This is the inside of my SCA shield. I had two. My other one (pictured below) is being converted into a Belegarth shield.

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This is some of the junk I took off. The original shield was made from a 24 inch wide piece of wood. I trimmed it down to under 23 inches wide to accomidate the military camp pad I'm using for the bulk of my padding.

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It's Winter. I am trying carpet tape as a construction material since it is too cold for DAP contact cement.

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Here is where the first roll of carpet tape died. This could get expensive.

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More carpet tape.

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More foam.

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Inside the shield. The piece of wood under my project was originally going to be the core of a shield, but I decided it was too thin and flat for the kind of bashing a shield might experience. So, it has been demoted to cutting board and tablecloth protection.

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Inside foam test fit.

As you can see, I decided the steel cage needed to be added to the discard pile. I replaced it with a simple 10" gate pull.

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My edge is too sloppy for carpet tape. I'm trying gorilla glue for the bottom layer then plan on using a more flexible adhesive for the second through fourth layers of edging foam.

 

Trim, cover and done.

Dec 2, 2007

The gorilla glue produced a hard spot that went all the way around the shield where the blue foam met the green. I removed the blue foam and hacked off as much of the glue as I could with a razor knife. On the plus side, I now have a nice level area that I can attah carpet tape to.

I dont have the cover sewn yet and bad wather made fighter practice a bad idea today anyway. Hopefully, I'll have a passable shield next week.

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My first blog being back in Iowa and off of active duty.  Well, I'm FINALLY back in Iowa, and I have no free time at all.  Worked a little on my chainmail, haven't touched any of my other armor though.  Gonna wait till I get a new suit done to sell one of my old ones.  Most of my time is going towards driving.  I live about 30 minutes south of DSM right now so I spendapprox.  2 hours every day driving.  I'm really glad I have a Prius since 60 mpg makes the driving easier on my walet.  Plus, its like I drive a big rolling computer.  That brings me to my next point.  I'm officially a Geek now, got hired on at Best Buy to the Geek Squad.  Wouldn't stay there due to pay except for the sweet sweet employee discount and auction site.  I'll write some more in a day or 2 between homework.  Until then, I'm back in DSM, IA.

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As the title says, 7 weeks until I'm off of active duty.  After the weekend, I've gotten everything from my vacation put away, saw Transformers, taught the dog to walk up stairs, and made progress on my newest armor.  I got all the fabric cut for it and some of the initial sewing done.  Now I'm attaching plates into the inside.  I was thinking of sewing pockets forthe plates, but rivets just look SO much cooler.  I also noticed that I have 2 different types of plates, well patterns for holes in the plates.  This will take some drilling to correct or the rivets will have a weird pattern.  I'm going to try and put the rest of the side panels together tonight and start the sewing on the front and back panels.  Then tuesday finish those up and rig up a temporary suspension so I can fight wednesday at SCA practice.  I really regret not bringing my red suit back from Iowa with me, since I would have been able to use that with some minor mods to fight for practice.  I'm really trying to get away from borrowing SCA-spec armor from other people since nobody is my size and I hate being a mooch.  I also contemplated adding metal reinforcement to my U-H suit over the kidneys, but decided not to since I might be selling it.  Anyway, I've decided not to add padding directly into this new CoP and instead make a simple gambeson so I can upgrade the armor at a later date and not have to make one then, plus when I use this for Belegarth it wont be as hot or heavier than it already is.  I've also been documenting the construction of this armor in photographs so I can release a series of blogs as a tutorial for making it.  It was relatively cheap to make, comming in around $40 plus whatever my tools cost.  I'm sure if I bought the metal in bulk it would be alot less, but I don't have the storage space for sheet metal in my apartment.  I don't have any cool pictures to put on here today, sorry bout that.

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Well, my first blog from El Paso, TX is probably going to be one of the last. Got the news today that I'm going home next month. Good thing with that is it means I can actually devote more than web resources to Solasmahr Tir. Bad thing is I won't have a job when I get there. Guess ya take the good with the bad. I've been fighting alot of SCA down here. ; I should hopefully finish my coat of plates tonight, but I also have to put all my stuff away from my vacation tonight also. Plus, I have a free ticket to go see Transformers. Maybe the armor won't get done. I also won't be attending O'fest since I'm helping with photography for the Bill Russel Adult Basketball Camp.  And just because I've got nothing else to do with it, here's a picture from my barracks window.

 

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