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Arms, armour, ducks and doors
Apr. 23rd, 2022 06:56 pmAs well as spotting comical lions, last weekend we made Bronze Age swords!
But before that, we revisted the Weald and Downland open air museum, which was basking in glorious weather. The main attraction of the place is the many dozens of historic domestic buildings which have been carefully demolished and carefully reassembled on the site, minus all the modern additions that they had acquired over the years. Confronted with all this history, what did I photograph? Ducks and a fence.
( Duck bottoms and a wiggly fence )
And then, on Sunday, we made swords! This was an all-day workshop at Butser Ancient Farm, done with a backdrop of battling Anglo-Saxon re-enactors and a half-built wicker man. (I meant to photograph the massive nestbox on a prominent dead (or dead-looking) tree overlooking the farm, but forgot. It truly was an enormous nestbox, large enough for a small dragon. Apparently it was there for owls, but no owls had bought it yet.)
Anyway... There were just two of us on the workshop, and we both worked together to make one sword, then another. A lot of the time was spent making the mould out of sand - piling it in, pressing it down, hammering it down, putting in more sand, hammering it down again, rinse and repeat. Then we made bronze out of copper wire and old tin tankard fragments, poured it into the mould... and within less than a minute, there was a sword, solid and ready to pick up with pliers and plunge into a vat of water. Yay!
But now comes to hard part: polishing it. We started the job on site, filing away the thin edges where the metal had seeped out beyond the edges of the mould. My sword didn't have much of this, but Pellinor's had a lot. But it will be hours and hours of hard work sanding and scrubbing and buffing before they're good shiny bronze. I've done odd hours here and there. The sword's getting quite a bit smoother, but my fingers seem to be, too, since the fingerprint recognition on my phone has stopped reliably recognising my fingerprint. (Time to rob a bank, perhaps?)
( Sword pictures )
And, finally... while we were sitting on top of Portsdown Hill near Fort Nelson (a lovely view of Portsmouth; I could have sat there for hours just looking out at the vista below us - a view that was too big for a photograph to do justice to it)... Anyway... we were talking about comical lions, and Pellinor, whose live roleplaying character (one of them, anyway) has a winged lion as a badge, said it would be nice to have a winged lion on his helmet. "But I don't know if it would be possible..."
Challenge accepted.
( A winged lion sitting on a hat )
But before that, we revisted the Weald and Downland open air museum, which was basking in glorious weather. The main attraction of the place is the many dozens of historic domestic buildings which have been carefully demolished and carefully reassembled on the site, minus all the modern additions that they had acquired over the years. Confronted with all this history, what did I photograph? Ducks and a fence.
( Duck bottoms and a wiggly fence )
And then, on Sunday, we made swords! This was an all-day workshop at Butser Ancient Farm, done with a backdrop of battling Anglo-Saxon re-enactors and a half-built wicker man. (I meant to photograph the massive nestbox on a prominent dead (or dead-looking) tree overlooking the farm, but forgot. It truly was an enormous nestbox, large enough for a small dragon. Apparently it was there for owls, but no owls had bought it yet.)
Anyway... There were just two of us on the workshop, and we both worked together to make one sword, then another. A lot of the time was spent making the mould out of sand - piling it in, pressing it down, hammering it down, putting in more sand, hammering it down again, rinse and repeat. Then we made bronze out of copper wire and old tin tankard fragments, poured it into the mould... and within less than a minute, there was a sword, solid and ready to pick up with pliers and plunge into a vat of water. Yay!
But now comes to hard part: polishing it. We started the job on site, filing away the thin edges where the metal had seeped out beyond the edges of the mould. My sword didn't have much of this, but Pellinor's had a lot. But it will be hours and hours of hard work sanding and scrubbing and buffing before they're good shiny bronze. I've done odd hours here and there. The sword's getting quite a bit smoother, but my fingers seem to be, too, since the fingerprint recognition on my phone has stopped reliably recognising my fingerprint. (Time to rob a bank, perhaps?)
( Sword pictures )
And, finally... while we were sitting on top of Portsdown Hill near Fort Nelson (a lovely view of Portsmouth; I could have sat there for hours just looking out at the vista below us - a view that was too big for a photograph to do justice to it)... Anyway... we were talking about comical lions, and Pellinor, whose live roleplaying character (one of them, anyway) has a winged lion as a badge, said it would be nice to have a winged lion on his helmet. "But I don't know if it would be possible..."
Challenge accepted.
( A winged lion sitting on a hat )
