I am interested in making my own 13th century heater shield, and have a few questions I would like some help hashing out. I am tend to be a purest whenever possible, so I don't want to make a shield out of plywood, as some instructions I have seen have shown. To my understanding a 13th century heater shield was constructed in a similar fashion to the older round shields in that they're not make from a single piece of wood, but several glued together side by side. One obvious problem I see with that is how would you go about putting a curve in the shield? If you steam them and put them on some sort of a form to give them the shape it doesn't seem like they would bend effectively, and if you glued it first and then tried to put the bend in it, logic would say the glue would just break.

At this point what was being used for glue? Is it a dairy based glue, or as I read somewhere was it a glue made from fish swim bladders?

The other question I have is in regards to what covers the shield once you have the wooden form together. I have read several places that they were covered with a leather or a canvas, neither of which seems like it would be that effective in giving the shield sturdiness. It seems that covering it with a rawhide like older round shields were, would be more effective?

I did try doing some searches on the message board to find answers to my questions, but I wasn't able to. I did love the topic where many of you showed off your shields though, some of them are beautiful.

Plywood's actually not far off, shields were often made of several layers of strips, laid in different directions to add strength. Considering the thinness of the individual strips, building in a curve is somewhat trivial. Any sort of facing also adds strength, whether it's linen, rawhide, leather or thin metal. Don't discount textile coverings, they're pretty much brushed over with generous amounts glue or resin and then painted and become quite hard, like a sort of fiberglass.

And avoid putting an edge on it, it will catch any weapon tips and turn it into a liability. And never forget that shields are disposable items.

I experimented using some felt, like the earlier eastern shields on a canvas covered ply shield and the shock absorbing abilities were fantastic. I could cut down the thickness of wood a fair bit and let the felt take the blows. It was partly an experiment of efficacy but I was taking it abroad so needed some weight saving.

@ Bjorn Hagstrom,
Unfortunately I don't have a word of German, so I can't read the book you linked to. If you have read this book, could you tell me are all the shields made from butted planks, or are any made from multiple layers of wood, similar to plywood?

All described ones, where it is possibly to tell is from butted planks.
The examples range in age from 12th to 14th century and are all heater-shields (mostly from the german-speaking parts of Europe, but also the Black Prince one)

A topic you might be interested in lookin closer at is the following:

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...light=kite

The method Elling used for the kite, would work equally well for a heater.

Thanks very much Bjorn. That's what I thought, but always nice to have some confirmation.

I appreciate all your responses. Really too bad that book is all in German, because it looks extremely interesting. Thank you also for the link to the other topic on the kite shield, I think I will take some of those ideas and adapt them. Starting simple and experimenting the first time is also probably a good idea instead of ruining better more expensive materials haha.

I haven't made one myself, but this seemed like the best directions for making one:
http://yeoldegaffers.com/project_shieldpress.asp

And I got the link from reading this thread from the myArmoury forum:

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19445

I had seen that website and like what they had. The problem I had with it was the plywood construction.