so how do we adjust for it? Simply dremel out a small matching depression on your work board to sit the marble in. You maintain your 1" diam/width but lose a bit off the height of the finished item.

Once your boss is melted and flanged to your liking, let it cool totally then airbrush it with some silver or steel paint as a primer coat. Once the primer is dry, you can brush it with your favorite color scheme and distress it a bit to let the primer coat show through for a great chipped paint/metal look. As an alternative, you could paint it your base color then drybrush a bit of silver or steel onto it for the weathering.

Remember, this is war! Make it ugly!

For the vacuum-forming method, simply make a few of the acorn thingy bosses (or some Fimo ones) and use those as your masters then vac form a sheet of suitable styrene down over them and cut the resulting bosses out of the sheet and paint them.

For the hammered metal type, you'll need a sheet of 1/16 inch nickle-silver sheet or a handful of American nickles beaten out flat to 1/16 inch thick. You'll also need a selection of ball-peen hammers in different sizes and some sockets from your socket wrench set....and lastly, a decent steel anvil of some type.

To begin with (and we're assuming you've already mastered beating those nickles from the other projects) cut a 1 1/2" circle from your NS sheet or a flattened nickle. Lay that flat on your anvil and begin dishing it exactly like your steel-faced shields project....ie you begin beating in the center and spiral your way outward over and over until you get a decent dish effect. Only diff is on this one, you stop short of the rim. As always, start with your largest ball-peen and then move downward to your jeweler's peen as you finish it. As you proceed to the smaller hammers, the dished effect will get more and more pronounced until you have a deep boss with a rough flange.

Some folks will tell you to use a concave anvil like a tree stump or a steel anvil with a hole drilled in it but those weaken the metal so much that no decent smith would ever do it. Proper dishing on a flat anvil flattens and expands tiny sections of the metal to a controlled thickness that over time will give a perfect dishing effect. Hollow anvil dishing stretches sections of the metal in an uncontrolled way to achieve the effect. *ANY* curve or dished area on *any* suit of armor, helmet, or shield can be done on a flat anvil. Anyone that suggests a hollow anvil alone has never learned the proper method!

Once you achieve the proper dishing on the boss blank, find a 1 inch or 1 1/8 inch socket (socket wrench set) and lay the dished blank on it and use that socket rim to carefully beat your boss' flange flat. Go slow and just tap around the rim over and over. *Don't* try to beat one side totally flat and then proceed to another or you will get metal wrinkling that will ruin the boss.

Metal bosses can take lots of time and effort to get perfect but once mastered, they beat the look of *any* other boss! You simply cannot recreate a hammered surface without hitting it!

My first efforts 10-15 years back took hours each to finish them satisfactorily whereas a good boss is 20-30 minutes of work these days. A fullscale one can take a couple of hours.

Those three methods all produce perfect bosses for flat shields as a lot of Viking ones were. The flat bosses also fit most dished round shields as well with very little fitting necessary. For a Roman shield boss, however, you'll need to do them just a bit differently. Since a Roman shield is only curved in one plane, your boss needs to be curved in one plane to fit perfectly.

Where you used a flat modeling sealing iron to melt the flange onto the acorn thingy for a flat boss....for a curved shield boss, you can find a steel five pound Folger's coffee can (my favorite brand :) and heat the inside of that carefully with a propane torch to melt the flange onto on the outside. The resulting flanged boss will be curved in one plane, and if you do your Roman shield on that same can it will fit *perfectly*.

Let's move on to a simple Viking small shield now to try one of your bosses on.

For this project, you'll need approximately twenty wooden popsicle sticks, some cyanoacrylate glue, some sandpaper and files, some brass or steel craft pins and a drill bit to match them, a compass or a four inch diameter food can for drawing circles, and an xacto knife.

To begin with, we prep the sticks by scraping/beveling two of the edges like this pic....just use your xacto knife and scrape them lightly. We bevel those edges so that once the "boards" are glued together, the edges between the boards remain visible. If we didn't want the edges, we could use plain old modeling plywood instead of sticks but we *do* want the edges defined so we use sticks.



Once you have the front edges beveled, lay them side by side on your table so those front beveled edges are downward on the table and carefully start cyanoacrylating them together. You want to form a square of butted/glued popsicle sticks so you'll need to glue eleven of them together. Once you have eleven of them glued side by side, use your compass or 4 inch diameter food can to mark a circle on it.



With your center marked, layout seven sticks at right angles to the first ones as spacers and glue the outer two into place. Leave the center one off for now since we'll need to do some work on that one.



Now we do the cutting. Using your xacto knife or razorsaw, cut out the 4 inch diameter circle you penciled in earlier. Use your sandpaper and files to get it as close to perfect as you can. Now using your compass again, draw and cut a 1-1 1/8 inch diameter circle from the center of the shield blank. The cutout should be exactly the size of your boss *without* the flange so measure and cut yours to fit!



Now we add that center board that we left off in the previous steps. You'll need to measure and mark the exact center and then use your xacto knife to narrow it as pictured for the grip. You can stain it and wrap it in some craft string or leather thong before gluing it into place if you want. It's far easier to work with now than it will be once it's glued into place. Once you have it finished and glued into place (use your spacer sticks again to get it perfect), trim the ends off to match the shield's edge.



Now use your sandpaper to rough sand the shield front down just a bit to make everything level. Once rough sanded, use your drillbit/dremel/pinvice to drill a hole through the entire shield at every board intersection and push a craft pin "nail" through from the front and cyanoacrylate them into place and trim them off on the back of the shield. Fullscale Viking wooden shields used nails that were then bent on the backside to prevent them loosening so you can if you want.

The second to the last step is to glue and nail the boss into place on the front of the shield....fullscale Viking ones used patterns of four nails to attach them whereas medieval shields most often used six so it's up to you what type you prefer.

The last step is to sand it all down again lightly with your finest grit paper or some steelwool and stain and paint it. Don't try to polish it perfectly since no combat shield ever was. You can add some edge trim if you like, but small shields of this type didn't require it.

That 4 inch shield you just made is a fullscale 24 inch targe-type shield. Those were made small and light to use in "fencing" so to speak. They're also called "heaters", "bucklers", "breakers", and "targes" (targas) and were meant to deflect the sword strike of the opponent and not to absorb the full hit as full-sized shields were. Viking shields ranged from the 24 inch targe-type to a massive 36 inch steel-faced round shield so use your own imagination.

Our next project is a 5 inch Viking round shield made from tongue depressors instead of popsicle sticks. The one point to remember here is that some craft-type tongue depressors are made of thinner wood than even their smaller cousins the popsicle sticks. You'll need to shop around and find the thicker type but they are pretty common so you should have no problems. If you can't locate any of the thicker ones, you can use 1x1/8 inch basswood from your local modeling or hobby store.

Build the shield exactly as before with beveled-edge boards and three cross boards on back (one for the grip of course) but cut it to a 5 inch diameter instead of 4. This one will recreate a 30 inch diameter battle shield that will look equally good on a Viking figure or a Viking longboat.

Once the shield is done to the staining and painting stage, you'll want to add an edge trim around it. We can do that by buying some 14 gauge single strand insulated copper wire from Radio Shack and splitting the plastic insulation down the side and tack gluing it into place around the edge of the shield. You can add some steel foodcan brackets as detail if you want. One thing to point out is that if you add a rim to your shield, you should use your xacto knife to *carefully* trim the edges of the backing boards a bit so the rim material lays right all the way around....you'll see what I mean.

Right here we're going to talk about one of the best and easiest tips we can give you on shield-making and that is the "coffee can technique" mentioned earlier. We've hit upon it in several other projects but this one (shields) really illustrates it well.

One of the biggest problems you'll find in modeling is getting all the pieces to fit right. Getting the chariot facing to fit the deck....getting the boss to fit the curvature of the shield etc.

You can easily overcome that problem by making the parts fit a particular form....in this case a coffee can. The same can is used to curve/form the chariot face and to cut the decking so when assembled, the facing fits the deck perfectly. Both fit the can so both fit each other. In the case of the Roman shield below, the can is used as a former for the steamed wood *and* it's used to form the boss so when assembled, the boss will fit the shield face perfectly.

Our next project will be a Roman scutum. A door shield! For this one, you'll need a sheet of 1/8x6x24 inch basswood or modeling plywood from your local model or craft store, a single 1/4x1x24 basswood stick, the ubiquitous cyanoacrylate and sandpaper and files and xacto knives, some brass or steel craft pins and a matching drillbit, a 5 pound Folger's coffee can, and one curved boss you made and painted earlier (preferably a plastic acorn one).

We'll start off by drawing a 5"x7" rectangle on a piece of our basswood or plywood. Steam it to soften it and then bend it and rubberband it tightly around the coffee can to dry.

*Don't* cut it out until after it's bent and cooled and dry!

Once dry (overnight is best), carefully remove it from the can, cut it out, and lightly sand it and buff it with some steelwool.

Next, we *carefully* cut a 1 inch hole in the exact center of the shield blank for the boss. As always, measure your boss' beforehand and cut the hole exactly as big as your boss without the flange. Once that's done, drill holes in the boss and shield (Romans tended to use 6 nails) and craftpin/cyanoacrylate the boss into place.

Remember the "coffee can technique"? Use the same can to make your boss as you used to curve/form the wood and the boss will fit perfectly. In this case, carefully heat the inside of the can with a propane torch and *CAREFULLY* melt/form your plastic acorn boss onto the outside to get the perfect curvature.

If you don't want to go the hot way, simply razorsaw off the excess as before and sand the curvature into it by using your coffee can as a sanding block. When you cement your styrene disk to the boss rim to make your flange, it will still be perfectly curved to fit your wood.

Next, we narrow a length of the 1/4x1 inch stick for the grip as earlier (be sure to wrap it now while you can) and craftpin/cyanoacrylate it into place on the shield back. For the rim, use some of the wire insulation from the preceeding project. Paint it all up and you're done.

I'm a huge fan of brass so I usually skip the wire insulation rim and use 1/4x1/16 brass strip cut to size and pinned into place around the shield. Use your imagination.

Next, we come to a medieval "kite" shield. For this one, you'll need a sheet of 1/8x6x24 inch basswood or modeling plywood from your local model or craft store, cyanoacrylate and sandpaper and files and xacto knives, some brass or steel craft pins and a matching drillbit, a 4 inch diameter food can and one 5 pound coffee can, some thin leather or craft foam to make the grips.

We start off on this one by using the food can to make two 4 inch circles side by side on our wood. Use a straightedge to draw the straight lines and then go back over your design with an extra-fine permanent marker or pen.



*DON'T* cut it out until after it's steamed and bent! Cutting it out beforehand will make bending it properly nearly impossible!

Next, *carefully* steam that blank and rubberband it tightly around the five pound can as before. Let it dry thoroughly (overnight is best) and then remove it from the can and lightly sand/buff the surfaces. *Carefully* cut it out following your inked pattern and then sand all of the edges smooth.

Once sanded, we simply mark and drill the shield for the straps and craftpin/cyanoacrylate them to the shield's back. Add some wire insulation for the rim and paint it and you're done.

The straps on this one....Kris suggested I be a bit more clear about their location so let's look at this one a bit more.

The kite shield was originally designed as a cavalry shield plain and simple. I'm gonna leave out the paragraphs on the proof of that statement and simply ask you to think it through if you doubt it ;)

Since it *was* designed as a cavalry shield, you can't look at it in terms of an infantry shield for the placement of the grips. The two methods of fighting are so different that one will not work for the other! If we placed a single center grip as on a round shield, the knight would find it very difficult to hold and use in combat as well as impossible to hold the reins of the horse. We need to put the shield directly on the body with the left hand in position to hold the reins.

Stand your figure up straight and put its clenched left fist directly on the sternum and its elbow as tight to the side as possible.....then center the kite on the left pectoralis major and place the tail of the shield on the left knee. You can then mark the perfect location for the straps. When seated on a horse and the tail covering the left knee, the left hand should be just above the figure's naval and perfectly positioned for the reins.

The straps on this one *are* straps because a solid grip would make holding the reins very difficult in the same hand....and the added mass of the tail has to be held as close to the body as possible.

TBC