#foam shield

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.