Fat little sister (making of a sturdy shield.)

By Arttu Peltoniemi
Prologue

The first shield I made was planned around a hypothesis that in the area of Finland there is close to no shield finds, and thus it is believed the shields were made purely on organic material. The shield was highly inspired by a shield find from the swamp of Tira Latvia. After testing my thin, light, pretty, and agile thing that eats weapons, that are struct to it, deep into its board I decided to name it the Pale blade eater. (Go read about it here)

Now the context of a light shield is interesting. It is mentioned in the Egil Skallagrimssons sagas that Norwegians had stronger shields and thus were able to easily overpower Fins (Kareilians). I (Arttu) myself am not a strong man, and find the fast agile light shield superior in sparring, both with sharps in slowed down fighting and in fast phased fights using simulators and safety gear. Anyhow the sagas and most shield finds suggest a heavier shield was highly popular. So to find out how they compare we need one. 

The ne shiel is named Fat little sisters and its thickness and tanned leather hide use were inspired by Rolf Warmings research.

The fat little sister. Making of a sturdy shield.

First thing to notice is that 1 cm thick radially cut planks are easier to make, with the modern tools I use. The gluing is also exponentially easier. (Of course I now have practiced with four thin shield boards, but still.) I originally bought the radially cut 8 cm thick spruce planks from Fiskarin saha and then used a circular saw to cut them to desired thicknesses. For gluing of the board I use hide glue.


Sawing the board round was also easier since it was more stiff, and thus easier to handle. For this I used a band saw.


My work was not perfect and the board was partially less than 1 cm thick. I still think it was good enough and continued with  what I had made.


As a next step I made the board about even using a modern planer. I decided to thin the edge down to 3 mm thickness. From the front I started planing it down towards ~5 mm thickness from a 10 cm distance from the edge.  


From the back side I decided to Plane it down to 3 mm thickness from a 3 cm distance from the edge. The decisions were based on what was easy for me to do. The reason for the back side down planing being only on the 3 cm area and only 2 mm down is that I wanted the back side to be as even as possible for make it easier to fit the handle later on. Also Rolfs Research suggest that planing down would happen more on the front side and less on the back. I must ad that the 10- and 3 cm distances were chosen by how I felt the planing would go nicely.  


In the next picture you can see almost finished edge and not so close to finished edge. It took me about 4 hours to plane this one down. I used a rougher plane first to go close to the desire measure and then made it cleaner with the tool you can see from the pictures above.
 

When the board was finished it was time to glue the the leather sheets. I don't remember why we wanted to cook the glue outside, but it was quite fun. This tanned leather was bought from Kemin nahkatarvike and the glue I by from Plektra. We use thermometer designed for cooking. I have thus far always glued the leather on top of a board before making a hole for the boss/hand. There is no particular reason for this.  



After gluing the hide on the board I tend to let it live and find shape for two weeks or more. One notable benefit of using tanned leather compered to raw hide is that it lives way less. The glue alone bends the board, but not as much as raw hide does. Thus making a facing with tanned leather makes success more likely, for someone with my experience. I also always try to glue both facings as close in time to each other as I can. This time the difference in time was maybe 20 minutes. Putting the hide on both sides definitely helps keeping the board straight. (Unlike here.)

To make the hole I use a drill with a special head to saw through the board. Then I finish the shape with a knife. It has been suggested that the hole could be nicer if it was cowered with leather or even with a thin fur slice, but when it is like this a sharp eyed scholar might notice the radially cut planks.  


After the board is finished I like to put the handle and the Umbo on place using screws before doing the finish with nails. This way, if there are mistakes, it is easier to take them of again. After the placing is done, I replace them with nails one at a time until its all done. 


Now this is the heaviest iron age shield I have made. The kitchen scale I had on the work shop only shows up to 3 kg and the board alone was heavier than that. It feels really different to use and I at least need to change my guard posture and move it with a bit different body mechanics than those lighter shields I have made. So there probably is some learning curve ahead. We shall see how it compares against lighter shield in fights and we shall also find out how it manages against sharp period weapons. I hope to write about all of that during the summer. Hopefully we get good video material of all the tests. 

EDIT: I bought a draw scale meant to weight fish. From it looks like the Fat little sister is ~4,3 kg total. 

EDIT: So now... 
We made two shields with exatly the same building method. The white paint is on the Fat litlle sister. The black one is made out of the same wood, same patch of leather, we used the same glue... it is made out of 6mm thick blanks and only tempered down to 3mm from 5cm distance. Now we can test what are the difrences of the boards in use.


Read (and see) abuot thick and thin shield tested against all viking weapons here:
https://hirdmenn.blogspot.com/2022/12/testing-thin-and-thick-shields-against.html



To stay tuned you can follow us on the hirdmenn facebook page. To see some older tests on the first lighter shield you can visit our YouTube channel. Start with this video where a shield board eats a sword.

Please leave your comments and criticism.
Location: Helsinki, Finland Helsinki, Finland

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