constructing and mounting a porpax

[Kineas]

First, many thanks to Theron for advice and many more to Aurora for a ton of work. Aurora's metalworking skills are, well, professional.

First, we made a porpax. We used 22 gauge sheet bronze. After about ten days of looking at pictures from vases and statuary, we decided to use the palmette design because it is visually interesting and a little different from the standard heavy triangles... I spent a week making a pattern and then Aurora trashed it by pointing out that I'd made a NEO classical palmette rather than a CLASSICAL palmette (actually, my wife, Sarah, had made the same point,)

Sigh--30 years of 18th C. reenacting exacts a heavy price.

So, we cut out the patterns, cut out the blanks from bronze, and then Aurora whisked them away to rough them out. She brought her formed and shaped final product to me for the scut work of polishing, and then took it back to put silver (!) rivets in to hold the leather liner. Yeah.

Meanwhile, I cut out and formed the "washers", the heavy bronze reinforcements that stiffen the handles and hold the heavy bolts that put the thing on the shield. Let me add at this point that as far as I can see there's several ways to make a Porpax, not one, and that's for another article!

Here's the aspis blank, turned and sanded, with a red leather interior glued in with Lee Valley fish-hide glue (pretty authentic). Thanks to Dan and his dad for the awesome blank. (That's Theron!)


So, here's the 20 Gauge porpax complete, leather installed, almost ready to mount.



Here's the "good" side: