Stupid Rawhide rims....

[Magnus]

My stitching has broken in a few spots on the rawhide on my scutum. I was thinking of just drilling through in a few areas and firing some rivets through, maybe at the start of each piece of rawhide.

Thoughts?

[marsvigilia]

I have been thinking about using rawhide on my second shield someday, (sighs whistfully)

What type of thread were you using?
And what weight?
Did it break during construction or later during usage, transit?

With plain tanned leather edging I've so far had good luck using the waxed linen chord from the beading section at Walmart.

[Peroni]

Salvete,

I make a lot of shields, and I find that the best thread to use is artificial sinew. It's a lot thicker than linen threads, easy to work with and looks more natural and realistic.

Regards,

[marsvigilia]

Linen chord for beading is rather thicker than thread and doesn't tend to break very easily.

I haven't tried artificial sinew. I had looked for natural but was unable to find lengths longer than about 8 inches. I wasn't sure what to do with these or how the Romnans would have done it. So I stuck with the linen.

But sinew might be kind of cool. The American Indians used it a lot I think.

[Magnus]

I used waxed linen thread...not sure of the weight, but it's the same stuff I used for my caligae. I think part of hte problem may be that it's caught on some edges of the rawhide. See, I used sections of rawhide, because I used a dog rawhide bone....Hey, I saw it on Matt Amt's website as a suggestion, and they're cheap, so why not? LOL. Oh, and they broke after construction...

Anyway, where some of the pieces overlap it may have broke because of the edging...but, there are other areas where it just seemed to break for no good reason. I think I'll tie those areas off with knots and rivet it.

[Peroni]

If you are in the US, you can get it in large reels from this place...

http://www.jastown.com/bulk/rs-333.htm

Regards,

Peroni

[Magnus]

I'm actually in Canada, but I have a good source for leather and such anyway. Just wanted to try something different.