Skyrim Shield

Haven't been working on much of late, but I did start a quick shield project. I've been playing a fair bit of Skyrim and watching a few Viking/Historical time pieces and I figured what a better thing to make with wood than a shield. A quick glance around the web and I found a fantastic Skyrim shield by VolpinProps and I pretty much followed his tutorial save for sculpting in clay. I figured it would be easier for me to make the whole thing out of wood. After determining the best course of action on how to cut out multiple circles between a table saw, band saw, or router I chose the router. Interesting enough a table saw and band saw will cut perfect circles too (quick search on youtube will prove this), but it would have been harder to make the metal trim ring that gives depth to the shield!

Here is how I did it!

 

Cut everything out into 2x2 sections size doesn't matter just cut them out to the overall size of the shield you want. Mine will be slightly smaller than 24 inches. 

 

I then glued a two inch by two inch square to the center of the boards with a hole in it. This is used to anchor the router and homemade jig to use as a track to arc a perfect circle!

 

The jig just has to mount the router base to a fixed arm with a pin/nail in the end that will drop into the glued square with hole in it on your shield piece! Nothing fancy here!

 

 

Router in action! Remember the size of the circle will be twice the length of the jig! Cut shallow cuts over and over until the circle is cut out!!

 

Backside of a jig! It is not as interesting as the back side of water, but that is an article for another day! I used a metal dowel I had laying around, but a nail, or wooden dowel would have worked just as well!

 

Here is a completed circle!

 

The trim rings were made the same way as the inner circles, but once the outside diameter was cut I moved the jig and shortened the stroke and repeated the process to cut the inner diameter out and it left me with a nice trim ring! Fear not the excess circle that was cut out can be used to make Ouija Boards, signs, or smaller shields for little minions!

 

Here they are! I used 1/2 inch plywood for the material, so they are in total one and a half inches thick! Trim ring on the front, full circle for the shield in the center and one more trim ring in the back!

 

I then took the router and carved planks in the shield face. I have not glued down the trim rings in place yet and I recommend not doing that until after the next few steps and possibly until after painting! I traced the trim ring onto the shield face, so I didn't carve the decorations down past the inner dimension of the trim piece.

 

Free handed some wood grain designs onto the shield! Just used a pencil and went crazy.

 

Voila! Time to stain and paint. I will update the process once that is completed! Time to enjoy some mead and dream of Valhalla!

Haunted Mansion Bench

Made a bench to accompany the craft table I made! I found a tutorial on Lowes on how to make a bench from plumbing material. Definitely not inexpensive! I also purchased some Haunted Mansion fabric to upholster the bench with! I deviated from the plans a bit and purchased 1" fittings because my store did not have enough smaller ones. I ended up having to go to Home Depot to pick up more pieces.. I don't remember, but they did package them differently.. I believe Lowes has them each with a sticker and Home Depot has each piece in a bag. Not a huge difference until you go to paint the pieces!! The stickers did not come off easily. I recommend purchasing them in the plastic bags if your store has them that way and save a ton of time! I also used two 1/2 thick pieces of pine for the seat!