Pompeii Gladius and Scabbard - Work in Progress

[jvrjenivs]

No, seems my post wasn't clear enough.

About the beltplates, I use .5mm, which seems appropriate and historically acurate. The same thickness I used for the kind of work shown in this topic (although my plates doesn't look that nice, but yeah, it's already 2 years ago I did them).

Now, I'm using .03mm for repousse stuff. And this stuff is easily to work with, also to make such a plate (as long as it gets supported in the end product. So I guess I gonna give it a try some day soon. And that .03mm is the foil I'm talking about and thus used for these plates.

[Doc]

Jurgen,

Thanks for the clarification. What exactly are you making in repousee to use material that thin?

[jvrjenivs]

Jurgen,

Thanks for the clarification. What exactly are you making in repousee to use material that thin?

All kind of stuff. I've just started with that kind of work last year. But basically I'm planning to do stuff like decorated band for helmets, repousse style armilla, phalerae, but also some beltplates (althoug this isn't the way the romans would have done them, I guess). When the image is completed I fill them with tin solder and back them up with .6 or .8 brass sheet.

[Doc]

Jurgen,

I am looking foward to the final products.

[Matt Lukes]

Yup, I've made lockets in metal as thin as 0.4mm and it was perfectly fine with respect to strcutural stability and strength- 0.5mm is a bit better but still would appear extremely thin to most anyone handling it. Remember, this locket is simply wrapped around the wooden core so doesn't need a huge amount of strength of its own- many examples have flattened edges just prior to and after the curved sides, which stiffen it, plus the ribbing of the suspension ring bands and perhaps even the decorative ribbed bands forming the frame, not to mention the mouth plate, all contribute to its solidness. You don't need nails going all the way through (and I'm hesitant to believe the holes on that super-pierced locket were so as they appear to be too close to the middle and could therefore interfere with the blade), or even more than the most minimal mechanical fastener if the fit to the scabbard body is tight.

I'm reasonably confident too that, save in the case of the famous locket with the chariot already posted above, which is all embossed, the separate ribbed framework strips are riveted on; I've examined an original chape with a fragment of this edging still present and it's riveted on from the back, and you can clearly see it too on the short example from Vindonissa and as well the holes for the rivets and the rivets themselves can be seen in numerous examples like those posted already and one lovely example recently sold at auction (also from the Guttmann collection). They're not held on by small nails from the front- they're riveted to the locket from the back. It seems that only, or at least mainly, the ribbed suspension ring bands were soldered on. In the case of the background pierced Guttmann, the two holes in the area of the upper band may suggest it had additional riveting that's unique among the artifacts we know of that are missing theirs (no others have such holes), and that the rivets, if present on any intact examples, must be flush ground similar to how those of the frame strips are.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Jurgen,

Thanks for the clarification. What exactly are you making in repousee to use material that thin?

All kind of stuff. I've just started with that kind of work last year. But basically I'm planning to do stuff like decorated band for helmets, repousse style armilla, phalerae, but also some beltplates (althoug this isn't the way the romans would have done them, I guess). When the image is completed I fill them with tin solder and back them up with .6 or .8 brass sheet.

Thats how Brian does his, gives them a solid base to rivet onto the belt.

[Crispvs]

Matt,

Thanks for that information. The locket you mention from the Guttmann collection - do you have a picture of it? The only ones I was aware of were the one I posted up and the well known one with the metal band which passes around below the locket.

Crispvs

[Doc]

Byron,

That is how Brian does them. However, as Jurjen pointed out its not exactly how the Romans did theirs. It is easier using foil metal since it can be hand worked as opposed to having to punch/emboss/use a die in the same fashion that is described in B&C 2 about the belt plates with animals chasing each other in a circle.

However, back to Jurjen's idea, I plan when I can muster up the courage to make the Pompeii plates in silver using the same thin silver sheet then backed onto brass. I think that this is one instant in which this backing may seem plausible (some pictures show a backing while others do not) but even here, the decoration and figures are stamped out first so the silver could not be too thin either.

[Doc]

Jurjen,

I was recently informed that I have been misspelling your name. :oops:

Honestly, I cannot say that I ever noticed the error. My apologies.

[Robert]

With gratitude to the wonderfull Valkhof museum and its curator Louis Swinkels, I can report the "nails" are not nails but small rivets. This is in total support of there having been two thin bands above and below the suspention band and prove me very much at fault in my reasoning :oops: . The thin bands have been lost, but the rivets have remained, just as Crispvs so rightly pointed out. Thanks, guys, for preventing me straying into the dark mists and leading me back into the bright light of facts over fiction. And also thanks for posting all those great pictures of finds and excellent reconstruction work.

[sulla felix]

Thanks for sharing that information Robert - much appreciated. Well done on persuading the Museum to confirm also! I hope to visit this Museum when I visit the area in June this year.

[Robert]

I can certainly recommend Valkhof museum. There is a pottery section in the basement to the side of the cloakroom, easily missed. Upstairs, there is a great exhibition, rather classicly done with all the pieces in showcases, although they do have a reconstructed cart, two uniformed soldiers (infantry and cavalry) and a saddled horse to go with the cavalry chap. I must say the fort at Saalburg is also worth a visit, if only for the shoes on display, but closer by is Xanten with its new museum. Also nicely done and the rebuild city gatehouse, the wall, mansio and amphitheater are well worth the visit. Do not expect much in the way of enlivenment.