Just now I received my wooden buckler by Crescent Moon. Currently, his shop is off-line and it took a while to complete, but he compensated on the shipping time so it arrived before I needed it for this weekend.

It is a once-piece plywood body with a wood handle, recessed at the grip. It is 14" in diameter and 5/8" thick. The grip is riveted to the body with two rivets. The boss on this model is 12ga. by order, but I do not have the means to check it's average thickness. The handle is 1" thick at the grip, and the whole handle is lamented.

I do not have access to a scale at this moment, so I am approximating the weight at 1.5lbs.

It will see use this weekend in interesting other people into I.33 fencing, so will be very useful. It supprised me just how large this is, a full inch wider than my metal one from Mercenaries Tailor. With some basic messing around with, the buckler moves in the hand fairly well, switching from inside to out of line easily despite the thick handle. As the front is plain save for the two rivets, I may eventually adorn it with a painted on image, and edge it with rawhide to increase lifespan, though it has been ages since I last used rawhide for anything.

Total cost was 91USD with standard shipping.

Parker was easy to work with, and kept me updated on my order. His site is currently down last I checked, as he is switching hosts, so you will have to contact him by email if you want to start a project. (crescentmoonarmoury@yahoo.com)

In all closing, the buckler seems nice. The boss and rivets are all hand done, which makes them a bit irregular, adding a nice sense of authentic personality to the piece. No doubt it will see some use past this weekends event, and I would recommend him to local people looking for gear. I will hopefully include pictures this weekend, and am interested in doing a formal review for our site.

M.

Have you checked out the steel bucklers at mandrake/windrose armory?I love them....I fight sca combat with the 14" one....They also have a 18".....I'm not sure, but I believe they use to have these in a lighter gauge of steel for the fencing community.
Having said how much I love my buckler, I do reccomend that you do some preventive maintenance and replace the rivets for the handle with heavier duty ones....about 5 minutes work in exchange for piece of mind.

I haven't heard of them, but I will give it a look. I would have thought this thread would get a tad more attention, but I guess not everyone here is for bucklers :D.

M.

This board comes and goes in waves......plus Their is a big sca war in the midwest(I'll be headed their tuesday).....I love bucklers....I wish we could use them the way you are susposed to in the sca.....But it would be hard not to knock somebody out or break their arm....I keep my buckler in my car along with a "tire checker".....had a drunk redneck pull a tire iron on me one night.....I pulled my gear and he looked really confused at encountering a shield....he mumbled something and got back in his truck(thank god, he was a big boy and I don't think love taps would of stopped him)

Good point on the attention, Chad.

Speaking of follow-ups, I just got done cleaning oxidation off of some of my stuff and took a look at the back of my buckler, where it had made contact with my arm while helping another get interested in I.33 last Saturday. The two lines away from the handle where pretty bad off, as it was quite warm and sweat had made contact with the metal. So for those of you considering metal bucklers, you're probably better off going wood, unless it's dished a bit and makes less contact with the arm. I will probably shoot Allen an email about adding some sort of backing as an option to this one, as it's a nice buckler but maintaining it where I am will be a pain. I may actually throw in the hat and try to trade it off for a wooden one here or at SFI.

M.

Good point. I'll look into that, actually.

M.

Have had a whacky idea in the back burner of my mind i want to try out....I would like to geta big ol' drum cymbol(I'm thinking 18-20") and cut out a decorative desing into it....then back it with heavy leather and maybe some more metal or maybe wood to make a eastern style buckler......the concave shape would lend a nice look......I was worried about it being too brittle, but somebody brought up how to anneal brass, so that's one problem down.....maybe stiffen it with a crosspiece of hidden T-6? If I could find either black iron or copper rivets with diamond or pyramid heads to bind it all together....what do you guys think? Either black leather or a deep crimson....i'd say ox blood, but a brighter red to really make the brass "pop" Hell maybe even a brocade type material in a eastern pattern.

Friends

I wanted to point out that on my Crescent Moon buckler the grip is riveted to the body with four rivets. The two outer rivets go thru the body only, the two inter rivets go thru both the body and the boss. A number of people in the ARMA DFW study group use bucklers from Crescent Moon and so far through many hard rounds of sparring with both wooden wasters and with steel blunts none of us have experience any problems with the bucklers.

Ran Pleasant
ARMA DFW

I would like to inform anyone interested that the website, www.crescentmoonarmoury.com, is back up and functioning.[url][/url]