Making a Sparring Sheld

One of the hobby's I have is sparing. Witch is just the proper term for dueling with swords. I use Cold Steels training swords. Cold Steel is a great company, everything I have from them has stood to the test. And if any one wanted to start sparing I would recommend there training swords. I will put in a link to there web site at the end. But we were sparing one day and a good friend of mine said we need some shields. Now I have made wooden ones but none of them made it to this post.

So what better then any one who played knights remembers there trash can, so I just took it one level up. Our farm has junk all over the place and I found a 55gal steel drum lid, and I instead of scraping it I though oh I see a shield, and the end product was this.

Step 1: Things You Will Need

Tools

• Drill
• Drill bits
• Wrench
• Sand paper
• Knife, for cutting card board.

Materials

• A 55gal steel drum lid
• strapping, you could use an old belt instead.
• four bolts
• four lock nuts
• eight large washers
• cardboard

Step 2: The Assembly

I apologize for not having a lot of pictures, but please bare with
me. It is a really easy project you need to just pick wear you want your straps, and drill four holes.

My mom sews, so she made me some straps. They are fully adjustable, and have a quick release clip so I can take the shield off really fast.

cut out three pieces of card board and put them in the back of the shield, so it had some padding to take some of the shock away.

Then I bolted all of it together and sanded the shield down a little to take the rust off.

It is a really easy project does not take much time and is quite rewarding if you use it.

Step 3: End

Over all this is a very easy project. and for reusing an old piece of junk it was a pretty good deal.

Some Ideas

I like Captain America quite a bit so I gave a good friend of mine a shield and he did a nice paint job and the thing looks pretty awesome. So if your looking for a cheep shield that works try it out.

Here is cold steels training blades on amazon. I will say the gladiolus look pretty sweet with this shield.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=cold+steel+training+weapons&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=25934904157&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9188866948064672167&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_hdkj7q2fm_b

Step 4: