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Robin Smith
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 Posted: Wed 31 Oct, 2012 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Matthew Bunker wrote: | | Robin Smith wrote: |
No... Gut is incredibly tough once hardened. Tennis racket strings used to be made with gut. Its alot like a springy rawhide. Very tough. |
But 'gut' is intestine....how on earth do you cover a shield with intestinal wall...stitch lots together?
I thought the Illerup shields were covered in hide....I'm off to look at Vol 9 now. |
I dunno. Maybe cow gut?
I don't know the details of it. I was just pointing out that it is far from fragile. Its got all the toughness of rawhide, but with more spring.
A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine
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Jason O C
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| Posted: Wed 31 Oct, 2012 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Matthew Bunker wrote: | | But 'gut' is intestine....how on earth do you cover a shield with intestinal wall...stitch lots together? |
My thoughts exactly Matthew.
| Matthew Bunker wrote: | | I thought the Illerup shields were covered in hide....I'm off to look at Vol 9 now. |
Looking forward to learning what you find.
Jason
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Peter Messent
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| Posted: Wed 31 Oct, 2012 7:04 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting if gut was used - it's certainly a tough material, instrument strings were made from gut for a very long time and I believe some manufacturers still produce them.
I could see perhaps a stomach being large enough, but I don't know if it is as tough as gut.
As a sidenote, I do recall reading a long time ago that gut was sometimes used as a seamless grip cover for swords.
If a patchwork of gut was used for a shield facing, it seems like a lot of effort to go to if shields are seen as disposable when there are a wide variety of alternatives - but I'm not completely satisfied that they were truly disposable, in the very short-term at least.
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Matthew Bunker
Location: Somerset UK Joined: 02 Apr 2009
Posts: 483
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| Posted: Thu 01 Nov, 2012 1:21 am Post subject: |
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| Peter Johnsson wrote: | Investigation on shiled finds in Illerup Ådal show that parallel to an increased use of archery as a military weapon in the late roman iron age, shields were covered with a layer of gut. This was shown in experiments to have a great effect in preventing the boards from splitting by hits of arrows.
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So, I've looked at Vol 9 of the reports and, unless I'm missing something (which is entirely possible, given that it's a big book all in German), it seemed to be saying that although there is an assumption that the boards were covered with an organic material (based on gaps left between the surviving boards and their metal components), there's no physical trace of it due to the alkaline nature of the soil?
There is a picture of their reconstuction and that looks as though they've faced it with thin, untanned hide that's been stitched on with sinew or gut? I've made both flat and curved planked shields that I've covered with thin hide on both sides and can confirm that it makes for an incredibly tough shield...much, much tougher than one which is simply planked.
"If a Greek can do it, two Englishman certainly can !"
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Jason O C
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| Posted: Thu 01 Nov, 2012 2:30 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for getting back to us so quickly Matthew.
Jason
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Peter Johnsson
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Thu 01 Nov, 2012 2:38 am Post subject: |
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The complete shield is covered with a single sheet of gut. As I understand this it is stomach hide. It is glued and stitched on to the boards to my understanding.
It is raw hide and translucent so that paint can be applied to the boards and show through. Pig bladders was a traditional cover for lanterns because of its translucent quality.
In the find there were generally no traces of the raw hide because of the conditions in the bog.
But I think there were minute traces of thin raw hide under some of the metal mounts of the shields.
I cannot now remember if this was something I was told by the archaeologist Xenia Pauli Jensen, or if I read this somewhere in the many Illerup pages.
In general the research done on the Illerup find is very thorough and professional.
The idea that the shields were gut covered should not bee seen as a complete fantasy.
My personal opinion is that the use of thin gut hide saw many uses. I think that many of the wood hilts of the spathae in this find were originally covered with gut. The metal nails and the narrow reinforcing bands as well as the groves cut in the wood, suggest that thin raw hide as applied over the wood to provide greater resilience and perhaps water proofing.
The idea that some of the the hilts were gut or raw hide covered is not to be found in any published research. It is my own theory.
There is some evidence that later period seax grips may have been treated in a similar way.
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Martin Wallgren
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| Posted: Thu 01 Nov, 2012 2:58 am Post subject: |
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I had to nominate this topic as a spotlight topic. It has turned out one of the best shield-discussions I´ve seen and also we get new jawdroping stuff from our most learned forumites. Sorry for the OT!
Swordsman, Archer and Dad
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Matthew Bunker
Location: Somerset UK Joined: 02 Apr 2009
Posts: 483
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| Posted: Thu 01 Nov, 2012 5:04 am Post subject: |
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| Peter Johnsson wrote: | | The complete shield is covered with a single sheet of gut. As I understand this it is stomach hide. |
Ah, that makes much more sense, stomach rather than gut (in English, when discussing materials, gut tends to refer just to the intestine rather than the stomach...not a criticism BTW, just a clarification).
I've not had the chance to play with any stomach wall but I'd imagine that it's similar to bladder material. I've used pigs bladder a couple of times, it is both tough and translucent when dry.
Does it have any advantages over hide I wonder, other than being thinner (and therefore lighter).
| Quote: | The idea that the shields were gut covered should not bee seen as a complete fantasy.
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Absolutely, couldn't agree more. A planked shield with no cover to it has much less structural integrity compared to one that's been faced with hide, leather, linen etc...especially a flat (as opposed to a lenticular) board.
Just out of interest Peter, does it say what animal's stomach they used?
"If a Greek can do it, two Englishman certainly can !"
Last edited by Matthew Bunker on Fri 02 Nov, 2012 1:01 am; edited 1 time in total
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Bjorn Hagstrom
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| Posted: Thu 01 Nov, 2012 5:14 am Post subject: |
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| Matthew Bunker wrote: |
Does it have any advantages over hide I wonder, other than being thinner (and therefore lighter).
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I would say most likely that there where simply less other uses for stomachs.
Leather/hide would be useful for a lot of stuff in the iron age household. Shoes, bedding, belts, bags, bellows, buckets, harnesses for draught animals and so on, where the stomachs should have relatively speaking fewer useful applications.
Also one of the reason we do not see much leather clothing. Wool and linen fabric was also labour intensive and expensive but the leather was most likely much needed for other applications without substitutes around the estate/longhouse
There is nothing quite as sad as a one man conga-line...
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Rebekah Leib
Location: Northern Idaho Joined: 29 Oct 2012
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Mon 05 Nov, 2012 12:37 am Post subject: Rumens and rawhide and gut, oh my! |
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I'm new to this place as well, but thought I'd chime in with some of my own experience in doing living history & experimental archaeology. On the first page of the thread, the question of a distinction between parchment & rawhide was raised; as someone who has made parchment 'from scratch' (from dead deer & goat to finished writing surface) the main difference between parchment (before applying the powdered "ponce" to it) is that skins for parchment are stretched and dried under tension for thinness and evenness. Either way, rawhide is very tough stuff, although if over-dried it does tend to crack. Rawhide with a light coat of grease or oil will retain enough flexibility to resist cracking, as well as being somewhat water-resistant so that getting wet or even changes in humidity (the bane of bodhran players!) won't affect it quite as much.
Referring to 'gut', modernly it usually referred to intestinal strips, but for covering a shield, if I wanted an unbroken piece of gut to cover something as large-ish as a shield, I would go for taking & using the rumen of something cow-sized.
Just my $.02. 
Rebekah
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Jason O C
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| Posted: Mon 05 Nov, 2012 2:35 am Post subject: |
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Hi Rebekah. Pardon my ignorance, but what is rumen?
Jason
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Scott Woodruff
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| Posted: Mon 05 Nov, 2012 8:58 am Post subject: |
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The rumen is the first part of a ruminants digestive system. They swallow the food, then regurgitate it (the cud) and chew it again. Most artiodactyls (cloven hoof animals) are ruminants (cud chewers) with the exception of pigs.
I have begun experimenting with using gut and thin translucent rawhide to cover wooden objects like spear shafts and knife and axe handles, and I hope to get a hold of some cow gut some time soon for the Hjortspring shield I am working on.
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This is a standard topic