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New Shield. Thoughts?

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Thorsteinn:
Comments? Questions?



it's a 22" x 36" curved oval centergrip.

Sir Nate:
I like it. It seems to provide good defense and mobility.

Sir Edward:
It looks great, in terms of size and mobility. How is the weight? The nice thing about the center-grips is that you can use the shield at arm extension like a buckler, though of course that's tough to hold for any length of time. :)

The good news is that you don't really need a full gaunt inside the shield, unless you need to drop the shield and continue fighting.

Thorsteinn:

--- Quote from: Sir Edward on 2014-05-17, 13:16:54 ---It looks great, in terms of size and mobility. How is the weight?

--- End quote ---

Well given that I've not exercised in a while the 8-ish lbs feels like a lot. We know that I will probably go smaller with the next shield (Say 21" x 34"), and given that it's 2 layers of 5mm Luan and 3 layers of canvas we don't know how long that will be. I know I'm gonna have to hit the weights to get back to where I could use this without hurting myself. Good news is that it makes my shoulder much happier.

scott2978:

--- Quote from: Sir Edward on 2014-05-17, 13:16:54 ---... The good news is that you don't really need a full gaunt inside the shield, unless you need to drop the shield and continue fighting.

--- End quote ---

This is something I've been wondering about a lot since I started getting historically accurate shields. I mostly deal in late 14th century (so it may not apply to the present conversation much), but as far as I can tell they didn't have adjustable grip straps or endarmes, so they would need to be made to fit your arm and hand with armor... thus the straps wouldn't fit right without. Also, the geometry of wearing a shield with hourglass gauntlets is very awkward. So, I kind of think they went without a gauntlet on the shield hand but I don't have any historical sources to compare my opinion to.

Of course, the kind of oval, center grip shield depicted in this thread was in use much earlier, since before the Thueros of Greek antiquity had copied even earlier Celtic shield designs, and had fallen out of use by the 12th century or so, so it predates any plate armor style gauntlets I'm aware of, though mail mittens were in use during part of that medieval timeframe.

Scott

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