Kite Shields & Bucklers

Why a shield gets pulled into a point

Every shield is a compromise between coverage and weight. Make it bigger and more of you is behind it. Make it bigger and your arm tires, your vision narrows and the thing catches on everything. The kite is one answer to that argument. Keep the top wide and round so it covers the shoulder and the side of the head, then taper the lower half into a tail that guards the thigh without carrying the weight a full width board would.

It was a cavalry idea first. A rider sits with his left leg exposed along the flank of the horse and a round board leaves it in the open. The long tail solves that while staying narrow enough not to tangle the reins. Foot soldiers kept it, because a tall board planted on the ground and leaned into is a small piece of wall.

The heater is what happened next. Armour got better through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, mail gave way to plate on the legs, and the long tail stopped earning its weight. The bottom half was cut away and the top squared off, and the result is the flat topped board with curved sides that everyone now draws on a coat of arms. Lighter, easier to see over, much easier to fight with on foot.

The Roman scutum here is the odd one out and the oldest idea of the three. It is not flat. It is bent around the body on a cylinder section, so the edges come forward past the shoulders and the board covers you sideways as well as in front. Curved ply is also far stiffer than the same thickness laid flat, which is why a scutum can be enormous and still survive being hit.

The shields in this collection

Ten pieces sit here and the name of the page undersells them. Four kite boards, two heaters, two Roman scutums, one dished steel round and one boss supplied as a kit. The wooden boards are built much the same way underneath and differ in outline, size and paint.

Norman and Templar kite boards

Two are Templar patterns at about 40 inches by 20 inches, one with a red cross pattee on a plain white field under a cut knotwork band, the other black and white with the same cross and a wide gilt border carrying hand cut running scrollwork. A Norman board runs about 40 inches by 22 inches at the shoulder, divided black and off white down the middle with rust red trim, an engraved knotwork band and a cross, at about 11 lb with the straps on. The shortest is a 34 inch teardrop by 24 inches across the shoulder, three painted bands over a cream ground with a tooled knotwork panel, about 9 lb complete.

Heater shields

Two, and they are the practical choice if you want something you can hold up for an hour. The smaller is 26 inches tall by 22 inches across the flat top, quartered navy and white with a red fillet inside the rim and a cut knotwork band along the top. The larger is 30 inches on a laminated hardwood plank core, faced and sealed, with a hand painted rampant lion on a rust field and a bone coloured outer band carrying a painted knotwork line. Domed rivets run around the edge and the reverse carries a buckle adjusted arm strap and hand grip.

Roman scutum

Two curved boards, both on laminated timber bent to the curve before painting. One is 37 inches tall with white wings, thunderbolts and arrows on a black field, a domed steel umbo riveted through the centre and a horizontal leather grip behind it. The other is the heaviest thing on the page at about 13 to 15 lb, roughly 40 inches tall and 26 inches across the curve, cross laminated ply around 12 mm thick, linen faced and hand painted on a red ground, with a raised steel dome on a square plate and an engraved wreath border. Its grip is a leather wrapped timber bar behind the boss cut out, which is how the original was done.

Steel round shield and the boss kit

The steel round is dished from a single disc of mild steel at 16 gauge, about 1.6 mm, 20 inches across with a rolled edge, an etched interlaced knotwork band with beast head terminals, and a raised dome boss on a flanged plate riveted through the face. It weighs about 9 to 11 lb, which is heavy for its size because steel is heavy.

The last item is not a shield at all. It is a hand raised conical boss in 16 gauge mild steel on a wide flat flange with six rivet holes and an Elder Futhark rune line around the flange, supplied with ten rivets and washers, a coil of undyed veg tan leather rim strip, two buckled arm straps and a wide grip strap. If you have ever wanted to plank up your own board, this is the part that is annoying to make and easy to buy.

Sizes, weights and construction across the range

Every figure below is taken from the specification panel of a piece on this page. These are made by hand, so read them as what to expect rather than as a guarantee to the millimetre.

Only four of these listings state a weight, so use those as your guide. A 40 inch planked board with rawhide and straps lands near 11 lb, a 34 inch one near 9 lb, and the big curved scutum sits well above both because there is more timber in it and a steel plate through the middle.

Sizing, fit and what you can actually hold

For display, the only measurement that matters is your wall. A 40 inch board wants about four feet of clear height once it is on a hanger and looks wrong crowded into a gap. Measure before you order, because these arrive bigger than people expect.

For wearing, a kite should reach from just below your chin to somewhere around the knee with the strap on your forearm. Most adults land on the 34 inch board rather than the 40. Under about five foot eight, a 40 inch kite drags on the ground when you stand relaxed.

Heaters are easier. At 26 to 30 inches they cover the torso and upper thigh and you can hold one at guard for far longer than a kite. If the shield will be in your hand rather than on a bracket, start there.

Boards, laminate and thickness

The wooden shields here are built two ways. Some are planked, meaning individual boards edge glued and pegged into a panel, which is how it was done historically and gives a board stiff along the grain and slightly springy across it. Others are laminated ply, layers cross bonded so the grain runs both ways, which is stronger for its thickness and holds a curve. The scutums have to be laminated for that reason.

Thickness sits around 12 mm on the boards that list it, with one tapering from the centre toward the rim. That taper is not decoration. It puts timber where the grip is and takes it out of the edge, where you want the board light and where the rawhide is doing the work anyway.

Faces are canvas or linen laid over the wood before painting. The cloth ties the planks together, stops a split running across the whole face and gives the paint a ground. Every face here is hand laid paint rather than a printed transfer, so expect brush marks and small variations.

Rims, bosses and rivets

Rawhide edging is the traditional binding and nearly every wooden board here has it, wrapped over the rim and riveted at intervals all the way round. Wet rawhide shrinks hard as it dries and grips the edge like a clamp, which protects the most vulnerable part of the board. The one thing it hates is being soaked and left, so keep a bound rim out of the rain.

A boss is a steel dome over a hole cut through the board, and it exists so the hand can sit in the middle of the shield holding a bar rather than strapped to the back. That is centre grip construction, and it is what the scutums and the steel round use. The kite and heater boards here have no boss and no hole, because they are strapped to the forearm instead.

Rivets are set through the face with the burr peened over on the reverse, domed heads where they show. If one works loose it can be reset with a hammer and a bucking block, which is why shields have been repaired this way for two thousand years.

Straps, enarmes and the guige

Some boards arrive with the strapping fitted. The others come with the leather loose, which sounds like an inconvenience and is the right way to do it. Where the straps sit depends on your forearm and on whether you are wearing armour, and nobody can set that for you from a warehouse. Hold the board against your arm, mark the positions, then rivet.

The forearm loops are the enarmes, one at the elbow and one at the hand, set at an angle rather than square so the board sits across the body instead of flat on. The long strap is the guige. It goes over the shoulder and takes the weight when the shield is slung on your back, and on a rider it stops the whole thing sliding off the arm.

The centre grip pieces work differently. One hand around a bar behind the boss, no straps on the arm, and the board is moved by punching it around rather than by turning your body. Faster and more tiring.

Paint, care and storage

Hand painted faces want the same treatment as any painted wood. Keep them out of direct sun, because pigment fades and a red field goes pink over a couple of years in a south facing window. Keep them away from damp, because the timber moves and the paint crazes.

Dust with a soft dry brush. No household cleaners on a painted face and nothing with solvent in it. Leather straps take a wipe of conditioner once a year and the rawhide rim wants nothing at all.

The steel round and the bosses are mild steel and will rust if left wet. Wipe them dry and put a light film of oil on the bare metal. Storing a shield flat on its face is fine. Leaning it against a wall on one point of the rim for a year is how a board goes out of true.

Engraving

Several boards already carry cut or engraved detail, from knotwork bands to the rune line running around the flange of the conical boss. Further engraving is done in the United States after the piece arrives, and metal takes it better than a painted wooden face, so a boss or a steel round is the usual place for a name or a date. Text engraving is 19 dollars, a symbol is 39 dollars and a family crest is 49 dollars.

Elder Futhark is a phonetic alphabet rather than a code, so a name is transliterated by sound and there is no rune for the letter C. Engraving is permanent and an engraved piece cannot be returned, so send the exact spelling and read it twice before you order.

Where these come from and how they ship

Ransack Viking is a US company based in Memphis, Tennessee. The pieces are handmade in the Czech Republic, then imported, inspected and shipped from Memphis. Engraving is done in the US after arrival.

Shields ship boxed and flat, with any loose strapping and fittings bagged inside. Two boards of the same name will differ slightly in paint, grain and rivet spacing, because two people made them on two different days. None of these are rated for full contact steel combat, and the listings say so. They are built for display, living history, film, photography and light reenactment.

How to choose

Hanging it on a wall above a fireplace or a bed? Take a 40 inch kite. It is the shape people recognise, the tail fills vertical space that nothing else fills well, and the painted heraldry reads from across a room.

Actually carrying it at an event? Take the 34 inch kite or one of the heaters. Your arm will thank you by the middle of the afternoon.

Building a Norse round board from scratch? Buy the conical boss kit at 179 dollars, because the boss and the strap hardware are the parts that are genuinely difficult to make at home. The planking is a weekend.

Related collections

• Round shields, the Norse board this one replaced
• Viking shields across the whole range
• Roman and Greek shields
• Shield bosses and fitting hardware
• Medieval helmets to match a heater board
• Roman and Greek helmets
• Chainmail armour
• Leather armour and body protection

Guides worth reading first

• Round shield or kite shield: which one you actually want
• Choosing a shield for display
• Viking shields explained
• Viking armour explained
• Chainmail, plate and lamellar compared
• How to display swords, axes and shields