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Real Deal Spolas
Thanks, Caradepato! The kind comments in this thread keep me going. Almost done... Been trying to get my apartment cleaned and organized; getting this far created a big mess at home, but now I am almost back to working on it. Thanks again!

Qui sepeliunt capita sua in terra, deos volantes non videbunt.
--Flavius Flav 
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This has got to be, without a doubt, one of the greatest reconstruction armours that I've yet seen.

To follow on from Dan Howard's sentiment, You've gotta go full commando when it's done!

If you went into a time machine, You'd definitely have a line of hoplites lining up for your gear.
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Not sure I deserve the kind praise! But, I am hoping to get back to work on this -this comeing weekend. A number of things besides typical end-of-project laziness came up. But I want to finish it soon.. Pics in full panoply to follow when everyhting put together.. Thanks, TheJackinati275 and everyone!

Qui sepeliunt capita sua in terra, deos volantes non videbunt.
--Flavius Flav 
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I have failed to mention in this thread, despite following it with interest since the beginning, that I consider this a very worthy attempt at a real deal spolas!
It may vary greatly from my approach with the alum tawed leather, but given our lack of hard facts and knowlege on the construction of these things, this is a very plausible alternative.
Very interesting to see how 2500 years later, two people based on the same primary sources, even the same painter as reference, can produce so different interpretations!

Can't wait to see it finished!
Khaire
Giannis
Giannis K. Hoplite
a.k.a.:Giannis Kadoglou
a.k.a.:Thorax
[Image: -side-1.gif]
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(08-13-2018, 09:46 PM)Giannis K. Hoplite Wrote: I have failed to mention in this thread, despite following it with interest since the beginning, that I consider this a very worthy attempt at a real deal spolas!
It may vary greatly from my approach with the alum tawed leather, but given our lack of hard facts and knowlege on the construction of these things, this is a very plausible alternative.
Very interesting to see how 2500 years later, two people based on the same primary sources, even the same painter as reference, can produce so different interpretations!

Can't wait to see it finished!
Khaire
Giannis

Well said! There's enough room for reasoned differences.
Joe Balmos
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(08-13-2018, 10:42 PM)Creon01 Wrote:
(08-13-2018, 09:46 PM)Giannis K. Hoplite Wrote: I have failed to mention in this thread, despite following it with interest since the beginning, that I consider this a very worthy attempt at a real deal spolas!
It may vary greatly from my approach with the alum tawed leather, but given our lack of hard facts and knowlege on the construction of these things, this is a very plausible alternative.
Very interesting to see how 2500 years later, two people based on the same primary sources, even the same painter as reference, can produce so different interpretations!

Can't wait to see it finished!
Khaire
Giannis

Well said! There's enough room for reasoned differences.  Yes, as I mentioned to Giannis in the other thread, with his gorgeous piece we probably have all of the bases covered as far as materials go, but as Dan pointed out, they may have consisted of hide and alum tawed leather, or some other arrangement.  Need to find the remains of one of the freaking things!  That's all we can do, for now..

Qui sepeliunt capita sua in terra, deos volantes non videbunt.
--Flavius Flav 
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I've stopped this project, because I now feel that the spolas was likely made from layers of leather, perhaps water-hardened, instead of oiled and waxed hides.. Rawhide is still too susceptible to moisture, even wrinkling with humidity in the air, though it could be used for scale armour if sealed properly. I am going to suggest something controversial.. I suspect that the white color seen on what could be spolioi in depictions might actually be lead white ground in oil. Here's why: The other white pigments available at the time are too powdery --they would crumble right off the leather, and they don't have the covering power of white lead, as well as being extremely susceptible to moisture. Painted designs wouldn't adhere properly etc.

Qui sepeliunt capita sua in terra, deos volantes non videbunt.
--Flavius Flav 
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Can you salvage the piece on which you painted the medusa? It would be a shame to waste it.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen & Sword Books
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(07-20-2019, 11:44 AM)Dan Howard Wrote: Can you salvage the piece on which you painted the medusa? It would be a shame to waste it.
Thanks Dan, I wish, but no, it's toasters.. It's also painted on hide! Not a big deal, but I have some financial commitments for about a year that will slow down the production of a leather one, but I have a bunch of stuff to get back to work on, anyway.

Qui sepeliunt capita sua in terra, deos volantes non videbunt.
--Flavius Flav 
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(07-19-2019, 05:55 PM)Feinman Wrote: I've stopped this project, because I now feel that the spolas was likely made from layers of leather, perhaps water-hardened, instead of oiled and waxed hides..  Rawhide is still too susceptible to moisture, even wrinkling with humidity in the air, though it could be used for scale armour if sealed properly.  I am going to suggest something controversial..  I suspect that the white color seen on what could be spolioi in depictions might actually be lead white ground in oil.  Here's why:  The other white pigments available at the time are too powdery --they would crumble right off the leather, and they don't have the covering power of white lead, as well as being extremely susceptible to moisture.  Painted designs wouldn't adhere properly etc.

Have you thought about baking rawhide to remove excess moisture and then sealing it?

I'm also of the opinion that the pteurges could be made by tablet weave from suitably robust twine and I suspect would hang better...

I think the spolas could be covered with a white leather, tawed and even tanned leather can be naturally white or close to it.

A White Hellenistic shoe from Egypt (allegedly)

https://collections.mfa.org/objects/164463

Wink
Ivor

"And the four bare walls stand on the seashore. a wreck a skeleton a monument of that instability and vicissitude to which all things human are subject. Not a dwelling within sight, and the farm labourer, and curious traveller, are the only persons that ever visit the scene where once so many thousands were congregated." T.Lewin 1867
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(07-20-2019, 06:43 PM)Crispianus Wrote:
(07-19-2019, 05:55 PM)Feinman Wrote: I've stopped this project, because I now feel that the spolas was likely made from layers of leather, perhaps water-hardened, instead of oiled and waxed hides..  Rawhide is still too susceptible to moisture, even wrinkling with humidity in the air, though it could be used for scale armour if sealed properly.  I am going to suggest something controversial..  I suspect that the white color seen on what could be spolioi in depictions might actually be lead white ground in oil.  Here's why:  The other white pigments available at the time are too powdery --they would crumble right off the leather, and they don't have the covering power of white lead, as well as being extremely susceptible to moisture.  Painted designs wouldn't adhere properly etc.

Have you thought about baking rawhide to remove excess moisture and then sealing it?

I'm also of the opinion that the pteurges could be made by tablet weave from suitably robust twine and I suspect would hang better...

I think the spolas could be covered with a white leather, tawed and even tanned leather can be naturally white or close to it.

A White Hellenistic shoe from Egypt (allegedly)

https://collections.mfa.org/objects/164463

Wink
I still think the rawhide would be too hygroscopic; a little humidity or sweat and it will warp or worse. Alum tawed hides are even more hygroscopic, as alum is excellent at pulling in moisture, and alum tawing creates a very soft product. Apparently the processing of hides in Egypt or certain processes did indeed create a paler hide / leather. I suspect with the decoration on some of them that they were painted, perhaps with a white pigment, though as you say, perhaps it was the processing. I do have a different T & Yoke armour that is twined and is partially done; I suspect that some of the T & Y armours were twined. All speculation until we can find some remains!

Qui sepeliunt capita sua in terra, deos volantes non videbunt.
--Flavius Flav 
Reply
(07-20-2019, 08:20 PM)Feinman Wrote:
(07-20-2019, 06:43 PM)Crispianus Wrote:
(07-19-2019, 05:55 PM)Feinman Wrote: I've stopped this project, because I now feel that the spolas was likely made from layers of leather, perhaps water-hardened, instead of oiled and waxed hides..  Rawhide is still too susceptible to moisture, even wrinkling with humidity in the air, though it could be used for scale armour if sealed properly.  I am going to suggest something controversial..  I suspect that the white color seen on what could be spolioi in depictions might actually be lead white ground in oil.  Here's why:  The other white pigments available at the time are too powdery --they would crumble right off the leather, and they don't have the covering power of white lead, as well as being extremely susceptible to moisture.  Painted designs wouldn't adhere properly etc.

Have you thought about baking rawhide to remove excess moisture and then sealing it?

I'm also of the opinion that the pteurges could be made by tablet weave from suitably robust twine and I suspect would hang better...

I think the spolas could be covered with a white leather, tawed and even tanned leather can be naturally white or close to it.

A White Hellenistic shoe from Egypt (allegedly)

https://collections.mfa.org/objects/164463

Wink
I still think the rawhide would be too hygroscopic; a little humidity or sweat and it will warp or worse.  Alum tawed hides are even more hygroscopic, as alum is excellent at pulling in moisture, and alum tawing creates a very soft product.  Apparently the processing of hides in Egypt or certain processes did indeed create a paler hide / leather.  I suspect with the decoration on some of them that they were painted, perhaps with a white pigment, though as you say, perhaps it was the processing. I do have a different T & Yoke armour that is twined and is partially done; I suspect that some of the T & Y armours were twined.  All speculation until we can find some remains!

Ok so lets speculate....

The point is to make it less hydroscopic by baking and sealing the rawhide, as far as I'm aware this was a technique still in use by a professional scabbardmaker 20 years ago for dress swords (think Life Guards), the object was to stop the scabbard from warping and stabilise the material, my own experience proved that simply drying even in a fairly warm place was not enough and the scabbard would still warp. How you'd do it with such a large piece I don't know perhaps stretching it in a frame wet and then baking it? unfortunatly I dont know the temperatures used but a bit of experimentation with a few samples should prove it either way.

Assume you have a rawhide front, back and shoulder and these pieces are streched wet in a frame and dryed naturally and then baked before final cutting out, excess offcuts can make up the scales for the sides which otherwise might be made from more flexible material, the rawhide covered on the outside by a layer of thin white leather of your choice for the main components

With tablet weave you get exactly the width you want for the pteurges with a very thick flexible material the ends can be tasseled to represent the finish that you see in contemporary illustrations. You could even weave them altogether as a single piece with a starting border on a frame loom etc.

Wink
Ivor

"And the four bare walls stand on the seashore. a wreck a skeleton a monument of that instability and vicissitude to which all things human are subject. Not a dwelling within sight, and the farm labourer, and curious traveller, are the only persons that ever visit the scene where once so many thousands were congregated." T.Lewin 1867
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I am very interested in how the coloring of this piece turns out.

Unless I missed a discussion somewhere I thought Sean Manning put the "alum-tawed leather" for the spolas idea to rest in his June  post here: https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/showth...#pid348921 .

"She has not seen any alum-tawed leather, or any text describing tawing, older than Julius Caesar, and she is not sure that Roman aluta was really tawed. Whereas we have whole museums full of (probably) oil-cured leather from Egypt and 4000 year old texts describing rubbing oil into skins and then dying them with madder and alum."

"I have checked some articles by Gabriela Ruß-Popa and Carol van Driel-Murray, and have finished the section on Hide Products. If I ever research Greek shoes and leather, I might add a few sentences, or those might go under 'shoes.'

I was surprised to discover that there is no evidence for alum-tawed leather before Roman times, and in 2008 Carol van Driel-Murray was not sure the Romans had it."

I was too was surprised that there was no further discussion or questions from the "leather tawed spolas" crowd. There are numerous mentions of Alum Tawed leather being used in Ancient Greece on the net, but no references it seems. Does anyone have a good solid reference? 

Did Sean's post influence your decision on how to color your spolas? Why not just Alum dyed?

Please don't add links to other discussions stating "Athens had a booming export industry making white shoes from alum-tawed leather." Until Sean's post I was inclined to believe that as it's mentioned over and over online. I mean we can always trust what we read on the internet right? I'm just very curious why we think Alum Tawed leather was used for anything in Athens at that time? Is there an artifact or rumors of such an artifact as we know researchers are slow to publish and some publications are hard to find. Is there a clear reference somewhere the experts Sean mentions could have missed. That's certainly possible. I've seen ancient pieces in museums laughably mislabeled....by experts. An obviously new wood scabbard on an ancient blade was recently brought to my attention. Is there any evidence that the Greeks before the Roman conquest knew of or used Alum Tawed leather?

I really want to know because I've ordered such a Tube and Yoke and I want it to be as accurate as possible.
Joe Balmos
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(07-22-2019, 03:31 PM)Creon01 Wrote: "Athens had a booming export industry making white shoes from alum-tawed leather."

I already provided a link to a white shoe which may or may not be Ptolemaic and could be cured leather or anything else pretty much, however I made no suggestion it was Alum tawed, if its true that aluta can refer to any white leather then theres a number of ways it can be achieved without ever using Alum, the problem is that there is no unambiguous evidence and little in the way of surviving material or contemporary descriptions of any significance, any list of materials can be open to interpretation, colouring leather is quite often done as part of the tanning process.

Remember White leather doesn't necesarily mean Alum Tawed but can also be cured, the problem here is with wording of the translations when does "Dressing" become a process of "Curing" or "Tawing" or "Tanning", when Pliny talks about dressing skins with Alum does he mean curing/tawing or as preperation for dying and are they one and the same thing, hes not being very specific about a good many things almost as though he has no real knowledge of the subject which is likely not suprising.

You'll find many mentions of tanners/ dressers of skins/hides in greek litrature but this is usually as far as it goes, as far as I can tell there are no actual descriptions of the process and although the egyptians for example have left some pictorial evidence for oil dressing hide its a shorthand version, if that is indeed what they are doing since there is no manual for it.

There is as far as I know no surviving leather footware from classical Greece (everday items are going to be way more common then armour in the rubbish), equally though you could say the same thing of Roman Italy with a few notable exceptions, these regions compare very badly with the thousands of leather items including some horse protection from northern Europe (veg tanned mostly or it is now) and Egypt (early non veg tanned mostly)

And then there is the complete lack of unambiguous tannery's in other words the places where skins/hides were turned into usable material...... everywhere, with the possible exception of Pompeii.

I think its true to say that none of the real questions have yet been answered its possible they may never be......

My suggestion is experiment away.... it seems like the best course to me.


Just my thoughts not written in stone Wink
Ivor

"And the four bare walls stand on the seashore. a wreck a skeleton a monument of that instability and vicissitude to which all things human are subject. Not a dwelling within sight, and the farm labourer, and curious traveller, are the only persons that ever visit the scene where once so many thousands were congregated." T.Lewin 1867
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Nice one. So the Athenians exported white leather products but they were not made from tawed leather.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen & Sword Books
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