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Todd Feinman
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Matt Corbin
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 Posted: Tue 04 Aug, 2026 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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Looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Keep us posted.
?This was the age of heroes, some legendary, some historical . . . the misty borderland of history where fact and legend mingle.?
- R. Ewart Oakeshott
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Dan D'Silva
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| Posted: Wed 05 Aug, 2026 7:21 am Post subject: |
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Sounds great. I've always wondered how these might've been built, so it'll be interesting to see how you go about it.
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Wed 05 Aug, 2026 8:43 am Post subject: |
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We don't really know much about them. We know what they looked like from illustrations but that is about all. We only think that they were made from hide because some of the illustrations show a pattern that resembles the fur on cowhide. The Lion Hunt dagger shows the shield's back, which has a neck strap, not a central hand-grip (the shields were used with two-handed pikes). One illustration shows cross-hatching, which suggests that the construction might have involved wicker but that is on the later Dipylon shield, not the Figure-8 shield. The vertical keel on the facing tells me that a wicker backing was not needed. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with, Todd.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
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Todd Feinman
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| Posted: Wed 05 Aug, 2026 9:49 am Post subject: |
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| Dan Howard wrote: | | We don't really know much about them. We know what they looked like from illustrations but that is about all. We only think that they were made from hide because some of the illustrations show a pattern that resembles the fur on cowhide. The Lion Hunt dagger shows the shield's back, which has a neck strap, not a central hand-grip (the shields were used with two-handed pikes). One illustration shows cross-hatching, which suggests that the construction might have involved wicker but that is on the later Dipylon shield, not the Figure-8 shield. The vertical keel on the facing tells me that a wicker backing was not needed. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with, Todd. |
Thanks Dan! It will be fun for us, and controversial for all.
Progress pics here:
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewto...p;t=189076
Photo from my backyard. Real. https://tinyurl.com/vhp4e8hj https://tinyurl.com/4zknmw8v
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Sean Manning
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| Posted: Fri 14 Aug, 2026 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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I think there is a lot of room to use bentwood and wicker skills to understand ancient shields. Most people come to shieldmaking from woodworking, metalwork, or leatherwork. Most traditional shields are based on a form you can easily make, whether spreading a skin over a frame or splitting one whole width off a tree with wedges, but we rarely have those intuitions because are are not weavers and woodbenders and butchers and because the fancy metal copies of the cheap wicker-and-hide shields survive better.
weekly writing ~ material culture
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Todd Feinman
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| Posted: Yesterday at 8:11 am Post subject: |
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| Sean Manning wrote: | | I think there is a lot of room to use bentwood and wicker skills to understand ancient shields. Most people come to shieldmaking from woodworking, metalwork, or leatherwork. Most traditional shields are based on a form you can easily make, whether spreading a skin over a frame or splitting one whole width off a tree with wedges, but we rarely have those intuitions because are are not weavers and woodbenders and butchers and because the fancy metal copies of the cheap wicker-and-hide shields survive better. |
One thing I noticed when cutting the hides for the shield is how much the weight adds up quickly! One thinks of rawhide as light, but in large body protecting surfaces, it adds up very quickly. I was initially going to use to two full thicknesses of hide, but that was already too heavy, even without the mast. in depictions where warriors are using two-handed spears the shield is held by a guige; anything too heavy would bruise or injure the warrior using it that way.
Iirc, Homer mentions shields skillfully made of many hides sewn together, but no mention of wicker or weaving wood together; certainly that would have been mentioned? I think either Homer was accurately describing the sewing together of many bovine hides (seven?), for a shield made from the smaller cows of times gone by, or was exaggerating things, like the tales of Paul Bunyan; is it from Peter Connolly? I'd want more hide layers instead of wicker. I think a lot of folks who haven't worked with hair-on-cowhide are unaware of how tough and strong it can be. Rolling an edge of rawhide over a strip of rawhide can create a many-layered rim that is very tough, and being bent backward and supported by the mast, would be an extremely anticlastic construction. Looking at the Pylos Agate, you can see the middle of the shield pulled back at the sides. Everything nis curved in at least two directions. ("Anticlastic" is a word I got from the great Jeffrey Hildebrandt).
Iirc, there are mentions of hide shields in military texts from Nuzi. I think the Minoan depictions are showing the shields from the back, not front, in a stylized manner; no sculptural depictions show wood on the outside. and no wicker on the inside. I know there are some depictions with crosshatchings, etc. But those are ambiguous. I think there is a depiction where you can see the texture of the back of the hide where the flesh was scraped off.
Looking at Egyptian shields, I think the curved ones were usually all-hide; you wouldn't need a metal boss if they were solid wood; Tut'[s "shields" don't have bosses.
So, what if I am wrong about the figure-8 shield? Not to worry! I can always add slats to the back of the lobe areas if I need to. If I had to, I'd add an "x" shape behind each lobe. Like the pieces mentioned by Homer for round shields; those two pieces also wouldn't provide a tremendous amount of support for a round hide shield that was quite large, i.e. "ankle tapping".
It dawned on me that I'm going to have to focus on this shield over the Egyptian one, so I can avail myself of the hot remaining days to dry the shield after it is wet.
Photo from my backyard. Real. https://tinyurl.com/vhp4e8hj https://tinyurl.com/4zknmw8v
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Sean Manning
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| Posted: Yesterday at 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Todd Feinman wrote: | | Sean Manning wrote: | | I think there is a lot of room to use bentwood and wicker skills to understand ancient shields. Most people come to shieldmaking from woodworking, metalwork, or leatherwork. Most traditional shields are based on a form you can easily make, whether spreading a skin over a frame or splitting one whole width off a tree with wedges, but we rarely have those intuitions because are are not weavers and woodbenders and butchers and because the fancy metal copies of the cheap wicker-and-hide shields survive better. |
One thing I noticed when cutting the hides for the shield is how much the weight adds up quickly! One thinks of rawhide as light, but in large body protecting surfaces, it adds up very quickly. I was initially going to use to two full thicknesses of hide, but that was already too heavy, even without the mast. in depictions where warriors are using two-handed spears the shield is held by a guige; anything too heavy would bruise or injure the warrior using it that way.
Iirc, Homer mentions shields skillfully made of many hides sewn together, but no mention of wicker or weaving wood together; certainly that would have been mentioned? I think either Homer was accurately describing the sewing together of many bovine hides (seven?), for a shield made from the smaller cows of times gone by, or was exaggerating things, like the tales of Paul Bunyan; is it from Peter Connolly? I'd want more hide layers instead of wicker. I think a lot of folks who haven't worked with hair-on-cowhide are unaware of how tough and strong it can be. Rolling an edge of rawhide over a strip of rawhide can create a many-layered rim that is very tough, and being bent backward and supported by the mast, would be an extremely anticlastic construction. Looking at the Pylos Agate, you can see the middle of the shield pulled back at the sides. Everything nis curved in at least two directions. ("Anticlastic" is a word I got from the great Jeffrey Hildebrandt).
Iirc, there are mentions of hide shields in military texts from Nuzi. I think the Minoan depictions are showing the shields from the back, not front, in a stylized manner; no sculptural depictions show wood on the outside. and no wicker on the inside. I know there are some depictions with crosshatchings, etc. But those are ambiguous. I think there is a depiction where you can see the texture of the back of the hide where the flesh was scraped off.
Looking at Egyptian shields, I think the curved ones were usually all-hide; you wouldn't need a metal boss if they were solid wood; Tut'[s "shields" don't have bosses.
So, what if I am wrong about the figure-8 shield? Not to worry! I can always add slats to the back of the lobe areas if I need to. If I had to, I'd add an "x" shape behind each lobe. Like the pieces mentioned by Homer for round shields; those two pieces also wouldn't provide a tremendous amount of support for a round hide shield that was quite large, i.e. "ankle tapping".
It dawned on me that I'm going to have to focus on this shield over the Egyptian one, so I can avail myself of the hot remaining days to dry the shield after it is wet. |
You could look into the water-buffalo targets from India. Bovine hides are the Afro-Eurasian gold standard for shield covers from the Bronze Age until shields fell out of use. The Chinese liked rhino until they hunted it out. I get my water buttalo leather as discs for drums and dream trappers and things like that.
The goldsmiths who made the Lion Hunt dagger mark fat rims on the inside of the figure-eight shields. https://www.greece-is.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PELOP_MYKHNES_07.jpg The Pylos Combat Agate also seems to have a rim around the top and bottom of the shield. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pylos_Combat_Agate I think screwing up scraps of rawhide like a newspaper baton would create something like a pole which is the other obvious thing to bend the rim around. The shape on the Pylos agate looks like a rope was tied around the waist of the shield and tightened with a lever. So you could try to make the shield with three rods (one longitude, two stiffeners for the top and bottom edges, and a rope about the waist. You might want to start with a goatskin or sheepskin to test the shape and make sure you don't underbuild (tightening rawhide is powerful).
IIRC there are some stone forms from Ptolemaic Egypt which could be for stretching rawhide shields and helmets over, or could just be decorative.
weekly writing ~ material culture
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Todd Feinman
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| Posted: Yesterday at 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Sean Manning wrote: | | Todd Feinman wrote: | | Sean Manning wrote: | | I think there is a lot of room to use bentwood and wicker skills to understand ancient shields. Most people come to shieldmaking from woodworking, metalwork, or leatherwork. Most traditional shields are based on a form you can easily make, whether spreading a skin over a frame or splitting one whole width off a tree with wedges, but we rarely have those intuitions because are are not weavers and woodbenders and butchers and because the fancy metal copies of the cheap wicker-and-hide shields survive better. |
One thing I noticed when cutting the hides for the shield is how much the weight adds up quickly! One thinks of rawhide as light, but in large body protecting surfaces, it adds up very quickly. I was initially going to use to two full thicknesses of hide, but that was already too heavy, even without the mast. in depictions where warriors are using two-handed spears the shield is held by a guige; anything too heavy would bruise or injure the warrior using it that way.
Iirc, Homer mentions shields skillfully made of many hides sewn together, but no mention of wicker or weaving wood together; certainly that would have been mentioned? I think either Homer was accurately describing the sewing together of many bovine hides (seven?), for a shield made from the smaller cows of times gone by, or was exaggerating things, like the tales of Paul Bunyan; is it from Peter Connolly? I'd want more hide layers instead of wicker. I think a lot of folks who haven't worked with hair-on-cowhide are unaware of how tough and strong it can be. Rolling an edge of rawhide over a strip of rawhide can create a many-layered rim that is very tough, and being bent backward and supported by the mast, would be an extremely anticlastic construction. Looking at the Pylos Agate, you can see the middle of the shield pulled back at the sides. Everything nis curved in at least two directions. ("Anticlastic" is a word I got from the great Jeffrey Hildebrandt).
Iirc, there are mentions of hide shields in military texts from Nuzi. I think the Minoan depictions are showing the shields from the back, not front, in a stylized manner; no sculptural depictions show wood on the outside. and no wicker on the inside. I know there are some depictions with crosshatchings, etc. But those are ambiguous. I think there is a depiction where you can see the texture of the back of the hide where the flesh was scraped off.
Looking at Egyptian shields, I think the curved ones were usually all-hide; you wouldn't need a metal boss if they were solid wood; Tut'[s "shields" don't have bosses.
So, what if I am wrong about the figure-8 shield? Not to worry! I can always add slats to the back of the lobe areas if I need to. If I had to, I'd add an "x" shape behind each lobe. Like the pieces mentioned by Homer for round shields; those two pieces also wouldn't provide a tremendous amount of support for a round hide shield that was quite large, i.e. "ankle tapping".
It dawned on me that I'm going to have to focus on this shield over the Egyptian one, so I can avail myself of the hot remaining days to dry the shield after it is wet. |
You could look into the water-buffalo targets from India. Bovine hides are the Afro-Eurasian gold standard for shield covers from the Bronze Age until shields fell out of use. The Chinese liked rhino until they hunted it out. I get my water buttalo leather as discs for drums and dream trappers and things like that.
The goldsmiths who made the Lion Hunt dagger mark fat rims on the inside of the figure-eight shields. https://www.greece-is.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PELOP_MYKHNES_07.jpg The Pylos Combat Agate also seems to have a rim around the top and bottom of the shield. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pylos_Combat_Agate I think screwing up scraps of rawhide like a newspaper baton would create something like a pole which is the other obvious thing to bend the rim around. The shape on the Pylos agate looks like a rope was tied around the waist of the shield and tightened with a lever. So you could try to make the shield with three rods (one longitude, two stiffeners for the top and bottom edges, and a rope about the waist. You might want to start with a goatskin or sheepskin to test the shape and make sure you don't underbuild (tightening rawhide is powerful).
IIRC there are some stone forms from Ptolemaic Egypt which could be for stretching rawhide shields and helmets over, or could just be decorative. |
Agree to most of that! I've looked at other hide shields. I've interpreted the border on the figure-8 shield depictions as an edging, which I will add to the shield after it dries. It will be much easier to have the roll on the outside and it will also dry better and create a more anticlastic form. It really seems to be on the outside with the Pylos agate depiction.
Here is the plan, which you have mostly figured out:
1. Finish the mast! You will notice it curves at each end are the same distance as the radius of each lobe, so that when the hide dries and contracts a bit it will have the same angle (mostly).
2. The mast will be lashed to the inner layer of the shield with rawhide lace after the layer has been wet and then dried to "leather hard". At this point I will also chisel the curved rows of slits for the lacing which passes through both layers and arches across the middle top and bottom of surface of shield. I will also drill holes along the edge to match holes on the outer layer.
3. Drill holes along perimeter of outer hide layer. Get the layer wet and dry to almost leather hard. place the inner layer and mast in place. weave through the .5" leather hard rawhide laces to bind the inner and outer layers together. Lash the mast, too, where the laces cross it.
4. Lash the very heavy rawhide lacing all around the shield's outside edge and the edge of the inner layer. roll the edge over the lace, starting from the top of each lobe, working to the middle waist of the shield, on each side. Roll it about three times and then drill a series of holes along the edge and lash the roll all along the edge of the shield.
5. Pull the middle (waist) of the shield back, a la Pylos Agate, and use the .5' lace to hold it to a form while it dries. It will pull the edges back as the shield dries and contracts. Test showed the rawhide dries slightly dished, but no "bubbling" or deformation and that is good. The lobes will tilt back slightly and curve back at the edges, giving a perfect anticlastic form. I may need to use some small sandbags to keep things dished out if some problem occurs, but they shouldn't.
When things are dry, I'll attach an edging, using the same holes for the final lashing..
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewto...6#p2857806
Photo from my backyard. Real. https://tinyurl.com/vhp4e8hj https://tinyurl.com/4zknmw8v
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