[MR] re: Viking Shields

[RAL]

Guys, I'm sorry to butt into your list since none of you know me and
all....I haven't been involved in the SCA in about eight years now and very
seldomly even then since 88.  I did frequent the archery mailing lists
though and had many great discussions.

The past 10 years or so my passion has been military figure modeling since
the knees no longer hold up to 1-1 scale stuff anymore.

I just came across a page on the web with you guys discussing viking shields
and I just wanted to share a bit of my information I've gathered over the years.

Flat-type viking shields usually ran in the neighborhood of 30-36
inches....flat boards of about four inch width and half an inch
thickness....with two cross boards on the backside for support.  The hand
hole was approx 6 inches in diam and the grip was mainly carved wood nailed
to the back of the hand hole.  The boss was usually in the range of 14-16
gauge and held onto the wooden shield with four nails or groups of four
nails (two nails side by side....pattern of three and so forth) around the
boss.  The backside of the shield rim was chamfered down approx 4 inches
from the shield edge to form an edge that was approx 1/4 inch thick.  All
nails were in the 1/16th inch diam size and were bent over after hammering
through the shield.

A rawhide strip about 2 inches in width was then wet and shrunk around the
rim and tacked on with nails driven through from the front and bent.  Bent
nails are reusable nails!

The entire thing when finished weighs in at approx 4-6 pounds and would seem
far too light to stop any direct hits.  However, it's very stout when swung
with zero flex, and is so light that it's almost disposable.

Steel-faced shields were approx the same diams as the flat wooden type but
gently dished.  The steel facing was in the 18-20 gauge range and served
*only* as a personalized facing for a replaceable wooden shield behind it.
The steel faced shield had six nails or patterns of nails approx 9 inches
from the rim and those were often simply for show....they don't appear to
have served any purpose other than show because a rim of rawhide, leather,
or steel banding was bent-nailed around the shield edge to hold the steel
facing onto the replaceable wooden shield behind.

Think in terms of making a bent-wood shield with staves that was a shield in
itself and then just rim-band a steel face onto it and you have the viking
steel-faced shield.  

The steel-faced shield still weighs in at less than eight pounds for the few
that I've produced.

I don't know if it'll help anyone or not but I did do a short howto article
on making 1/6 scale shields for action figures that was posted to the web a
few years ago.  The url is
http://www.geocities.com/randkl.geo/Joemodeling/shield.html

Once again, I apologize for butting in, and I hope something I've said might
help you guys.

All the best!

Richard McLlewyn