Shield Patterns or Templates

[Tally]

I have a sheet of aluminum and I want to cut out a shield or two from it. Does anyone know of a place where I can see the sizes and shapes of different shield styles or where I might be able to download a template to use when cutting out a shield? I am thinking of a heater or a coffin lid, something with corners.
Thanks!

[Ingelri]

I would recommend going to the store and getting a 10 pack of posterboard and going to town. Try out different shapes and sizes until you find one you like.

Ingelri

[Konstantin the Red]

Tally, welcome and well come to the Archive; may your stay with us be long and profit you much!

If nobody in your SCA Shire or Barony can tell you how to lay out a nice symmetrical heater shield, I daresay we shall profit you much indeed.

Most heaters are within a couple inches one way or another of being two feet wide, mostly for convenience in laying out shields from plywood sheets.

You'll need a ruler, a pencil, some tape, and a string that the tape will anchor for laying out the curves. A saber saw with a couple metal cutting blades will cut out the curves on the bottom part of the shield.

If you know someone with a sliproller, he can curve your aluminum for you, particularly if you have structural aluminum like 6061 in a large T number (5 to 10). If you bend it with a hammer, you need a heavy deadblow hammer for the job, trust us. 6061 is springy.

Height of shield, chief to base, no more than about three feet, and if it's approaching as short as two, you have a nimble shield, though something that takes tactical expertise to use to its fullest. Many intermediate fighters adopt shorter shields as a means to stepping up to really expert.

Having decided how wide you want your shield, e.g., 24 inches, start by assuming a rectangle, 24 inches wide by 36 tall. Find and mark the centerline, from center chief to the point in base.

The upper third to upper half of the shield body is, well, a rectangle -- so one foot down from the top edge, locate these points on both sides of the shield. Tape the string's end to one of these points, stretch the string out to at least the other side of the shield where that other point was marked, but you can go a little farther if you want a longer curvature. Secure the pencil or Sharpie marker there, and using the string as your radius, mark the curving line down to the point. Repeat all this for the other side, so your two curves intersect at the point.

If you go with a longer radius than the width of the shield, move your string's fixed point up on the shield side towards the top edge so your curve can start at that 1/3 or 1/2 point, whichever you prefer. Mark the curve as above.

Having drawn all your marks, cut 'em out with the saw. This method works whether your sheet metal is flat or already curved. I very strongly recommend you curve your metal, since you've gone to this kind of trouble, for a curved shield balances much better on your arm and covers you better too, because it's wrapped around you some.

Aluminum is very lightweight, a bit too light for a shield really. Cover the shield with scrap-bin lightweight leather in at least one of your device's colors. With heraldic ordinaries or partitions of the field, you can stitch leather together to make the face of your shield to most excellent effect. Cover the back of the shield also with either cloth or more leather; either was used. You can find out how to make low-profile shield edges that hide superbly within the rest of the construction but still saves your shield, and your opponents' weapons, right here.

Coffinlids, pretty much the same essential layout, with a centerline and the upper third of the shield being the same rectangle. Determine how wide you want the base to be on either side of the centerline, then draw the taper from the point one-third down from the top to either end of the width of the base. There's your coffinlid. Clipped corners, your option, but complete corners are tactically better.

Curved-bottom heaters can go all the way to having the entire bottom end of the shield a semicircle -- it's really a tallish roundshield with clever tactical corners on top, and is sometimes called a bunny-round, for reasons I've never heard.

[Tally]

Thanks for the great instructions, Konstantin! I think I may need to try a few before I find one that fits my fighting style. That's my round shield to the left, and I am hankering for a corner to hide behind. I am not very handy, which is why I was hoping for a template.
Thanks again!
Tally

[marcus the pale]

I recommend making a few styles you think you might like to try in wood first, something cheaper and less permanent. I found that what I thought I would like and what actually works well for me, are two very different things. If you have material to waste, go for it. But I would also check your local area practice to see who fights with what. Its a lot easier to learn how to fight with a strapped heater from someone who fights with one, as opposed to learning how to fight with a curved, center grip, kite when there is no one around to give you tips on how to get better.

I guess my advice is really just not to waste good materials. A good aluminum shield will last you a lifetime, so you might as well be sure that it is something you want to use for a long time. As for templates, I just figured out the rough shape of the shield I wanted to use, on my own, and went with it. I'm a tall skinny guy with a tall skinny shield, I don't work well with round shields.

Have fun exploring!


marcus

[Konstantin the Red]

One thing that is bound to happen is that you will become more handy. It's mainly just knowing what measurements you need to have, or to take.

The rest of it is letting the tool do the work at its own pace.

[Tally]

One would hope I would get more handy the longer I did it, but that sure hasn't been the case with my fighting! I am going to try to get better, and one part of that plan is a new shield. Thanks for the help, C. Does anyone know where I can find samples of what different shield shapes look like? Also, I know that heaters are often curved. Are coffin lids curved?
Thanks
Tally

[Johann Lederer]

Greetings Tally,

Johannes at Windrose Armoury has a large selection of sizes and shapes, most are listed (pictorial) on his site. That is what I looked at prior to making mine.

[Tally]

Thanks! Here's a link.

http://www.windrosearmoury.com/zc/index ... Path=30_27

[William of Stonebridge]

There are as many different ways to make shields as there are fighters. Shields are a very personal thing. Some like large rectangular war doors, some like bucklers and the rest fall in between. This is how I cut out my heater. I usually draw it out on poster board or newspaper first and then trace it to my shield blank.

The size of my shield blank starts out the width of my shoulders, and the height is the measurement from chin to crotch. This is a good starting point for size. You can make it bigger or smaller than according to your taste and local custom. My shields are usually 20"x26".



Find the center point on the bottom of your shield and make a mark with a pencil there. Take a piece of string the width of your shield and tie a pencil to the end of it.




Put the free end of the string on the center mark at the bottom and pull the string tight and mark the distance on the right and left edges of the shield.



Put the free end of the string on the mark you just made and the pencil on the center mark at the bottom and draw an arc from the bottom to the opposite side.




Draw the other side



Transfer the pattern to your shield and cut out.

[Tally]

What great instructions! I salute you, sir!

[Konstantin the Red]

I like 'em too.

[olaf haraldson]

Tally, where are you located in the East? Is one of us close enough to help you?

[Stahlgrim]

the best way to decide which shield to make is to check around your local practice.
If everyone is fighting heater and you come in with a center-grip round are they going to be able to effectively teach you?

[Tally]

Excellent point. Which is better, to fight the best shield for my fighting style, or to fight the shield that others around me can train me in the use of?

[Sean Powell]

Excellent point. Which is better, to fight the best shield for my fighting style, or to fight the shield that others around me can train me in the use of?

Or C) to learn to fight with the shield that your persona would have used or the one that goes with your kit.

Honestly I can only teach 'lazy heater' style so I try to instruct local new fighters in that. I also have loaner heater shields available. If a fighter finds out that a different shape suits his style or persona better then my instruction becomes less direct and instead used demonstrations of 'This is how I attack a coffin-lid shield. Now you figure out how to block'. If I do instruct it's more like 'This is how I block the wrap with a heater, can you do something similar with your round shield?'

I guess I favor using the shield that you can be taught, especially in the begining and then moving to the shield that works well with what you can do and what you have been taught. Remember, once you are past the very basics, EVERY opponent is effectivly your teacher if you can study yourself. Hopefully the shield also satisfies your persona as well.

Sean

[Tally]

Tally, where are you located in the East? Is one of us close enough to help you?

What a kind offer. I am near Philly, but I was hoping to try my hand at things myself, which is why I haven't asked for help.

Or C) to learn to fight with the shield that your persona would have used

At this point, I am more concerned with staying alive than with looking period. I know it may be heresy, but I am really just a stick jock at heart.

[Konstantin the Red]

Well, tally, stickjock is where a good many of us started. What's happened, over the decades and in some measure through this site, is that our desired standard in armor has climbed from "get it around me and have it protect" to "protect, look well, follow historical profile, and move ergonomically with me" not necessarily in that order.

Look to the skilled fighters in your Barony for your first teachers. To enhance your skills, make a point of not falling too much in love with any single particularly attractive weapon style -- some fighters go through a phase where they get so fond of bastard sword than their weapon-&-shield gets quite rusty. Whatever shield type is favored in your Barony, if there is a clear favorite, is the one they are likely to be most competent with.

Essentially, it breaks down rather like this: Heater's the basic, and takes some drilled, conditioned reflexes to use it best, with the knee-bend to guard low and the swivel-up-drop-down-quick guard for high. A great deal of your anatomy is involved using it, and its large coverage is very good for buttoning up behind -- it's an excellent defender.

A strapped Round requires a more agile approach, as you have to actively meet incoming by swiveling the shield high or low, pulling it shieldside or punching it to centerline as needed. Its coverage is much less, its weight rather less, and the motions required, while rather extensive, are natural to anyone with a strong karate background, as they are very like karate forearm blocks, just augmented.

A long shield like a Norman Kite or a Roman Scutum covers a great deal and can be rather immobile because of its size. Its length gives a lot of coverage to the leg. The kite is likely to be inconvenient to use if you get legged because of that length, unless your shield is strapped so your arm is vertical and then you can invert the entire thing by lowering your forearm.

A Buckler is used by punching it at whatever's coming. It's a very very mobile sort of fighting, with more reliance on footwork to place you favorably for your defense, unfavorably for his attack, and favorably for your riposte. Lots of stepping back and forth to control range, and off at angles to control angle.

[Tally]

"protect, look well, follow historical profile, and move ergonomically with me"

For me most important would be protecting and moving ergonomically. At Pennsic I saw some amazing kits. If I could get there for a few hundred dollars, I would, but I suspect many people have spent many thousands or many months or years of time, neither of which I can afford. I am really not very handy, which I why I came to ask advice about something so simple as cutting out a shield.


You can see my shield to the left, Konstantin. It is basically a strapped round shield. I want to move to something with corners, so I am looking at a heater, wankel or coffin lid. I like a strapped shield, so I am not interested in center grip. Some of the guys at my practice fight with heaters, but there is a contingent that fights with a larger heater shape that has a point at the top center, I don't know the name but it looks like a cross between a heater and a kite, 13 in this pic from windrose:



The guys that use this shield cover up well, but it seems to big for my style of fighting. I fought with one at Pennsic, and didn't like it much.

I am thinking about 7, 9 or 10:

[img]http://www.windrosearmoury.com/zc/images/armour_images/shields.jpg[/img]

Even were I to chose a basic shape, there are so many variables in the dimensions that it is confusing. And what about curvature? My current shield is flat. Practice is tomorrow and I am planning on trying everyone's shields, but I think finding the best one for me may be a long process, but at the end of it I will be older, wiser, poorer, and hopefully a bit less bruised.

[Konstantin the Red]

What you said. That's exactly how I'd experiment. And I hope you'd be only very temporarily poorer.

You'll very much enjoy the better balance of a curved shield now that you've experienced the way a flat shield tries to lie flat hanging from your forearm; you get a lot less of that with a shield curved about three inches deep measured at its center -- with the shield lying on a flat floor if you wish to be precise.

No.9 would make a pretty fair late-type kite, if made long enough. The No.8 next to it was long popular among the Russians, running from a very early date, maybe 10th, certainly 11th century. No.7 is known as a Wankel, and is used like a round. Its corners make it extra efficient; the shape is strictly a modern one, having been introduced into SCA combat circa 1972 as far as anyone can recall. I keep fantasizing about its doing double duty in camp if table leg hardware is attached to its back to screw legs into and make a card table. The bunny-round I mentioned earlier -- a shorter No.2 -- fights the same way, with similar advantages of corners, just one fewer and a more Middle Ages look. It's a good shortened/shrunk shield for when you're trying to improve your shield work and increase opportunity for offensive moves, which should be the next step you take once you've got a few months' fighting under your belt and have some confidence in your technique and in those teaching you theirs.

No.10 is consistent with both Romans and Celts and probably is most agile if strapped for a vertical forearm and the whole thing approaching four feet top to bottom. Kite shield tactics will suit this shape best.

In something of a heater's length I prefer to have more breadth in its lower end than No.9 -- either 2 or 3. Better coverage for the butt. Butt and thighs can take quite a lot of pounding because of their depth of meat, but a hard shot to the butt still stings plenty unless you've put something there or have it sheltered.

A peaked or gable-topped heater is still a heater. I like having the corners still present on a heater though, not clipped off. You lift/swing a heater corner up to guard your head and temple, dropping it back down immediately after deflecting the sword shot so as not to be blinded to the other fellow's next move -- this requires that the heater actually have a corner there, else you'll have to do like a round and swing it farther. You don't simply park your heater out in front of you and expect it to fortify you completely. There are tactics with the shield too, in binding another man's weapon or pressing his shield to immobilize it for just that second you need to whop him.

[Konstantin the Red]

Shield dimensions probably deserves its own post.

Breadth: your cubit arm from point of elbow to knuckles at the least. Your arm will be slanted about 45 degrees from horizontal anyway, with your shield hand up in one corner of your heater. Cubit arm plus four inches probably puts you very close to 24 inches across anyway. In shields, as in sword lengths, one inch qualifies as "very close," very close indeed.

Height for a heater shield sized for you: The inches between the crotch of your jeans and the ground, with your feet standing flat on it. If you can straddle the height of a shield with both feet flat on the ground, it's a good height for you. If it should have undue effects on the timbre of your voice, it's too tall -- or a kiteshield, which pretty much runs shoulder to knee or about four feet, whichever is desired -- shorter's more mobile, taller more defensive without having to move around much. That's good in a shieldwall where you can't move around much yourself, and not so terrific for single combat until you've gotten quite agile and knowledgeable. Most of the time when you're new, a short shield will develop you better.

Round shields of one kind or another usually run from 24 to 36-38 inches in diameter. Wankels measure the same as heaters, above -- careful around them points! <-- one guy checking a height and three looking on

[don]

I would say to check your martial rules first, and look into some previous copies if you can. Chin to crotch, shoulder to shoulder seems to be about standard. In An Tir this was used as every fighter using any shield type other then a round shield had the same amount of coverage, rounds were elbow to elbow with clenched fists to a maximum 30 inches.

Another reason for checking your martial rules is that they might influence your shield choices

Don

[Konstantin the Red]

Yes, the local Knight Marshal's job is to be a knowledgeable guide to the Armor Standards -- the greater part of his job is vetting equipment and assessing its safety or lack of it -- and teaching the combat conventions of SCA heavy-equipment fighting. He's ultimately your local resource. If there's something too baffling for him, it goes to his boss, the Kingdom Earl Marshal.