It seems I used unsuitable glue which wasnt strong enough to hold the sheets in shape.

hey everyone, just thought I'd share my experience in shield making. Myself and brother in law spent some time at the local Home Depot and picked up pretty much everything at once. We used 2-3ply sheets of birch to which we ratchet strapped to a Homer bucket and poured several gallons of boiling water over slowly tightening the straps over the course of several hours. Once it dried we unleashed the form and surprisingly had a really uniform curve. After a week of dry time we epoxied the sheets together with enough adhesive to choke an elephant and again let cure. Shaped, we applied a sheet of 16 gauge steel to the outside and cut a 1 inch skirt around the edge. Then we 'fingered' the steel and bent it over the edge to form a rim, each finger overlapping the last, securing in them in place with yet more epoxy and furniture tacks. The hardware is a new leather belt cut from 8/9 oz. stock and dyed brown. and several nut and bolts to hold them firm. To date this thing has withstood blows from my Atrim DN 1506, Cold Steel Pole Axe, war hammer (Both blunt and spike ends) boar spear, and a 1985 Sierra Classic 1500 running it over.

Hey M, i've never actually weighed it before but now that you mention it, scale says 8 lbs. below is the pic of my collection, well part thereof anyway. I didnt want to go with anything historic, so i painted some tribal on one side it matches my leg and arm. All the scratches are its war wounds from play testing.

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There are two ways to counteract spring back when making a curved lamination, the first is to over bend the blank so that when it springs back it approximates the degree of curvature you want and the second is to use a cold press lamination glue. Probably you're using ordinary wood glue for your laminating and that glue doesn't set hard enough and will allow some movement of the wood.

I'm not at all certain that fir plywood is stronger than birch; plywoods are, in general, pretty much the same structurally; the grain of the layers run at right angles to each other which makes the sheet stiffer in both directions than if the grain all ran one way. There are plywoods made for bending in which the grain all runs in one direction but this would be virtually useless for you because this type of plywood is almost as flexible as stiff leather. Regular birch plywood is probably sanded more to provide a smoother finish so it might be slightly thinner.

A cheap hot plate and an old double boiler will make a fine glue heater for hide glue. !!!!!!!!! DO NOT FORGET!!!! to put leftover hide glue in the refrigerator if you're planning to keep it. One of the most sickening smells I've ever been subjected to is that of rotten hide glue. Refrigerated hide glue will last for months and can be easily heated up in a microwave if one uses a bit of caution and adds water to keep the consistency right.

Just a little update on all this. So far, I have churned out a good 15 shields or so. Most were big flatted-topeed kite shields for out Knights Hospitaller group, but I made a couple of others as well. At the moment I have two smaller heater shields on the press. One of these will be for my non-Hospitaller kit.

As mentioned earlier in this thread I had some problems with my plywood. Two layers of 4mm birch ply worked really well, but the suppliers stopped making them. I never was a big fan of the Okume plywood. It feels light and flimsy and is quite expensive. After that I made a couple of shields out of 5.5mm birch ply. They turned out okay-ish but they are very hard to bend. I broke a ratchet when strapping one of these down (and these are good up to 150 kilos). I also had problems with getting a nice, even bend with the 5.5mm plywood. Despite a combined tension of well over 800 kilos on the straps, they would bend unevenly, leaving small gaps or pockets of air between the two sheets.

I have now switched to three layers of 3.4mm birch plywood. It's more expensive (three sheets of ply instead of two, and double the amount of glue) but has worked really well so far. First I glue together two sheets of 3.4mm ply. That's quite thin so very easy to do. When it's dry, I add the third sheet. Now it's even easier to bend since you need to bend only the top sheet. The resulting plywood shield blank is very smooth and even. Much better than the 5.5mm plywood shields. It's still a bit thicker and heavier than two 4mmm sheets though, but should be much sturdier as well.