I was so looking forward to purchasing one of the norman kite shields from albion-
but alas they are no more. What is the problem? and who else offers fairly historically accurate wooden kite or transitional kite/heater shields? Jeremy

Here are two sources, both of which accept American credit cards:

http://www.varmouries.com/vcat_02.html

http://us.armouronline.com/content/view/full/59/offset/25

Hi Jeremy , we started doing more research and decided they could be more historically accurate . We've already redone the wodden buckler and i'll be sending pictures out this comming week to go up of the redone round shield . Changes include being faced in leather . According to I.P. Stephensons "The Anglo-Saxon Shield "( based on archeological , literary(sagas) and sculptural evidence from late Roman till the Viking eras) most shields had at least the face covered in leather for 1) structural stability ,shields were built from planks and simply by covering one surface in a sheet of material gave the shield a much greated resistance to spliting 2) cut resistance 3) it was more readilly painted for decoration than wood . Also the boss will be padded inside ( there is archelogical evidence of this ) and the shields will be trimmed in natural not bleached rawhide . The Norman shield will include these features as well as a redone strapping layout to more accuratly reflect some historical models . Sorry for any inconvienience caused . We've discovered through this process why shield makers were held in such high regard during the period .

You guys at albion keep impressing me. :D

what will you be using to pad the boss? natural or textile?
Is there any padding planed for the hand and wrist area on the norman shield?
about how thick will this leather facing be?

The pad is made from two pieces of real wool felt hand stiched together and then batting put in.

Yes there will be padding behind the wrist/arm area ( leather tacked into place with batting inside under the whole area where the arm sits) this is one of the things that we discovered during further reserch and wanted to incorperate .

The leather facing is a 5/6 ounce rough rider hide ( the sam hide used for our ringmaille coats ) in a earthtone brown .
The round shield will not have a guige as there is no evidence that they had one but will have a strap for slinging the shield while on the march or hanging it in the lords hall for which there is both archelogical and written evidence .The Norman shield will have a guige strap .

Allan and others,
Is there any evedence of a buckler-like shield being used during the periode 1050-1150. I am interested in this possibility.
Also Allan, would it be possible for a right hand shield for those sinister folks like myself or would this carry an extra charge? Jeremy

Jeremy , I think all that would be involved would be flipping the template for the board and liner so all the holes for attachment are on the opposite side. I'don't see why it would cost any more , theres no more work in building it .
Possibly just a short wait for the left hand build .

There is sculptural and illustrated evidence for the use of buckler type shields during this period . The question that has been raised in most examples is wheather these representations are of real objects or a matter of the artist trying to depict something larger in a limited space . The answer to this question will probably never be know for sure and given the existence of bucklers in 13th century fight manuals I don't see any reason why they wouldn't have been in use a century or more before.

The buckles on the shield back are for the detachable sling strap(included) .

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Back of the shield

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Shield front

Here are the pics

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Buckler back [ Download ]

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front [ Download ]

Allan,
The viking shield looks great! Please provide more pictures! What time period is the insipration for the buckler? I am really looking forward to a nice kite shield to use with my Norman and Templar. Ahh! the resistance in buying any non-sword items! I must remind myself that my swords are not truly complete without the requisite shield, even if I will be holding everything backwards. . . :wtf: Left handed warriors unite. :D
Yes, I admit it, I am kind of a dork but who cares?

The use of "nayles" on the front of wooden bucklers(they serve to break up a cut . in other words when a slashing stroke is parried the heads of the "nayles"cause the blade to skip across the surface of the buckler taking a little blade control away from an opponent and causing less damage to the buckler face . ) has obvious scottish conotations to it but was
to be found used around Europe . The earliest examples i've seen with what seems to be "nayles" are from 15th century
illuminations . Given that bucklers were in use for at least several centuries before this it is certainly possible that thier use to augment the surface of wooden bucklers could have been earlier.
The straps are adjustable and there is a stuffed leather pad at the knuckles .

Yes please, more pics of the Viking shield. I've been searching for a good period correct one for some time now.

We'll shoot a couple more this afternoon and post them . Mr. Stephensons recently published work (mentioned above )was a great help with alot of the improvements and I can't recommend it enough . It honestly opened our eyes to shield construction being much more involved than a board and a boss .

How thick are these shields, what do they weigh, and are they tapered in thickness from boss to rim?

Allen they are made from 1/2" thick red oak plywood and do not taper from boss to rim . We went with ply rather than plank for the obvious reason of keeping costs reasonable for an off the rack product (cross grain plywood is a stronger construct for resisting splitting as well) . I'll throw one on a scale today and post a weight .We mulled over doing them in several types of wood ( while the literary evidence from the period mentions linden or lime wood the archelogical evidence dose not bare this out . from english finds alone alder,ash,beech,birch,lime,maple,oak and poplar or willow have been found used in round shields ) so there would be say birch, poplar or oak avaliable but for the sake of uniforminty for production opted to go with a single wood .

Here are close-ups of the grips/handles. The boss of the round shield is padded and there leather trim around the grip area . The boss flange is not flat against the shield face but inclined about three degrees . This is something we discovered during our research . This was done to give the boss some spring when struck . The round shield weighs about 6 1/2 lbs and the buckler about 1 3/4 .

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