#buckler

What’s the deal with tiny shields?

(Yes, I know my ‘big’ shield is stil pretty small)

Shield studies and designs!

The basic forms are based on...

Heater shield

Norman style kite shield

Rondache

Square buckler

All with my usual stylistic additions.

Would you like me to draw you a sword, shield, or other fantasy weapon?

A silly little design I made for my historical fencing club! We’d been discussing mental health in HEMA and my clubmate said this banger of a quote and I had to immortalize it. You can get it on stuff here!

I went to my first big LARP last summer, namely Drachenfest. While I had gone to a few tavern evenings, I had never really played a full consistent character, so it was a pretty big thing for me.

Beforehand, I prepared a number of things and also tried my hand at building weapons and a shield for the first time.

This was the result.

Below are a few pictures of the process.

I used a hard foam sheet as a core and bolted a piece of a wooden rod to the back as a handle. I used a hollowed out half of a softball as a boss. It was attached to a Plastazote mat. To secure the screws and edges of the core, I used a fibreglass fabric that was soaked in latex. I used a contact glue called Kövulfix, which is intended for use on leather. It deals well with the porous foam and has excellent properties if you want to sand edges for example.

I designed a pattern on paper and after adding the Plastazote to the other side, I mapped out the pattern to make adjustments.

Because I am not particularly good at drawing, I transferred a real wood texture to the surface in order to instead carve the texture into the foam.

I mainly just added the most prominent features of the pattern and freestyles the rest. I used wood carving tools and my trusted Dremel for this. 😊

After that, I added the rest of the embellishments. Which was a pain. (Although I am currently working on a shield that will have almost 150 individual foam rivets on it, so I guess it’s all relative. 😅)

I used different coloured primer for the wood and metal parts. As you can see I take masking off very seriously. I decided flex paints to avoid latex deterioration, which can be a big problem in LARP.

Because I carved the texture into the foam, I was able to paint the wood mostly by dry brushing, and only adding a few details with the brush.