Making an Authentic Viking Shield 5: Boss & Handle

So here's my shield. I have clamped it to some planks to counter the slight wall pitch that was caused by gluing on the hide. I have ironed down all the edges so they're all smooth and I'll find hardly any wrinkles and I have marked the outline of the handlebar and just in order to not get confused I marked an X on the bar here and on the board and a tiny circle here and on the board so that when the glue is brushed on I can work swiftly because the open time of this hide glue is pretty short. I'm using this leather as a cushion so I don't get any nasty marks on my nicely carved handle. Good, so I'm going to leave it until tomorrow and then I'm going to drill the holes for the nails and do the riveting. So the glue has dried and the handle is firmly in place and as you can see it also straightens the board which was slightly flexing and there was a slight wall pitch and now it's all straight. This is just wood glue that keeps it in place. As you can see I have already drilled the holes for the nails to keep the handle in place and for the boss which will be attached with four nails. Bosses were usually attached with four nails sometimes five. On the Gokstad shield it's six nails. With this shield like with some other examples the nail these two nails will pass through the flange of the boss and on the other side through the handle. Sometimes these nails were peened. I will go for the other system that is also authentic that is using clenched nails. That means they're going to be hammered back into the wood. Yesterday I attached these little rings here for fixing a strap that would allow for carrying the shield on the shoulder. The system I used is also confirmed by archaeology. Nails that have like two shanks that are bifurcated and hold a little ring have been found in Birka. Now that I have drilled these holes I'm going to use hand forged nails such as these ones here. These nails come in different lengths to adapt to the different widths that they have to pass through. Like this apparently here this will be the longest nails and then as the handle tapers towards the end I'm going to use smaller nails. The board I just weighed it out. The board as it is now that is the wooden planks that make up the shield corpus. The wooden handle plus the rings and the facing of rawhide and the glue of course. Keep in mind that paint and glue adds weight too. This now weighs just a little under 2.7 kilograms. So with the nails and the boss it will probably come out at just just above three kilograms. This is exactly the weight that I strove for because having tried out shields that Arthur von Eschen recently replicated and reconstructed I found that three kilograms is a really good weight. This shield is almost 90 centimeters in diameter. I think it's like 88 centimeters in diameter so that's well within the scope of original shields or at least the finds that we do have. There is variation and when you look up data for shield sizes keep in mind that there only are the Gotstad shields and a shield from Latvia which are complete and well of course maybe the one in Trelborg Denmark. All the measurements we get we get from fragments of wood sometimes even the width of the grave and fittings, nails, clench nails. So these are just indications and be always careful when you read about statistics. Okay so now for the boss. This boss here that I'm using that I'm going to use on that shield is a hand forged boss. It was made by Amnes Helset from Oslo. He did it almost 10 years ago for me. At the time he was working at the Oslo Archaeological Museum so he was in the restoration department and he had an original that he modeled this one on. This is the one of the two main types that we see in the Viking Age. There's another type that has a recess here like a neck. That is an earlier type which was never really replaced. So this one here is hand forged and let me just take a look how much it weighs. So this weighs 360 grams. Okay so now I'm going to promise to create a little hook at the end that can be buried in the handle. So I have now attached the boss as well which means the shield is readily assembled. It's actually battle ready by now. All it needs now is oiling and painting the front and as you can see I have also made an effort to smooth the edges so that there's a nice transition from the board into the cavity of the boss allowing for a nice good grip. The grip you want to ensure is an elongated grip allowing for the hand using the handle much like a thrusting weapon and this kind of grip is also supported by the shape of the handle the d-shape giving a good rest allowing for a good rest for the thumb as you thrust forward with the handle. All the nails have been hammered into the handle so that it makes for a smooth surface so there's really no pointy bits or nothing that would get into the way as you slip your hand onto the handle.