I made an Octagonal shield
Jan 14, 2021 19:06:47 GMT
Post by RaylonTheDemented on Jan 14, 2021 19:06:47 GMT
Short story: As the title say.
Longer story: I've been running a pen & paper RPG game for over 2 years now, our youngest, 14 years old son is playing a Dwarf and asked for his character's shield for Christmas.
I exclaimed to myself: HAHA! And started the project.
A functional Dwarven fantasy shield.
I looked around the web to find what size it should be and what kind of weight I should be expecting. Shopped and found a shield Bosse for 40$CAN + 12$ shipping.
I already had several pieces of plywood of different grades and thickness, the mystery left was how I would make the edge, cost: 0$
At first I wanted to make it round and circle the edge with steel. As I was roaming the local hardware store to find materials, I stumbled on these aluminum brackets and told myself: Hey, it's a Dwarven shield, lets make it octagonal and bought 3 lengths for 40$ (including taxes).
Also found some thick, wide leather on Amazon for 20$ for the arm strap, I ended up using around 1/4 of the length, so it ended costing 5$ for the project, leaving me with plenty of leather for a few more if/when I want to.
Thick plank of hardwood to make the handle I had: 0$
I also had some wood stain and lacquer left for 0$ dollars cost.
Last components were aluminum nails for riveting, washers, 4 round headed steel bolts and nuts for the strap and handle, all of which I already had - Cost: 0$
Total material cost: 97$ CAN
(NOTE: All prices are in CAN $, deduce around 30% for USD)
To make the shield octagonal, the length of the brackets kinda dictated the maximum size, as I could get 3 equal lengths of per bracket - My math were a bit off at first, and I messed the angles at first so I had to tinker and shorten them a bit, ended up with 8 lengths of 9 1/8" to make the reinforced edges with 1 leftover.
Once that done, I chose my plywood... At this point I decided to go with 3/4 plywood due to the brackets width, that and I don't have the metal saw to cut the aluminum to size. Back to this later.
Measured the angles, cut to size, used a wood chisel to roughly engrave false planks. Some sanding paper job.
Then I drilled the edge pieces and used them to mark and pre-drill the rivet holes around the edge, did the same with the bosse. Then I cut a handle out of a piece of ash, rounded it on the sander, finished by hand and again pre-drilled the holes for the bolts in both handle and shield.
Wood stained and lacquered the whole thing, 3 layers of lacquer, took a few days to let dry. Once done and dry I assembled shield bosse and edges and riveted them with the aluminum nails, heads on the outside with steel washer on the inside. Had help from my father to old the thing while I riveted, so as to not damage the shield by banging it around.
Glued the handle then bolted it on with the round headed bolts, nuts on the inside. Note that I sanded down the bolt heads a bit so as to remove the cast logo on them and to get rid of the polish, bring it down to the same dull grey as the aluminum. Finished by cutting the leather strap to size, punched a few holes for later adjustment to arm size (son is 14 and not big) and bolted it down using the same round headed bolts (I had to cut them down to length).
Size: 22 1/4" wide, octagonal edges are 9 1/8"
Thickness: 3/4"
Weight: 9 pounds
Final thoughts on the project: I am quite happy with the end result, being the first ever shield I made, making it octagonal made it more challenging than I thought, as you can see on some of the pics I messed up some of cuts and has to add shims to 'fill in' the brackets on the inside.
It is, I think, quite heavy for its size, Ideally would have used 3/8 plywood to reduce a bit of weight but again couldn't due to the brackets width. Steel or iron brackets would have made it very bulky.
I wanted to make functional shield, and yeah I realize that aluminum edges and riveting don't really cut it there, but I don't see him ever using it in anger, so I guess it's fine.
Pictures of the final results: