If you’ve followed these pages, you’ve seen me working up to this.

I’m now taking commissions for these shields. Eventually, I’ll have these available for orders on the web store. For now, contact me directly and we’ll work out specs and final pricing.

Each shield is hand crafted, and “historical-ish.” Each shield is based on information gained from some folks I know at Asfolk, Hurstwic, and Dimicator doing extensive research into the subject. Any errors in historicity are mine, of course!

Each shield will feature:

• Aspen planks butted together with hide glue
• Hand-carved oak handles
• Rose-head iron and/or copper fixation for the handle; copper nails and rivets for the boss
• Diameter to user’s specification (pricing range is “up to 24 inches,” “24-36 inches,” and “36-48 inches”)
• Optional distal taper on the outer edge; historical shields could be as little as 2.5mm of wood on the edge; I tend to make them to 4-6.5mm depending)

Optional Features include

• Stitching with 12/3 linen thread around the circumference of the shield
• Rawhide edging
• Very basic painting (I’m a craftsman, not an artist)
• Boss upgrades

Each Shield is Custom-Made

These are basically bespoke items, each one made to order. The user will specify the diameter (half your height tends to work out well), and we’ll talk about the shield profile. I can easily support “root” thicknesses (the thickness at the boss) of up to 7/16″ or so (11mm) and have created shields down to about 1/4″ (6.3mm) at the root. Because each is hand-made, these thickness guidelines are exactly that – guidelines.

We’ll work out what you want, and then I’ll get busy on it.

Pricing

The basic pricing structure is as follows:

Shield Blank

• Child’s Shield (up to 24″ diameter, 1/4″ thick): $100
• Standard Shield (24-36″ diameter, 1/4-7/16″ thick): $250
• Giant Shield (36-48″ diameter, 3/8″ to 7/16″ thick): $275

There are up-charges for stitching ($50), rawhide edging ($100), or different shield bosses. If you have an existing boss, I can probably work with it as well.

Shipping

There’s no way around it: this is a big product and it will cost a lot to ship. The 36x36x4″ mailer that will likely be the shipping container will likely cost $80-100 to ship. I’m working on this.

If you order a bunch of shields – 10 to 12 – the FedEx flat rate shipping container becomes a very good option, bringing shipping down to a net of about $10-20 per shield.

Sample Images

These represent some of my earlier efforts. The unpainted shields on the left are blanks with full taper, ready for the boss. The rawhide-edged one is tapered with hide and stitching, 34″ in diameter, with a 22-gauge boss. A shield like that would be $450.