Edging a shield: page 2
Next, I had to turn the strips into U channel. This was accomplished by first making them into L channel with a vice and a hammer. Then I made them into V channel by gently tapping the limbs of the L together. Once I had V channel, I opened the vice to the width I wanted for the U channel, wedged the V into it with an aluminum plate inserted into the top of the V, and tapped it into shape with my hammer.
Eventually, I had some nice straight stainless steel u channel -- but I needed curves. I own a tear-drop shield with a curved bottom. There are NO straight sections on my shield. If I had an English Wheel, I could have just rolled the strips into it and got nearly perfect curved u-channel. No such luck on my part however, so I had to improvise.
I know from experience that you can get a u channel to be CLOSE to the right shape by clamping it to your shield and gently persuading it with a hammer. Once you release the clamps, the edge will spring off, and you'll never get the edge to match the shield again.
You have to get the metal to bend PAST the curve you want, then adjust it back out. This is not possible to do when the form you are bending into is the final piece you want to fit the edge to.
I DO have a small round shield that I could have used as a form, but I wasn't going to tear apart my round shield to fix my teardrop. It would make me want to do a bunch of upgades to THAT shield also. It's a flaw of mine that I can't just put something back together like it was when I know there's a better way to reconstruct it.
My solution to the problem was to use my shield. It has different amounts of curve in different locations along its edge, kind of like a french curve. I clamped the u-channel to an area with more curve than I needed, hammered it to shape, then adjusted it to fit a spot with less curve. Once I had the shape close, I riveted one end of the section to the sheild using a copper rivet, clamped the other end, made final adjustments, then rivited the other end into place.
The rivets I used started life as 16 penny copper nails. I bought those at Bataeff's as well. I simply cut them to size using bolt cutters, and made rivets by clamping each into my vice, and gently peening one end until it resembled a fairly flat mushroom.
None of my edging was very pretty. I did a lot of work to one section of u-channel to planish the wrinkles. Then I decided that ugly was O.K. so long as there were no obvious sharp peaks that would cut into the rawhide. After that, the curves came together much more rapidly.
Everything was working well until I got to the rounded bottom of my shield. It's the tightest curve, which meant that I could not form the edge anywhere else on the shield. Luckily, I have some scraps of aluminum plate that I was able to use as forms of sorts. Again, "pretty" was not the desired result.
As a side note, my shield has a rounded bottom because I found that the pretty little point at the bottom kills rawhide faster than a great dane. Yes, you lose a few inches of leg protection, but that little tip never really stopped a leg shot.
Edging the shield with metal took about four hours spread out over three days. I don't usually have a large block of time to do projects, so I was getting a little stressed when fighter practice was looming and my shield was still in pieces.
