A piece written for the owner of the only medieval bar I know in China. Since his favorite work is the Song of the Nibelungs or Das Nibelungenlied, I copied the hand and art of the opening page of the original manuscript. The colors, words, and abbreviations are faithful to the original. There is just a small spelling error on one of the lines. The language of the manuscript, and this copy, is Old High German.
A little calligraphy project for a friend. I wrote this using purely aesthetic non-standard calligraphy. It is a long work written in the form of a scroll. The content is in English from the book of Havamal. Even though the hand I used is not based on any historical hand the finished piece looks good.
This is a replica of a Manchurian quiver from the late 19th century. It is made of leather with metal fittings. The bottom wedge is made of wood just as the Manchurians would have it. I included pictures of the leather dying process as well. Making this took me around a month, and I have been using it for more than a year now. It is fully functional.
This is a little project I had in mind for some time. It was a very simple change-of-looks to a regular fruit knife I bought. I changed the knife's plastic handle for a wooden one carved by myself. Then I wrapped both, the handle and the sheath, in different kinds of leather. I tried to give it a rough, primitive look by using patches of thick leather sewn together rather than a single piece.
This is a collar I made in 2007 or 2008. It was supposed to be a measure against vampire bites. The collar was one of my first attempts to fuse chain-mail and fabric. The weave I used on this one was double European 4-in-1 making it impossible to penetrate by the use of teeth alone, even with superhuman strength. The collar closes on the back of the user's neck with Velcro and then a metal hook can be fastened to prevent it from opening accidentally due to excessive stress.
I couldn't stab through it with a knife. So I doubt any vampire could ever bite all the way through before breaking his or her teeth. This is a Roman gladius sword that I made back in 2008. It is one of my best works to date due to its toughness, practicality, and successful design.
I used a thick metal slab for the sword's body and three different kinds of wood for the handle. I decided to use different kinds of wood because different parts of a handle undergo different levels of stress and some of them require more toughness to perform well, while others need to be light as no not encumber the user. The hilt (and the user hand) is protected from incoming blows by a fixed metal guard made from the same metal as the blade. All the wooden parts were tightly fixed to the blade using screws, most of which were later concealed with plaster and painted over. I am not completely sure about the alloy that I used for this one; since I got it in a scrapyard and I lack the knowledge to recognize different metals by sight only. I suspect however that contains great amounts of iron because of its heavy weight. In this sense it differs from a real Roman gladius. Roman swords used to be heavy I have read, but I can assure you their weight doesn't come close to mine. It is so tough and heavy that I cannot think of anything that if struck, would make me concerned about the sword's ability to keep its shape and integrity. The sword's body goes all the way down the hilt until the pommel. And it even takes the shape of the guard and hilt for maximum stability. It is sharp, but not too sharp, only sharp enough. This is a weapon for hacking and chopping rather than cutting. It feels to the user very much like a sword-shaped axe. Some leather pouches I made using real leather. They were my first attempts to work with this material. All were designed by myself and 100% hand made. I gave them all away as presents to different people except the last three that still accompany me sometimes.
Pictures of the shoulder guard I made last year are finally here. Thanks to my good friend in the pictures I can now upload pictures of the finished piece (I forgot to take pictures once I finished it, but it won't happen again). I made this as a birthday present for her since we both find joy in things that not only look cool but are also real and practical.
The shoulder guard was almost entirely designed by her. It is a leather pad that fits on the shoulder and is covered with a secured chain mail piece. This piece has two different weaves to provide extra strength on the upper part closest to the neck, and mobility on the lower part closest to the arm. It was my first experiment attaching chain mail to leather of this thickness and I have to say it was more successful than I had originally expected. |
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