Adventures in Shield-Making - Part 1

The plywood for making three new shields arrived, and - having already obtained rivets and bosses - I naively set about it.

First I laid it on a couple of Helen's tables - she had gone out, so she couldn't stop me! I won't tell you precisely how close I later came to drilling a hole right through one of them; I'm sure you can imagine.

Before it all went wrong?

The plywood is closer to the type used in the Dogs shields (structural) than the marine ply we've sometimes used for Draum shields in the past: not as strong, but not as heavy. I thought I'd ordered marine ply, but this explains why it was £20 cheaper from the supplier than from anyone else. It does have a good 'hard' feel, though, and the Dogs shields are heavy enough.

'Marine ply' indeed

Next, it was time to mark the shields out in pencil. First of all I had to find the centre. I wanted the shields to be about Dogs size, because too small a shield makes you an easy kill. Dogs shields are about 31" in diameter - well, mine is, though I don't like to brag ;P

So I tied a nail to a bit of string, measured 15 1/2", and tied a pencil at the other end. A bit of Sellotape stopped the string moving up and down the pencil. High tech stuff, which I shall patent as a 'NailStringPencil'.

NB: I definitely thought of using Sellotape to keep the string in the same place immediately and didn't draw any circles before-hand that went a bit wobbly, oh no.

NailStringPencil - the pinnacle of engineering

With my NailStringPencil I found the centre using my A-level in maths. I shall now attempt to explain the method to make me look clevererer. You put the nail on one side of the plywood sheet and draw an arc in the region where you think the centre might be. Then you put the nail on the other edge and draw another arc. Where the arcs intersect, that's where the centre of a 31" diameter shield would be.

See the small circle - that shows where the arcs intersect. Ignore the other bit where they intersect, and pay no attention to the buffoon behind the curtain - NailStringPencil is perfect.

I then measured it a few times just to be sure, which turned out to be a good idea, as it became obvious that if the Pencil part of NailStringPencil wasn't perfectly upright, there was an alarming variation in the distance between the Nail and the Pencil.

Obviously NailStringPencil was a refined tool, like it's inventor, and required 'skill' to use effectively. The 'skill' involves gripping it on all sides, drawing very slowly, and keeping an eraser handy.

Having found the centre of the first shield, I gently hammered the Nail into it, and then drew the outline of the shield.

To find the centre of the second and third shields, I drew one of the centre-finding arcs from the edge of the previous shield. Then I put the nail in each centre and drew the circumference of each shield in turn.

Drawing the shields with NailStringpencil. Cunningly, I have hidden the bit where the edges overlap with my hand.

My skill with NailStringPencil improved by the time I got to the last shield.

All three shield outlines drawn. Note how I took the photograph with the first one at the far end, to hide it's dubious nature

But now, the next problem - each shield needs a 'hand hole' which should be about the diameter of the inside of the bosses. This was a challenge: I knew the inside diameter was about 5 1/2", but after measuring various paint-tins and other rubbish in the shed, I couldn't find anything close enough. I also had a look through the house for a compass, but apparently such an instrument did not survive the boys' brush with GCSE maths.

I could have used a version of NailStringPencil, but frankly I had become rather jaded towards its vagaries. Still, an inventor such as I was not to be held back by such obstacles. Behold - NailWoodPencil!

NailWoodPencil - sometimes, I even amaze myself

NailWoodPencil is a bit of scrap wood, with a nail at one end, and a pencil-sized hole 2.75" away. I even used a set-square! The technique involves gently banging the nail into the existing centre-hole, and then rotating the wood around it. The pencil wobbled a bit, but I felt that refinements to keep the pencil upright and steady were a bit too fussy.

A 'perfect' circle

Finally, I thought about how I would get the jig-saw into the middle to cut the centre out. So I drilled a hole big enough to fit the jig-saw blade in. I intended that when I come to cut it I could arc out to reach the edge rather than heading straight for a perpendicular meeting. However, I could just drill another hole at the edge though and go from there. Which makes these holes pointless.

But is the table underneath that hole?

In the next part, I'll wreck it all by going mental with a jig-saw. After the shields are cut out, I'll need to obtain some hardwood handles, and then I can start riveting them all together.