Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

I have a complete tutorial that shows you how to cheaply and easily make a spartan shield. It looks just like the ones they used in the movie 300.

But first you might want to take a look at a real spartan shield. The picture below is a shot I took of a real spartan shield in a museum in Athens Greece. The plaque reads: Bronze Spartan Shield - loot from the Battle of Pylos 425 B.C. This shield has seen some action.

If you want a closer look I have a bigger picture on my website here: A Real Spartan Shield

I also have a home video of the monument at the actual battlefield of Thermopylae where the battle of the 300 took place. It is on my youtube channel here: The Battle of Thermopylae monument

If you want to make your own Spartan Shield the tutorial is here: Make a Spartan shield 

Here is a picture of what it looks like when completed:

You won’t be bringing down any castle walls with this trebuchet but it is a pretty strong floor model sized siege engine. It hurls a tennis ball.

The big thing I focused on with this trebuchet is “fast and easy”. I wanted to try to put together a powerful treb without all the hassle. And this fits the bill pretty good. It took me a few hours to design and make it. You should be able to build it in a couple of hours. I try to improvise all common parts and it uses just a few pieces of two by four and two barbells for a total counterweight of 20 pounds.

The project is located here and I will be posting to that page a youtube video explaining more and showing it firing off. The Tennis Ball Trebuchet

I just completed this new tutorial and it is complete with a video. It shows you how to make the leg guards (Greaves) just like in the movie 300. They come out really good and you just need a few items including some cereal box cardboard, flour and water. This is part of my on going series of tutorials on the 300 weapons and armor. So far I have the Spartan Greaves, Spartan Vambraces (arm guards) the Spartan Helmet and the Spartan Spear.

Coming soon I will be doing the Spartan Sword, The Spartan Shield and the Chest Plate.

You probably know I have been working hard on a visual dictionary of medieval armor and weapons and that is a project that is going well. I am having fun and learning a lot of cool stuff. But, in my research I am also digging up all kinds of interesting medieval tid bits that don’t really fit into anything I am working on. They are however rather interesting so i thought I would share some of them with you.

Famous knights of yore had the tendency to name their swords:

• Roland (from The Song of Roland) named his sword ‘Durendal’ (Enduring)
• Charlemagne named his sword ‘joyeuse’ (Joyous)
• The Saracen Emir Baligant named his sword ‘Precieuse’ (Precious) Sounds very lord of the rings doesn’t it?
• Some other knight named swords were ‘Hauteclair’ (High-Bright) and ‘Murgleys’ (Death-Brand)
• Beowulf named his borrowed sword ‘Destroyer’

Ok now let’s test your knowledge of weapons and armor.

Do you know what Gonfalons are?

How about a Scramasax?

Ever heard of a Spangenhelm?

LOL, Some fun stuff isn’t it?

I have been tinkering with the idea of a compendium of medieval weapons and yesterday I finally started working on it. It just seems like it would be a fun project to undertake and it will be interesting to see how many weapons I can get into it.  The first section is on Polearms from the middle ages and I have spent two days now drawing sketches and researching just the polearms.

The history and development of polearms is pretty interesting and it is of course logical to see how they morphed over the centuries and how they were often adaptatations of farming tools - at least in the early centuries.

Well, if you are interested in polearms or medieval weapons in general hop on over to my medieval site and check out the new section on Medieval Polearms.