making an aspis

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Hello.
Manning Imperial shields have reached a new levels of authenticity by now, and i don't only mean shape, but ways of construction, as based on old and new evidence.
I am confident that if you ask Craig to make you the real thing as it would have been made and battle ready, you will get it. Provided you want to pay for it of course...
Poplar is the correct wood to be used. The Vatican shield wood has been identified as poplar, and Pliny says that poplar is the best timber for shields because it is light, flexible and because it grows in wet invironment, its fibers tend to close around the damage caused by a weapon. In the vatican shield no glue has been found, but it has been spotted on other shield speciments from macedonia. What glue was not stated. However, the structural strength of the shield was not comming from the timber or the glue, but by the fact that the wooden core was sandwitched between a layer of linen on the outside that was gessoed, and a layer of leather on the inside. Of course some shields would have bronze on the outside keeping everything together. Even the bronze rim's primary purpose was to add structural strength to the shield, keeping the planks together.
Craig's own experiments showed that when only an outer layer of linen was added to a planked viking shield, it could be shatered to pieces with some well executed strikes, but when a second layer was added on the back of the shield, the result was an undestructable weapon!
The use of stucco or gesso has been attested to a number of 4th century macedonian hoplite shields, and it is logical to suggest that this was common in earlier shields. Linen and gesso have been used till medieval times.
Khaire
Giannis