Dura Europos Scutum

[C. Apollonius Priscus]

A photo of the shield prior to restoration from "The Discovery of Dura-Europos" p-187 by Clark Hopkins shows the lion facing left and the swastikas to be the "reversed" version.

[Theodosius the Great]

A photo of the shield prior to restoration from "The Discovery of Dura-Europos" p-187 by Clark Hopkins shows the lion facing left and the swastikas to be the "reversed" version.

Thanks, Alan.

There's also one in Osprey's Imperial Roman Legionary 161-284 AD, by Ross Cowan.

~Theo

[Matt Lukes]

I was writing about the middle layer, which consists of VERTICALLY arranged strips. I admit that making strips for the two horizontal layers with a shrinking thickness towards both ends might be pretty time consuming, but for the middle layer you could perhaps use strips with varying thicknesses, but a consistent thickness for each strip.
Got it? :wink:

I'd say it's considerably more complicated to use strips of varying thickness for the middle layer than to simply thin out the facing layers along their lengths- I mean we're talking about very small changes in thickness, which wouldn't be so easy to accomplish, then to arrange them correctly so the shield does taper and not undulate, and then there's the issue of that middle layer being stepped leaving small gaps in the gluing surface, which isn't ideal.

James reports the one 'naked' scutum fragment 631 (no facings and with all three layers of strips exposed) that the total thickness is 7mm, that the inner layer is 2mm thick, the core layer 3mm thick and the outer layer 1-2mm thick. Whether this means there's tapering isn't made clear, however he does write that "the exposed faces of the outer layers were carefully smoothed, while the inner sides were left rough, as one might expect, to aid adhesion between the glued layers", so clearly the outer faces were specifically worked in some fashion.

It's how I've made my original-type scuta- using strips of consistent thickness and then simply planing down the sides after gluing. I've never tried one in battle, but they seem sturdy enough

[Theodosius the Great]

Hey !

Matt's alive, everyone !

Some of us were starting to miss you.

It's nice so see you post during a lull in your busy schedule. Proof of life :wink:

~Theo

[Hibernicus]

We plane our historic scutum blanks after the glue dries.

An experiment using slats preplaned to be thinner near the edges resulted in a higher rate of breaking and or warping out of position during glue drying, more often than using slats that were relativley even in thickness.

[Matt Lukes]

Hey !

Matt's alive, everyone !

Some of us were starting to miss you.

It's nice so see you post during a lull in your busy schedule. Proof of life :wink:

~Theo

:lol: The reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated :wink:

[PMBardunias]

overall thickness means the thickness of the whole shield (wood+linen+leather)

Why do shield makers use linen between the leather and wooden layers?

[D B Campbell]

I don't think the Masada shields had a "linen" or felt layer between the wood and the leather facing. (Same with the Dura scutum, I think.)

[M. Demetrius]

Parenthetical insert

Slightly off topic, for kid shields, where weight, safety and expense become big factors, I've used plain old craft store felt soaked with diluted PVA glue as "leather" edging. It works well to cover the wood, and maintains a little flexibility. Cheap to do, and saves splinters in the kid body, deflects parental ire.

It dries very tough. It would provide some protection on the face of a real shield, being a system sort of like modern fiberglas--binder plus fiber equals strength and resiliency with less weight.

Now back to the real thread.