Woodworking Project Diary

[Sean M]

Two of my projects for this spring are making some spearshafts suitable for Babylonia around 500 BCE, and a whittle-tanged dagger from a grave in Uruk from the 6th or 5th century BCE. While I wait for some tools and materials to arrive and time for shopping trips to open up, I am sketching the knife handle and thinking about composition problem.

My main information about the dagger is a series of side views and cross-section sketches of the blade. My redrawing of the handle is life-sized, about 12 cm long.



The handle is a basic whittle tanged handle assembled from three pieces. I suspect the one in the middle is different than the impact plate and the pommel because it rotted worse. Mine will have a thin horn impact plate and a body of boxwood, apple, or pear wood depending on what gaukler has in stock. Boxwood and apple both show up in sites from Iron Age Iran and pears are widely distributed too.



The pommel is a bull's head and the horns or ears of the original have broken off (in the photo I can only see one pair of broken things, from position I would guess they were the horns). So I have to decide how to handle the horns and ears without making them too fragile. I could compress them down against the head of the bull, or fill in the space between them with something. I could have the ears touch the base of the horns to reinforce that part.

I will look through my collection of Achaemenid, Late Babylonian, and Elamite art to see if I get any ideas.

[Sean M]

I bought a used spokeshave. it is in good condition, except that the edge is a bit uneven and has some nicks.



mac tells me that spokeshaves have hard edges so you don't want to file them to remove nicks.

I have a pricker which I can use as a hone, and a dual 150/280 grit stone. I don't know if I want to get a finer stone to really polish a fine edge on the spokeshave. I have some 600-grit sandpaper and some blocks of wood to wrap it around ...

[Sean M]

Also, while we are thinking of how places with lots of durable stuff did things ... a Swiss chronicle from 1547/1548 has the following picture of pike-makers and wood-turners from what German-speakers call the Eschental "ash valley" and Italian-speakers call the Val d’Ossola in Piedmont. Its one of the bits of the Alps which went back and forth between the Swiss Confederacy and various Italian princes.



John Waldman had read the accompanying text and believed that they took ash trees, split them into quarters, planed the quarters into rough staves about the right size, and then passed the rough staves through sharp-edged dies to work them down further. I will try reading it next time I have an hour free. Has anyone else seen anything like this?

[Sean M]

The spearhead arrived, and it brought trouble with it.



Its a good medium size (22 cm long, 42 mm wide) but heavy (290 grams) with a socket diameter of 30 mm external, 27 mm internal. Most ancient war spears seem to have sockets with an external diameter in the 20-25 mm range. The socket is 50% wider than on the long (~250 cm) spears with broad heads from La Tène, and the head is twice as heavy! And this is a big deal because I have to choose what size I want the squared-off shaft to be. When I carve it into its final shape, no part can be bigger than the timbers I start with.

It seems like most spears have shafts which vary in thickness from end to end. No spearshafts from the Achaemenid empire survive, and artists usually just draw two parallel lines, but here are some staff weapons with particular shapes:

Staff weapons which are thicker at the head than the butt

• Most early Anglo-Saxon spears (Cap'n Atli)
• An early 15th century pollaxe in the Wallace Collection (inventory number A925, as described by Craig Johanson of A&A Minnesota)

Staff weapons which are thicker at the butt than the tip

• Many Greek hoplites' spears in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE (probably, we just have pictures of where they are gripped and someone tells me that the butt spikes tend to have wider sockets than the heads)
• Spears from the lake at La Tène (probably, I just have a scan of a drawing)
• Spears from the Celtic sanctuary at Gournay (heads have an external diameter of 15-25 mm (60% are 20-22 mm wide), and ferrules have an external diameter of 25-35 mm: Rapin, Gournay II, pp. 88, 97, 104, 105)
• Kelvedon warrior's spear (England, around 75-25 BCE)
• Wade Allen's Luzern pikes (Swiss, from around 1500)

Staff weapons which are barreled (thickest somewhere in the middle and tapered towards the ends)

• Longh Gur spear (County Limerick, Ireland, Late Bronze Age)
• Many arrows from different cultures
• Catapult darts from Dura-Europos (Roman, around 250 CE)
• John Waldman's Swiss and German halberds (15th/16th century)
• Wade Allen's Luzern pikes

Making the shaft thickest towards the tip seems to be good for throwing spears, and making it thickest in the back half makes it easier to control the weapon in thrusts and keeps long spears from bending too much. A spear about 190 or 221 cm long is not huge, but I'm not sure I would want a fighting spear heavy-headed AND heavy-shafted AND forward weighted. Warriors in Near Eastern art often hold spears overhand and about 3/4 of the way back.





(Another nice image is here from Sanherib's palace - oh, and the battle of Til-Tuba relief!)

If I wanted to really move the balance back on a spear with this head, I think I would need to start with pieces of wood 6/4" (36 mm) by 6/4" by however long the plank is, and working that down by hand would be work.

[Sean M]

The best description of ancient spears which I have is these Celtic spears:

Paul Vouga, La Tène, Monographie de la station publiée au nom de la commission des fouilles de La Tène, Leipzig 1923 columns 53 and 54

II. Pikes

The points which we have assigned to this category are those of 20-30 cm long; their weight, 145 grams on the average, permits them to be placed at the tip of a relatively long shaft, but seems rather burdensome for a throwing weapon. ...

If we have attributed the middle-sized points to the roles of lances for horsemen or chariot warriors, it is ... also thanks to the discovery whiuch we have made in the course of the last excavations of five intact lances, which are all furnished with points of middle length.

These pikes (plate IX, fig. 14 and 15) measure from heel to tip of the point from 2.43 to 2.47 metres. The shaft, of a diameter of two centimetres, is of debarked ash (en frêne écorcé), and so regularly worked that at the moment of discovery it seemed to be polished. No trace of an amentum (throwing loop) or strap intended for carrying the weapon.

The "debarked" and "as if polished" makes me wonder if these were made from coppiced / pollarded trees? My walking stick is cut from a branch and very shiny without obtrusive grain.

Plate IX is:



In a different article, he also has a print of a painting of the first intact lance found. He says that the painting was based on very careful tracings and measurements to avoid distortion in photography, but this is a printout of a scan of a print of the painting. It seems to me that where the wood meets the head is narrower than where the wood meets the butt.

[Mac]

Also, while we are thinking of how places with lots of durable stuff did things ... a Swiss chronicle from 1547/1548 has the following picture of pike-makers and wood-turners from what German-speakers call the Eschental "ash valley" and Italian-speakers call the Val d’Ossola in Piedmont. Its one of the bits of the Alps which went back and forth between the Swiss Confederacy and various Italian princes.



John Waldman had read the accompanying text and believed that they took ash trees, split them into quarters, planed the quarters into rough staves about the right size, and then passed the rough staves through sharp-edged dies to work them down further. I will try reading it next time I have an hour free. Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Whatever it may say in the text, the guy on the left looks like he's engaged in straightening the shafts. He's bending them with a fixture that appears to be the "industrial size" version of an arrow straightener.

Mac

[Sean M]

Whatever it may say in the text, the guy on the left looks like he's engaged in straightening the shafts. He's bending them with a fixture that appears to be the "industrial size" version of an arrow straightener.

Mac

I don't know what an arrow straightener is, but I like your interpretation. As far as I can tell, the German text says something like "Ash Valley works mostly in wood. Their commonest work and occupation is pike making and bowl turning, there are many turners (Draeyer today we say Dreher or Drechseler) ..." I don't see any more details about how they make pikes.

I wonder if someone told Waldman how pikes were made "and there is a picture in this chronicle," and Waldman heard "this chronicle describes how pikes were made." Its easy to get confused like that when you are talking to people.

[Sean M]

I picked up this piece of rooty-looking boxwood:



The big end has a small crack, but I think it has enough wood to whittle down / plane down into a knife handle. If not I can use the long narrow end. Whittling it down should give me a feel for how the carving will go.

Because I had the life-sized drawing of the handle, I could just place branches over it and see which were the right size and shape.

One of the Roman poets gets poetic about spear-makers stripping tender boughs of their gentle bark. I'm not a poet so I got out my single-edged, whittle-tang knife and got to work.



Debarking it is straightforward even with a not-so-sharp knife! Tomorrow I will cut off the cracked end and some of the short branches with a saw and decide how much of the remaining length I need.

gaukler tells me that Lee Valley tools often carries chunks of boxwood for making tool handles.

[Sean M]

I placed the skinny end of the branch in a vise and trimmed off the cracked part, a projecting branch, and the skinny end.



Its the right size for my sketch of the original handle!

The next step is to remove some of the "Y" end so that side of the piece is flat. The Kelly M. Memorial Tool Collection does not seem to have any rasps (unless they are out in the shed), but I have a selection of files.

I also have to figure out where to do this dusty work. Box is tough wood!

[Sean M]

The Kelly M. Memorial Tool Collection does contain a rasp! Its on the right with the red steel handle.



It does remove material much faster than the yellow bastard file or the orange fine file. Right now, my goal is to square off most of the handle leaving a bulb at one end for the carving. I think it will be easier to drill the hole for the tang on a square-ish piece of wood than a rounded twisty piece. In the Mendel book, the cutlers are usually depicted filing the handle after the blade has been inserted into it.

Niklas in Vienna says that he roughly saws the wood, drills it, inserts the blade into it, and then files and sands the handle to shape. That is especially handy with the 13th/14th century knives where the handle is 'stacked' from many little discs of different materials. https://neuesausdergotik.blogspot.com/2 ... chaft.html

[Sean M]

Snow and ice today. I have been roughing out the 'grip and blade' end of the handle. I just need it finished enough that I can make the hole for the tang and be confident that I am in the right place at the right angle.



The knob at the left will become the bull's head. I think this piece will be about 125 mm long, so pretty close to the 118 mm long original. And that gives me some wriggle room.

I am not sure what to do about the black knot at the right, I could rasp it out but it would reduce the size of the wood a bit. Whittle-tang knives usually seem to have pretty substantial handles, like 20-25 mm diameter.

[Sean M]

I now have an ash board 7/8" x 6" x 2.50 metres (because Canada). This one was cut from pretty close to the bark, but the grain runs mostly from end to end and it is springy.



I have to figure the best available saw for cutting the spear blanks out of it. A carpenter's saw would take a long time, I don't have easy access to a table saw, a sabersaw / reciprocating saw or a circular saw are more accessible but circular saws are scary.

[Sean M]

For now, a carpenter's saw does the job. If I get serious about woodworking I will sort out power tools or even fixed machine-tools. I have an old folding table which I can set up in our carport to keep the dust outside. In the long term I may want to make some sawhorses out of cheap softwood.



A discussion in another place is making me think about woods for board shields. About 74% of shields in graves in England after the Romans left are alder (alnus), willow (salix), poplar (populus: Dickinson and Härke 1992 Early Anglo-Saxon Shields). I am told that linden (tilia) was common in Viking Age shields and shows up in some of the Roman period bog deposits in the Baltic. Back in Aristotle's day Theophrastus the botanist said that willow was best for shields because it is light and squeezes closed when something tries to pierce it. The Roman shields from Dura-Europos are made from planks of populus euphratica.

Trade names for wood are misleading, and its good to know that the yellow poplar which is widely sold in the USA is a kind of tulip tree (liriodendron tulipifera) not a true poplar (populus). Americans and Canadians tend to call true poplars cottonwoods and aspens, and call tilia basswood (linden is a bit denser than basswood). Some people have good experience with tulip poplar shields, others find its prone to snapping ("brash") or just don't like the green heartwood. Red alder is commercially available in the Pacific Northwest, and I think black willow is commercially available in the US Southeast.

Does anyone have experience using woods available in North America for different styles of plank shields? (From historical-style ones with very thin edges and a rawhide or linen cover, to 'beaters' designed to stand up to clubs and blunt swords).

Edit: Weapon and Shield Weights (2011) shield specs... (2006) and historically correct wood for 11th - 14th C. shields? (2001) have bits of info but more general advice and summaries of research than comments from experience

[Sean M]

The initial saw cut is done. In the evenings, I am debarking some shoots of holly to make a walking stick.



Holly seems to have several layers of bark. There is the knobby green-brown outer layer which is very juicy and fragile. There is the layer the colour of milk chocolate which is also sticky. And there is the white layer which seems different than the wood (it is flaking away at one cut end). My inclination is to leave the white layer on since its hard and dry, does anyone else have thoughts?

[Sean M]

The sticks are stripped and I have started ripping two tapered spear shafts out of the 52 mm wide length of ash. I am waiting to see how far the splits in the sticks extend as they dry.

Most of you have build some flat or curved plank or plywood shields. A nice video is the three-part series by Arthur von Eschen and Roland Warzecha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7M3vAmGeiQ The Thegns of Mercia in the UK have a good blog post https://www.thegns.org/blog/princely-shields-part-2

But quite a few traditional wood-core shields were domed. There are a few modern ways of making these, such as building a giant piece of wood and hollowing it with an adze or a lathe, or building up a 'layer cake' or 'corbel dome' of rings https://www.larp.com/hoplite/hoplon.html

Mac dug up a study of a 16th century Italian rotella which shows that it was made of thin strips shaped like cooper's work and stapled and possibly glued into a domed shape https://archive.org/details/studiesineu ... 0/mode/2up

[Matthew Amt]

...But quite a few traditional wood-core shields were domed. There are a few modern guesses as to how to make those, such as building a giant piece of wood and hollowing it with an adze or a lathe, or building up a 'layer cake' or 'corbel dome' of rings https://www.larp.com/hoplite/hoplon.html
...

Just to clarify, the ring or "donut" method that many of us making Greek shields have used was never thought to be a historical method. It was just a modern technique that was suited to modern plywood, more easily done in a hobbyist's basement than steamed planks or turning a huge blank! I'm hoping to phase it out, though it is possible to make a perfectly good-looking aspis that way.

Matthew

[Sean M]

Reworded the previous post for clarity!

Dirk Breiding says that this shield in Phily is carved from a single piece of wood https://www.philamuseum.org/collection/object/71731 And the dhál / sipar shields in the Met are made of steel, formed rawhide, sticks woven together with cord, and probably wood covered in leather. So probably we can overthink about how wood-core shields were assembled, because there must have been several approaches. This 'cooper' technique is intriguing and maybe I will experiment with it one day.

There is a thread on Building a historical pavise with some thoughts.

[Sean M]

One good thing about shields is that there is a lot of archaeological evidence, but not many documents. The medieval words for 'shield-maker' seem to be Latin scutarius - German Schilter, schiltaere, schiltære - Norman escueor but I am not turning up much in the law books or expense accounts. So I can't distract myself with finding and translating written sources:

I remember that kohlmorgen-mittelalterlicher-ritterschild was useful on medieval 'heater' shields, I have ordered a new copy. I have not seen this new volume and its more expensive:

R. Beuing und W. Augustyn (eds.) Schilde des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit (Passau: Klinger Verlag, 2019) ISBN 978-3-86328-172-4

Simon James' book on Dura-Europos has a good practical overview of Roman flat round shields. One of the books on 'Migration Era' shields is free online:

Dickinson, Tania Marguerite and Härke, Heinrich (1992) *Early Anglo-Saxon Shields*. Archaeologia Monograph 110 (The Society of Antiquaries of London: London) <https://www.academia.edu/477692/Early_A ... ondon_1992>

There is a place up-island which should have thin rawhide, and there are hardwood stores and art supply stores locally. So even during the pandemic / Russo-Ukrainian war / Pacific shipping crisis, materials for shields should not be too hard to obtain.

Edit: There are those laws about how shields are to be made from Anglo-Saxon England and 11th/12th century Scandinavia, but I'm happy to lean on other people's research for them.

[Sean M]

I am still ripping the piece of ash into two shafts and playing around with knives and spokeshaves for turning four-sided timbers into round shafts.

Judging by photos, the Thegns of Mercia seem to have been careful to sand their shield-board smooth. Edit: they also mention sanding the board in a 2015 blog post. Theophilius thinks it is important to smooth shields with a draw-knife after it is glued, but Cennini does not talk about smoothing panels once all the knots are filled in. Theophilius could be thinking of making sure that none of the planks sticks out above its neighbours.

This ancient scabbard has visible file marks under the ?size? and gilding. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collectio ... t/Y_EA5428

I think that the boards of the Roman shields from Dura-Europos are covered in visible tool marks. My high-school woodworking was furniture-making where you carefully sand every surface, but I wonder if leaving the shield board relatively rough might help the various layers stick to it. It would definitely save work where it will never be seen, and modern plywood shields are not silky-smooth.

[Sean M]

To make cheese glue you need quicklime or slaked lime. My understanding is that there are three types of lime commonly available:

• Garden lime is calcium carbonate CaCO3. Its just ground limestone and is available from lawn and garden suppliers. Its not useful for this purpose.
• Quicklime is calcium oxide CaO. Its made by burning limestone, and is caustic. Theophilius and Cennini use it to make cheese glue. I think its available from building suppliers for making concrete, mortar, etc.
• Slaked lime or hydrated lime or pickling lime is Ca(OH)2. Its made by mixing quicklime and water, and is less caustic but still a strong base. Its available from building supply stores, hardware stores, and in small quantities from food supply stores.

We don't have quicklime so I will visit Home Hardware and buy some slaked lime. Its less dangerous than mixing quicklime and water yourself. There are a handy list of precautions in C. M. Helm-Clark, Ph.D, Medieval Glues Up to 1600 CE (2007) http://www.rocks4brains.com/glue.pdf (thanks Gerhard for the link).

The Thegns of Mercia just make their own curds from unpasturized milk. I have heard of other people using fat-free cottage cheese. Gaukler's partner Barbara has made cheese glue / casein glue and I will update this post if she uses another source for the cheese.

Granules or pearls of hide glue are available from art-supply stores and woodworking stores such as Lee Valley. If you work with a lot of rawhide or parchment, you can also boil down offcuts and scrapings yourself. Cennini seemed to prefer glue from skins and cartilege of goats for his projects, modern "hide glue" is often cow-based, modern "rabbit-skin glue" is rabbit-based. Old Pliny the Elder seemed to think that the common glue used by woodworkers was cow-based, he also mentions a fish glue.

I'm not sure of the first evidence for cheese glue. C. M. Helm-Clark says Pliny mentions it, but I can't find the reference. In the 9th century, the Mappae Clavicula mentions cheese glue. According to: Maya Heath, "A Practical Guide to Medieval Adhesives," https://www.scribd.com/document/3285959 ... -Adhesives

there is a description of cheese glue in a composite bow from Ancient Egypt in:

Baker, Tim, “Glue”, The Traditional Bowyer’s Bible, Volume 1, Bois d’Arc Press, Lyons & Burford, Publishers, New York, 1992, p. 203

Edit: Cheese glue is not in "Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries" by A. Lucas and J. Harris. But casein glue is notorious for decaying, and its not a famous type of glue like collagen glue.

Edit: Eureka! https://www.getty.edu/publications/mumm ... rt-two/16/

In our study (of round shields from the Roman city of Dura Europos), surface scrapings of paint layers and residual glue on the edge of the wood slats were analyzed with FTIR and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). FTIR detected proteins in the glue sample, which indicates that animal glue was used to join the slats; however, both FTIR and GC/MS identified wax as the binding medium of the paint layers. Proteins were not detected in the paint samples.

Dr. Brandon Gassaway of the Rinehart Lab in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Physiology and the Systems Biology Institute at Yale analyzed surface scrapings of paint layers and glue from the edge of wood slats with mass spectrometry–based proteomics. In both samples, casein, β-lactoglobulin, and serum albumin were found, attesting to the presence of bovine milk.

So that is evidence for cheese glue in shields by the 3rd century CE.

[Sean M]

Two spear blanks are cut out. While I try to get the spokeshave adjusted just right to take 'slivers' and not 'chunks', I am using a knife as a drawknife. I measured the circumference I want, marked it on a scrap of 3x5" card, and use that to see how close to the desired diameter I am getting.

Once this is done I will have to taper the tip further to fit inside the spear socket. The Viking Age spear from Lendbreen, Norway seemed to be carved so the socket fit flush to the wood like Wade's Luzern pikes (with the bottom end of the spear socket resting on a 'shelf' of wood). I may not be able to do that with such a large, thick-walled spear socket.

I edited the previous post with one piece of evidence that some ancient shields used casein glue to join the boards. It seems like archaeologists know about collagen glue / hide glue but not always about casein glue. It seems like in the ancient world hide glue was the "standard woodworking glue" and cheese glue may have been saved for special purposes.

Bill Grandy the fencer of https://historicalhandcrafts.com/ is thinking of making some of those 15th century jousting targes with complex shapes.

[Sean M]

Snow day! While I whittle down the spearshaft I am looking into hide products to cover shields.

There seems to have been a broad and lasting consensus that shields were best covered in leather from cows: Sumerian texts mention it, Egyptian paintings and models show it, Aristotle mentions it, Polybius mentions it, and some of the site reports from early medieval Europe report it. On the Viking shields it must have been quite thin because the edges of the shields are only 3-5 mm thick between clamps including the wrapped leather and the wood core. But how was it processed?

Theophilius book 1 chapter 17 (Latin) has:

Inde cooperiantur crudo corio equi, vel asini, quod aqua madefactum, statim ut pili fuerint erasi, aqua aliquantum extorqueatur, et ita humidum cum glutine casei superponatur.

Then the panels should be covered with the raw hide of a horse or an ass or a cow which should have been soaked in water. As soon as the hairs have been scraped off, a little of the water should be wrung out and the hide while still damp laid on top of the panels with cheese glue.

Kel Rekuta finds it good to soak the rawhide in limewater to degrease it before he applies it to shields. He was taught this by Rick Cavasin the parchment-maker in Ontario. Some tanners and parchment makers like to soak skins in limewater to help remove the hairs. So is Theophilius' water just water? Reed of Ancient Skins, Parchments, and Leather fame had a suspicion that early leatherworkers did not use lime because its not in rabbinic literature, but there are other recipes for depiliating skins involving flour, urine, or dung.

Jan Kohlmorgen says that heater shields from the later middle ages were covered with parchment (Pergament) whatever that meant to him.

Ralf Warming in Denmark found evidence that some shields in the Baltic were covered in vegetable-tanned skins, and others were covered in stretched skins without vegetable tanning.

PS. Reed mis-cited a text on parchment-making to Theophilius. Its actually an anonymous treatise in a MS from the 12th century (and folio 148 not 128). The treatise by Theophilius is in another part of the same manuscript.

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.asp ... 3915_f148r

[Sean M]

Another thing I am considering: quite a few people today do their 'old-timey painting' in milk paint or egg tempera (egg yolk on gesso, egg white + water on parchment), but the archaeologists seem to think that ancient painters more often used hide glue or plant gums as the binder. Does anyone know anyone who has experimented with hide glue tempera?

The thread Period Paint: Glossy or flat? by Clinker had a few comments.

Acrylics are cheap and easy and less fiddly. Younger me has painted in oil, acrylics, and watercolours.

Edit: one of the sites selling low-tech pigments has instructions and calls pigments + hide glue binder distemper. Distemper seems like one of the terms which means different things to different people.

[John Vernier]

I know that art historians sometimes use the term distemper to distinguish glue-based painting from egg tempera. It is certainly confusing terminology! They are also known as Tüchlein paintings. There are some surviving 15th-16-th century Netherlandish distemper paintings on canvas, and a few Italian ones too. It is thought that they were once common and a relatively inexpensive type of painting, based on documentary evidence, but few have survived because the glue binder attracts mold and vermin, and if the canvas starts to deteriorate the painting cannot be transferred to another support. The medium was apparently handled rather like watercolor, painted directly on untreated canvas, so the pigment soaks into the fibers rather than being isolated in a separate layer as with egg tempera or oil paintings, which are typically done on a gesso ground.

There is a decent description of Distemper or Tüchlein here:
https://jhna.org/articles/tuchlein-just ... -examined/

[Sean M]

Thanks John! Its interesting that moderns want to reserve tempera for egg-yolk tempera, whereas the ancients seem to be more flexible about using whatever binder suited the surface and the pigment. Its so easy to buy eggs, gelatin, hide glue, or gum arabic that maybe I should just play around with some earth reds and yellows and different binders

Gaukler's partner Barbara is a painter so probably has thoughts.

One of those sites recommends spraying hide-glue paintings with alum in water to harden the outer surface, has anyone tried that?

Edit: http://drypigment.net/ says that collagen tempera was popular for stage backdrops in the 19th and 20th century

[Sean M]

I now have 250 grams of plaster of Paris slaking in water. Cennini says to soak it for a month changing the water if it gets cloudy. I suspect that with finely ground modern plaster of Paris, less than a month will be needed. The powder does not want to settle out of the water at all!



D.V. Thompson's Practice of Tempera Painting (Dover) is a good read. He sometimes nudges readers towards his own favourite way of doing things, such as covering just the joints of the panel with canvas. But there are many variants on all these materials.

Thompson says that gesso from plaster of Paris (hydrated calcium sulfate from gypsum) is harder and less brittle than gesso based on calcium carbonate ("whiting" or chalk) which many moderns prefer. That might explain why some people have problems with their gesso flaking off shields. Another reason could be that some moderns forget to prime the surface with size (ie. glue).

Panel painters like D.V. Thompson tell each other horrid stories that if you don't season your panel for a year after cutting it, it may shrivel up like a ripple chip. Shield makers don't seem so concerned. I wonder if a complete cover of linen or hide helps keep the board from expanding and contacting?

I have been thinking about shield devices. We don't have great sources from the Migration Era, but earlier and later round shields. This is from Piazza Armerina in Sicily and probably dates to the 4th century CE.



Art from the 8th 9th and 10th century also does not emphasize vivid designs on shields in the way Greek vase painters do
http://www.vikingage.org/wiki/wiki/Round_Shield_Designs So I probably don't have to teach myself to do a full Migration Era gripping beast motif it I don't want to

Ancient Persian shield devices will come up in a later post.

[Sean M]

I visited a hardwood store and bought two pieces: one 9 feet by 5 1/2" by 2" red alder (Alnus rubra) and one 8 feet by 4" by 1" basswood (Tilia americana). I asked them to saw and plane the basswood into two planks 5/16" (8 mm) thick and they should be done by the first week of May. That is enough to make two round shields 24" / 60 cm wide, and to see what these two woods are like. I think basswood is closer to Old World populus, salix, and tilia than the red alder, but red alder grows locally and is the same genus as many shields in Migration Era Britain.

I was hoping to find boards which were pretty close to quarter-sawed, but no luck. It can often be hard to see the grain on the ends with paint and rough saw marks. I think quarter-sawed boards are the least likely to twist or bend as they dry or as the weather changes.

Boards for shields were often more like 3" wide than 6". Mac has thoughts why that might be.

PS. I had a look at the Greek, and Polybius 6.23.3 says that Roman shields are made from two layers of woodwork joined with bull glue (taurocollon). So someone in the ancient world thought plywood shields were made with hide glue. D. V. Thompson the painter liked to make panels from aircraft plywood joined with "a blood-albumen adhesive." As often as not he just used Masonite, an artificial product from wood fibres, though

[Sean M]

There are many ways of making hollow shields, especially today when we have to start with milled and dried lumber not green, split wood. The approach I have in mind for this project is hollowing out the individual planks with a saw, gluing them together, and then finishing the rounding with a gouge, curved drawknife, or scorp.



I am trying to decide what kind of saw would be best. Some bandsaws could do these cuts, others can only do straight cuts. A frame saw / bow saw would work well until the crossbar of the frame hit the workpiece (and frame saws or the steel parts for them are hard to buy). I could break up the wood which filled the trough, but that limits my options in recycling the scraps. It seems like the current names for a hand saw with a relatively narrow blade but no 'bow' are compass saw or keyhole saw. One of those with a 12" or longer blade would probably work, but cutting more than 24" long through 6" thick alder would be slow.

I could also use an adze. That wastes the wood inside, and adzes are not cheap, but its not so fiddly. Ancient shipwrights were not scared to cut away half the mass of their planks to make mortises.

Does anyone else have thoughts or see alternatives?

Edit: this chap in the UK implies that he does many curved cuts with chisels and a nylon-headed hammer https://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/wo ... and-tools/ Paul Sellers describes a version of that approach which turns the removed wood into scraps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z2Zq2pkY4I This much alder was only CAD 72 plus tax and someone can always burn the waste.

(All links to tools are to explain what I mean by a term, not to say the specific product I would use- ed.)

[Sean M]

The Kelly M. Memorial Tool Collection does contain an old Workmate collapsible workstation.



This will do as a workspace until I have time and energy to build one. Until now, my options were some pulpboard collapsible tables, a 20 year old plywood workbench, or our cedar back stairs (and I really should not hammer on the stairs, they are assembled with unclenched nails).

We have some dimensional lumber sitting around somewhere which I could use for test pieces and a shield press. I would like to try the chisel method of cutting curves.

If you prefer to learn from videos than books, Roland Warzecha has a video on tempera painting: How To Make Authentic Shield Paint One of his ideas is that since Viking Age shields vibrate so much, they might not be as suitable to gesso as smaller, thicker types of shield. Gesso seems to be a Mediterranean technology and might not have been indigenous to northern Europe (just like twill-weave cloths were native to Northern Europe and the Eurasian steppes but not the Middle East, Egypt, or Greece).

[Sean M]

The wood which I bought on 20 April should be finished at the mill on Monday 9 May. BC has a severe labour shortage due to COVID and the explosion in the cost of housing.

I will go buy most of the remaining few tools on Saturday 7 May. This week was cold and rainy so not great for cleaning off the old Workmate workbench. It needs a good scubbing to remove the bits of rotten leaves and cobwebs from it.

[Sean M]

Back in 2017, Roland Warzecha made a shield with all hide glue. He started gluing on the rawhide from one side and progressively clamped and weighted down some boards to flatten the rawhide as the glue set. He tried ironing the rawhide once the glue had set to remove small wrinkles and bubbles and had success.

Moderns often have trouble covering a shield neatly, but Theophilius and Cennini don't make a big deal of it. Practice probably helps, and casein glue which can set before it is dry but can't be undone once it sets has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Edit: one basic difference between Roland's approach and Theophilius and Cennini's approaches is that he did not wet the rawhide before he applied it. Arthur von Eschen also applies the rawhide dry except for any moisture it absorbs from the hide glue.

Edit: bought 6 kg of hydrated lime, 227 g of calcium carbonate, a new saw, and a pair of calipers at a local art supply store and a Home Hardware. The only thing I am missing is some clamps for the gluing and maybe a plane (need to search the Kelly Manning Memorial Tool Collection).

[Sean M]

I am reading Laura Broecke's edition and translation of Cennini. Its kind of pendantic and condescending (the first page implies that "we" does not include "a reader attempting to produce a work of art by following [Cennini's instructions]") but it does have the detail that art historians have examined the base layer of gesso on medieval panel paintings and found something other than plaster of Paris.

My understanding is that calcium sulphate can form three minerals depending on how much water it bonds to:

Gypsum (calcium sulphate dihydrate = CaSO4·2H2O)

is fired in a kiln to make

Plaster of Paris (calcium sulphate hemihydrate) = CaSO4·1/2 H2O

is fired further in a kiln to make

Anhydrite (Calcium sulphate anhydrite = CaSO4)

Her source found that the base layer is usually a mix of anhydrite and gypsum powder, usually more anhydrite than gypsum. She thinks that this sets more slowly and is easier to apply to large panels (page 151 / note to chapter 115). Unfortunately, the only people who sell anhydrite seem to be lab supply companies such as Fisher Scientific who charge lab supply prices and offer lab supply purity. If someone tries it out, let us know!

Now I don't understand the difference between gypsum and gesso sottile. Theophilius definitely says that his gypsum should be "burned in the fashion of lime" so it was plaster of Paris or anhydrite or a mix of the two.

Edit: Daniel V. Thompson Jr., The Practice of Tempera Painting (1936; reprinted Dover Publications: New York, 1962) p. 39

Note to 1962 Edition: If ground gypsum is available- not plaster of Paris but the raw, unroasted gypsum- it may be used in place of whiting (calcium carbonate), in exactly the same way (mixed with gelatine and water and brushed on to the surface to be prepared), and will generally be found better. Gypsum gives a crisper and whiter gesso than whiting, and is regularly used by modern gilders in Italy and France. In England, whiting grounds are more usual.

Edit 2022-08-01: Wikipedia says that a temperature of 180°C to 250°C is enough to turn plaster of Paris into anhydrite. So someone who wants to experiment with anhydrite but does not have access to a kiln could make up a small batch in an oven.

[Sean M]

I collected the basswood (tilia americana) and red alder (alnus rubra) planks from the local lumber yard! They do a lot of fancy millwork for local builders, and my two boards were not high priority.



Basswood is really easy to work, shaving down the sides so they fit together well for the gluing will be easy.

[Sean M]

Some days working the wood is difficult because of my work schedule, rainy weather, and housemates' unpredictable ability to sleep. I took a few minutes to throw together a placeholder page for late medieval shields, targets, and pavises. My focus right now is on ancient shields, but as I come across information in passing I can add it there.

I'm thankful for the donors who just about pay the cost of maintaining my two sites.

[Sean M]

I am using a mixed approach for the first board of the domed alder shield. I started by hollowing the edges with a chisel. The wood curves more there so chiselling is easier.



This produces nice tidy chunks of wood. One disadvantage of a modern workspace: I once let a chisel fall and the concrete floor damaged the edge. I will need to grind it. I'm not sure if it is too hard to file.



Then I started sawing towards the centre with the compass saw. This produces fine sawdust which is annoying, but it produces big chunks of wood which are easier to reuse. The wind was changing directions so wherever I stood I found sawdust blowing back at me. In an hour or two I am close to the centre line. I think I could rough out a shield by this method in a day even without power tools.