[Jared Smith]

I have done wood carving for a few decades, and Lindenwood or "Basswood" is the preferred species. I have never heard of one large enough to create a single piece object the size of a kite shield. I suppose they could have been larger in Medieval times, but, as I understand it, they were also revered to a degree. I hate to think of the most sacred ones being cut down simply to make kite shields!

Since I do a little unrelated modern work in composites, and use composite construction in scabbards, I would advocate the idea of overlapped and layered slats or sheets glued while clamped or strapped to a jig as being the most economical and fastest way to make a strong and light weight curved object. I can't prove it was done historically with shields, but, it seems to have been understood and practiced by a great many peoples in making bows and other objects during the same time period being considered in this post. The time saving advantages are especially true when using simple hand tools and a lot of hollowing out with table saws or scorp type draw knifes is to be avoided. The composite construction generally yields the highest strength to weight (improvement factor of 2 to 4 with very simple layups) ratio as well. Gluing a covering layer of cloth or leather with hide glue also fortifies it further. I am unsure of the scientific and historical basis, but have read that period hide glue was more effective at gluing dissimilar materials (cloth leather) to wood than at bonding the wood to itself. Hence, the coverings may have been critical structurally. (As was the analogous "backing" on many bow styles.) As we see this in actual period grip wraps, I would find it likely that the leather and cloth coverings were glued composite fashion over the shields as well with period understanding of the structural advantages of doing so.

Traditionally, beeswax was a cheap enough commodity to weather proof tents since Roman Empire era. Many present day leather workers still include it as an essential sealant/ rigidizer ingredient today. (Most blend it with paraffin wax.) And it is not that costly for sealing formed leather against light or occasional exposure to rain. I would not use beeswax as weather proofing for sea faring applications though. The pine pitch seemed to work well enough to have been utilized in longboat construction. I would guess that it could have proven similarly effective for rawhide or thick leather banding.

[Ron Reuter]

[Michael Doughty]

[Jared Smith]

[Michael Doughty]

I'm aware that boards were usually produced by splitting logs, but saws were certainly not unknown, as demonstrated by the toolbox discovered in Mastrmyr on the island of Gotland Sweden in 1936.

http://www.netlabs.net/~osan/Mastermyr/

If, as has been suggested, kite shields may have been made of a crude form of plywood, they'd need some way to produce fairly thin and smooth boards to bond together. Irregularities in the wood surfaces would tend to form voids in the lamination, and would adversely affect it's structural integrity.

How else could they have done this?

[Johan S. Moen]

[Michael Doughty]

Thanx for that Johan...

Pegging the planks together certainly makes a lot of sense... it's the way I would do it, at least.

Looks like a majority of the shield planks found were quite thin...some as thin as 0.4cm, so I'm assuming pegging would be out of the question in those cases.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/shield/shield16.jpg

If you could give me some more information about this, I'd appreciate it very much.

[Michael Doughty]

Here's another possibility:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highligh...hield.aspx

[Jared Smith]

[Leo Todeschini]

Scanning through this thread and trying to keep in touch with it, it does seem clear that we simply don't have a definitive answer to how were they constructed - which is a shame. Damn all those people 800 years who didn't write 'how to manuals'.

For my 2 cents worth though here are my thoughts from the experience of making laminated ply shields, solid timber shields, crossply steam bent laminated shields and butted planked flat and curved shields.

Shield making jigs for single plane curvature shields are the only modern way to go and I suspect historically this must have been so. They are easy to make, you can have a few on the go even in a small workshop and they make shields quickly and reliably to a given curve.

Single plane curvature shields have no need of curving the edges of the planks (barrel stave style) so actually are pretty easy to make; use loads of glue to gap fill, having made sure the edges are planed to go face to face well, and grease the jig before laying the wood on. Dished shields need to have the planks thin for curving and steam bending and will need to be 'barrel staved' to make them fit together (I use a jig for these too) and these are also pretty easy to shape and fit with a plane; not the nightmare you may think.

Solid timber shields take quite a lot longer to shape and finish and waste so much timber. I guess sometimes they made them like this but as with everything there are different quality levels. I am not certain they would be much stronger than a planked and glued shield, but assuming it is stronger by 20% or 30% most buyers would buy a cheaper shield (maybe a third of the price) and suffer the drop in quality. Think Albion verses Windlass - superficially they look similar but are quite different but far more people buy windlass. I simply cannot believe all kite shields were made like this some perhaps, but not all as both are valid and successful methods and it would depend on materials available.

Crossply steam bent are straightforward enough. Steam and bend the timber over a jig, 'stave' the edges and form the dome, do the same again and set at 90 degrees. Again use loads of glue. I have not heard of the pegging system before and so haven't tried it but I can see that working well enough. As a first thought, hazel sticks that have been hit will twist into a knot and a knot onto each side of the planks will clamp the faces down very hard.

Butted and flat are again pretty straightforward but as with all these getting thin timber is the issue, easy now, but more problematic then. As was said earlier, splitting shingles is still done now and also trugg baskets. These are made by boiling oak logs in long troughs and then after cooling they can be split in very thin sheets easily down to 3.5mm/1/8th" I don't know if this works with other timbers but I assume it does. The faces of these thin boards of course have the riven surface and this can be removed by scraping with a cabinet scraper, a technique that was used. This will give a smooth surface. I am not sure this would be too much of a benefit as the keying offered by a riven surface would be huge.

Animal hide glues are fantastic to use and for any that have not used them or doubt their effectiveness then I strongly suggest you go out and play with them - they are great. They are applied hot so you have to work fast, but when they cool they become very sticky, very stiff jelly so they go from fluid to holding pretty well in a couple of minutes and then the rest is air drying and so the final strength comes over the next few days. You can mix them to different consistencies so it can be used in different ways and part of that is too make it fluid enough to soak into leather......This means it will gap fill, it will laminate almost fibreglass, it will stick like hell to pretty much all organics as far as I can tell, it sets fast, it will soften with moisture, but it will also rebond if it has fractured. In short it is great and quite the job for laminating shields.

The one serious downside to animal glues is that they are heavy, so if the shield was crossply laminated with a riven surface there would be some gap filling to do and so this would be done with a heavy glue.

Viking shields seem to be very thin at about 6-8mm and are flat and butted planked construction - this we know. The Normans descended from the Vikings and so a similar technology would seem logical. If a customer asked me to make a kite shield as authentically as possible I would suggest a specification as follows - not to say this is right, just that it is my best guess.

Poplar, lime or pine planks at about 9-10mm thick as finished but made up from 4 planks that are scraped to this thickness so on the jig they would be about 18-20mm thick; bonded in a four faceted curve and scraped to be smooth.
The back face would have a layer of hide glue applied and then linen cloth applied and pressed so that the glue comes through and the excess scraped away. The front face would have a layer of thick hide glue applied at the same time as the cow hide cover had a layer of thin hide glue applied then the shield and the front cover pressed together and rubbed to revove excess glue, the edge pulled round and nailed down. When dry the nails can be removed and the edge of the leather tidied up.

If required the faces of the shield can be dressed down with gesso, a mixture of hide glue and chalk or a moulding compound based in linseed oil can be use for areas of high refeif. The shield can have a rawhide edge applied, but this does in fact add massively to the weight.

No definitive answers I am afraid but some thoughts I hope.

Interesting thread this one............

Tod

[Michael Doughty]

[Johan S. Moen]

In stead of edging the shield per se, covering it completely in rawhide/parchment and bending the material around the edges is another option. Cloth works as well.

Applying rawhide edges is attractive from a reenactment standpoint, since it is easy to do, and cheaper than getting a large piece of rawhide, but if you're making a shield to last a battle(or not even that), cloth would probably do. I made a heater shield with a few layers of linen covering it, and the edges held up pretty well even when fighting often with blunt blades. I did however get fed up with all the dents after a while, and applied a rawhide edge...

Johan Schubert Moen

[Michael Doughty]

[Sam Gordon Campbell]

Well, this thread inspired me to make another shield.
Granted it's not a kite-shield, but I whole heartedly intend to make one... After completing this one... Then may an Italian style one...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg8ejfh1c8o
I've got a friend who's parents know a wooden boat maker, and allegedly he steams alot of the planks he uses to make klinkers and whatnot.
So methinks that I may inquire further with that and see where it leads.
Also, keep up the awesome work gentlemen

[T. Hamilton]

I've been following this thread a while, and though I'm in no way an expert, I can't help wondering about the stability of some of the propsed construction methods. Do the plank-type shields have any kind of cross bracing on the back, or is the glue/edging combo all that's holding them together? Granted a shield wasn't meant to last forever, but how did all those joints withstand even a few hard blows? Also, the single piece, carved design seems like it would be prone to splitting. Wouldn't a laminated design be the strongest--and if turned out on a jig--the easiest construction method? I know you guys know way more about this than me, so will somebody explain where my reasoning is going awry.

[Keith L. Rogers]

Hide glue of reasonable gram strength forms a bond as strong as the wood itself. I don't know enough historical research to comment on whether wood alone, cross bracing, etc, was what they used. Aside: Tod is right on about the virtues of hide glue. The more I work wood the more I use it. It does have some, erm, 'eccentricities' compared to modern aliphatic resins and epoxies.

I don't think they had the technology for laminating wood as in modern plywood. That's made by rotary cutting entire boles into thin sheets. These days it's done with a meters-wide lathe and knife beast. Back then wood was split if possible, plank sawed if not. There are woodblocks showing sawyers making very thin planks but the widths were of course limited to the diameter of the log. Also, that process means the widest planks were necessarily sawn on the quarter which is the worst grain orientation one could choose for something getting pounded on. (Great for soundboards, though )

Surely curved shields were made like other curved plank objects then and now: laid up on a frame (aka mould or 'jig'). Iconographic sources show everything from lutes to boats used frames during manufacture.

[Michael Doughty]

[T. Hamilton]

Thanks, Michael! That really put it all in perspective for me. I guess I had no idea just how much strength was added by facing the shield. I am very much a fan of historic construction techniques, and have been wanting to take a crack at a shield myself. I had been leaning toward a laminated one, but after reading that article, I think I'll go with the plank method!

[Michael Doughty]

[William R. Short]