Anglo-Saxon Brooch

Cruciform brooch. Gilt copper sheet and wire with cut glass inlays. About 2" diameter.

Chasse

French or English chasse. Repousse sheet brass over wooden core. This was givin to his Majesty Eringlin at Lillies War '98. I believe he will put some cast figures in the recesses.

The recesses were carved into the wood, and the brass dished into them with repeated anealing. I think I only broke through once, during that night-before-we-leave project-completion-frenzy.

Ango-Saxon Cross

Cross of copper sheet/wire. 2 5/8" by 2 1/8"

Chest

Chest of pine and iron with large dovetails and integral handles.

Viking Box

Small Viking box of copper sheet over a pine core. Designs are done in repousee. Built on-site at Lillies War '99, where it won first place in the Arts & Science On-Site competition.

Viking Jewelry

Small Viking pendant and cross in gilded copper sheet and wire.

Wax writing tablet

Wax writing tablet in brass with copper wire with glass insets. This is one of my early pieces which I used a cold silver plating solution which wore off in areas.

Anglo-Saxon Belt and Pouch

Leather, brass, glass. This is one of my really early, non-period pieces where I had no clue what real Anglo-Saxon metalwork consisted of. The buckle is done in the Anglo-Saxon cloisonne tradition of cut class in soldered cells. It is backed with and iron plate for rigidity. The pouch has a brass cruciform design with etched animal interlace (forgive me, I didn’t know any better at the time). The catch is a brass bulls head filed and engraved. There are 2 glass cloisonne mounts as well (2 more partially done ones are sitting in my shop somewhere). This was my first Lillies War Arts & Science First Place winner, sometime back in the early '90's.

Unfortunately, the only thing that could be remotely considered "Anglo Saxon metalwork" is the round mounts.

Wax Carving Station

My wax carving station. The raised portion in the middle keeps the model out of the wax shavings that collect in the tray. Jen made the nifty Byzantine oil lamp.

Most of the carving tools are the el-cheap-o woodcarving variety, but some I made special.

Book Cover

Book cover, roughly 10th century, with elements of Byzantine and French influence. Won first place at Lillies War '94 (or so). The central icon (St. Mark), the 2 circular plaques and the hearts on the filigree side pannels are all cloisonne enamel.

Round Copper Boxs

Copper box from a 15th century example. It is made from sheet copper and joined with hand-made copper rivets and lead/tin solder. The top has compass drawn circle and swirl decoration and the sides are lightly engraved with a vine and leaf motif. 4" in diameter.

Small Bronze Buckle

Small buckle of Anglo-Saxon design, cast bronze and silver foil/wire. Much of Anlgo-Saxon jewellry uses the technique of setting a filigree plate inside a cast cell. The wire was beaded using the beading file describe by Theophilos and is just under a millimeter thick. The buckle is about 2" long. The tablet woven belt was made by my wife.

Melting Furnace

My propane-powered melting furnace, consisting of firebricks on end, set in a box of rammed earth (ok, its dirt). The lid is firebricks clamped together as well. Takes about 20-30 minutes to melt several pounds of bronze (up to about 8 lbs which is the biggest crucible I have). Could use some improvements in the realm of efficency, but it works fine for now. To do over, I'd make the inlet pipe larger (it's about 1.5" now). I like it burried in the dirt because it really holds the heat. The day after I run it, it will still be a few hundered degees inside.
The little side shoot there was orginally intended as a spot to preheat moulds while the metal was melting, but I usually just block it off with a brick instead.

I have actually dismantled this as of 2008 and have plans to build a reverb furnace instead.

Hnefatafl Board

This is a 7x7 square hnefatafl-type game board, with a merrels board on the reverse. It is hand carved of oak, with bone mounts and hand-made bronze nails. The dark trim wood is some scrap piece I had. Not sure what it is, possibly some strain of mahogany, but it carved horribly.

Celtic Cross - 3rd -4th Century

This is a small Celtic cross, about 1.5 inches, designed after the style of the Celtic brooches of the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. Bronze (90/10) with red enamel. It was cast in a 2 part clay mould on the hearth using bellows and coal.

Although the designs on the arms show up on the mould, the did not come out on the piece (I think I needed a hotter mould and longer sprue), so the designs were carved into the metal using chasers and fine chisels, which is actually closer to what the Celts were doing anyway. I need to make a few more chasing tools and work on my technique, but found that is *is* possible to do with very little tools. I'll try to refine the technique on later pieces.

Bronze Age Knife

Bronze Age (Period III) knife based on examples in the National Museum of Denmark. 90/10 bronze, about 7" long, cast and chased. Scandinavian.

This was sand cast using a woden model and the decoration chased on afterwards.

Round bellows construction

Here are some images I made up to help in the understanding and construction of some round bellows.

Viking Wire Bracelet

Recently a discussion came up about how the Viking wire bracelets were made and if they were braided on some type of loom. They were actually just twisted in a clever manner to imitate braiding. These pictures show how one of the examples was done.

Heres an original bracelet I chose at random from the various hoards.

Viking Pennanular Brooch

A bronze and silver Viking bossed pennanular brooch. The silver bosses are ringed with beaded pure silver wire. I've found that pure silver wire not only draws easier than sterling, it beads better as well.
This was cast in sand from a lead model, which was lost-wax cast from a wax model, which was cast from a wooden blank pressed into clay. Now, the reason for all this recasting is so I can, using the wooden blank (with no details), cast up multiple wax blanks and make them all slightly different. From those I can make lead or pewter models for further 2 piece mold casting. This is a very period way of doing it. This also allows you to break free of the modern convention of being limited to a pre-existing sheet of stock wax to make your model out of.

Viking Disk Brooch

Viking disk brooch based on an unpublished find in Gotland.

Making multiple wax models in clay

This article shows how to utilize clay in making wax models for lost wax casting, both for initial forms and for multiple copies of the same form. Archaeological evidence for this can be shown to some extent by the number of cast pieces found with woodgrain impressions, indicating that the original pattern was made from wood. Further rational on this will be presented in another article, but for now lets get to the process.

Here are the basic componants. This is for a set of hinges. Patterns were roughed out in wood. This pattern is then lightly coated with talc (baby powder) and pressed into the wet clay. This particular clay is of the stoneware variety. Further refinement of the pattern can then be done by tooling the clay (such as the raised border and the 'eyes'). Wax is then carefully heated and poured into the clay. The wax must not be too hot or it will stick to the clay, which makes removal difficult (but not impossible). As the wax cools it will contract leaving dimples in the surface. These can be refilled as it cools.

It is also possible to make a 2 piece mould by talcing the face of the first clay piece and pressing a second piece on top with the model inside, then removing the model and gently pressing the 2 halves of the mould back together, just enough to seal it. It's tricky but it will work.

When the wax is completely cooled, gently remove it. If you're gentle, and the wax was not too hot when you poured it, the clay mold may be still be intact and you can pour another one without touchup.
Excess clay can be removed by gently brushing and water. Flashing can then be removed and the back leveled. You now have an initial form to start carving.

Making a 14th century copper lantern

[This article is under constructon. I''ll have the text for these images up shortly]

Making an Anglo-Saxon saucer brooch

I've been wanting to make an Anglo-Saxon disc brooch for some time and have been researching how they may have been manufactured. There are apparently several ways they were done, the predominant ways being a rounded 'saucer' beaten out of sheet with a repoussee insert or casting, either in a piece mould or lost wax. Within the cast category it is evident that some were carved from wood and some were carved in wax. You can see this by the way the decoration was carved. Chip carving in wood lends itself to V shaped cuts and more angular designs, while wax tends to be (or can be) much more fluid. Examples have also been found with a wood-grain pattern showing on the finished casting, indicating that at some point the primary model was wooden.

I plan here to test a few theories about how these were made by doing a few reconstructive experiments using what I hope would be methods available to an Anglo-Saxons in the 5th-7th centuries. My first attempt will be to duplicate one based on a fragment I found while searching through the Portable Antiquities website. Because of the angle of the cuts and the layout, I feel that this was most probably chip carved from wood. The first question is how do you get the initial 'saucer' shape? After looking at many pictures of these (including cross sections), I don't believe they were cast flat and the rim turned up, but rather cast with the rim in place. The best method for making a model like this to me would be turning on a lathe. A small primitive lathe should be able to turn a little saucer blank like this with no problem. I made up a small blank in maple.

Powder horn and poll axe

Powder horn and hammer-poll tomahawk that I made.

Day Horn

Here is a small day horn with carving and engraving. This is smaller than an regular powder horn, intended for a short hunting session, or 'day trip'.

Casting of trade items

Here's a sand cast from a wooden mold of a small beaver and tutle pendant in brass. Raw casting:

Making small rivets

These are what I call 'spoon rivets'. Many people have the need to use small rivets, and these are sometimes hard to come by. Small brass nails work well, but these come in limited sized and are sometimes a bit pricy. Making small rivets is best done with a special jig that holds the wire securely on all sides to keep it from deforming while the head is being shaped. If you don't have one of these jigs it's a little difficult. Here is a way to create all the small rivets you want with no special tools. All you need is a teaspoon, a pair of pliers, and some standard copper electric wire.

Anyone who has tried to make a little rivet by clamping a piece of wire in a vice will note with some frustration at how the shaft usually bends over before the rivet head is completed. As any good metalsmith will tell you, light blows to a piece of metal will affect the surface metal, heavy blows move metal below the surface. We can use this to our advantage by using a standard stainless steel teaspoon as a hammer.

Hold a piece of copper wire in some pliers, leaving about 1/4" above the side as shown. You can aneal it first if you have a torch, but its not absolutely necessary. Use the back of the spoon to tap the head. It has just enough weight to move the surface or head of the wire without deforming the shaft. Light, repeating blows are all that is required. You will need to stop often and move the wire back up so the head is not resting on the side of the pliers. Holding the wire in a pair of pliers is all that is needed for support. Do not rest the pliers on anything, just hold them in your hand. We want all the energy that is not absorbed at the rivet head to be absorbed by the give of your hand, not the rivet shaft.

Casting Class - War of the Lillies 2005

Here are some notes on the bronze casting class that was held at the SCA War of the Lillies event, 2005, in Kansas City, MO.

I wanted to share my experience here in order to help those who might want to do a similar class.

Saxon Strapend

Anglo-Saxon strapend, 9th century, cast copper-alloy in a clay mould from a wooden model. The central figure is engraved and filled with a tin/silver background.

The engraving turned out much better than I anticipated, but the inlay was a little troublesome because there were spots where it didnt want to stick, even with lots of scraping and fluxing. After about a dozen heats I left it alone. I had to darken the copper-alloy by fuming with amonia to get enough contrast to see the silver inlay. I have to wonder if chemical coloring/oxidizing like this was known medievally, otherwise silver inlay and gold plating would not show up well against a brass or bronze background.

Casting class notes

Here are the class notes from the 2007 casting session at Lilies War.
Bronze Casting Overview

Ice Teeth

As the trees bowed under the gathering ice, the direction of the icecicles changed, so you get these wierd curving ones that look like great frozen fangs.

Birds Nest

This is an upside down shot of a birds nest, frozen in the tree.

Iced Needle

Needle and pine cone.

Under the Ice

This is a small puddle of water where the surface froze twice, but the water drained out from under it, leaving 2 ice shelves.

Under the Ice

Under the Ice

Fir-Cicles

Ice formed on a fir tree at Evangel.

Irish Buckle - 7th/8th Century

This is an Irish buckle of the 7th/8th century, about 70mm long, cast in bronze with champleve panels of enamel, silver foil, and millefiori. This was an entry for Kingdom Arts & Science Tri-Levels (Calontir) 2007.

This buckle is an extrapolation from two 7th century Irish buckles (one incomplete) and a few odd pieces. It is fun to see how vibrant and colorful the medieval buckles must have looked -- very different from the damaged and corroded examples we generally see.

Documentation and write-up for this buckle can be found here.

Anglo-Saxon Buckle - 7th Century

Anglo-Saxon buckle, 7th Century. Cast copper-alloy with beaded silver filigree. This was an entry for Kingdom Arts & Science Tri-Levels (Calontir) 2007.

Documentation for this can be found here.

Casting a 13th century brooch

This article shows how to make an authentic 13th century annular copper-alloy brooch via the lost-wax method, using common materials found (mostly) around the house. No special tools are required at any stage, including the melting and pouring of the copper-alloy. Many people think that high-temperature casting (ie something other than pewter) has to involve nasty chemical agents, high dollar kilns, and huge torches. Not only will we be using common items, with a little scrounging all the materials will be free.
Here is a list of the basic tools

• teaspoon
• small pocket knife
• hardwood charcoal or ash
• tin can
• compas
• biscuit tube lid
• candle wax
• large Sharpie
• cheap small paintbrush
• small candle
• lighter
• fine sand
• fist sized lump of clay
• small bit of natural fiber rope
• hairdryer
• 2 metal salad tongs

Brough of Birsay - Archaeology Papers

PICTISH AND NORSE FINDS FROM THE BROUGH OF BIRSAY 1934-74. This is one of the key archaeological sites for piece mould casting finds. Monograph of the Society of Anitiquaries of Scotland.

Viking Bronze

The premier casting research site by Anders Söderberg. Lots of great pictures and research material on Viking bronze casting.

Fröjel Discovery Programme

Fröjel site of Gotland University with Dan Carlsson. Good Viking research site.

Portable Antiquities Scheme

Online database of small antiquities.

Internet Archaeology - eJournal

View articles pertaining to archaeology. Get info straight from the field. Good research site.

Various Cast Pieces

Here are a few pictures of various cast item done in two-piece clay moulds.

Anglo-Saxon bird brooch, 6th century, 32mm, copper alloy. The wooden model is on the left. To the right is one of the many mis-cast attempts on this piece. I finally learned to put the sprue in the middle of the beak (to the left) so that the leg fills properly. Orginal piece to the right.

Romano-British strapend

The simplicity of this little Romano-British strapend belies a complex construction technique. The piece is very thin, less than 1mm, and does not appear cast. Now broken, the top was originally split to hold a strap. It is 35mm long.

Medieval Archaeology Online

The journal Medieval Archaeology.

Images of medieval bellows

This is a collection of all the medieval/dark age images of bellows that I know of. While the aim was to document double bellows for casting hearths, oddly there are no depictions of casting workshops, only blacksmiths and hand bellows to stoke fires for other purposes. The single goldsmith shown has a small single bellows, presumably for soldering.

There is plenty of incidental evidence for bellows at casting workshop in the form of stone and clay tuyers as well as the obvious need for high temperatures, and literary evidence (Theophilus- 12thC) indicates their use as well, so I believe a safe assumption is that the same type of bellows used for blacksmithing would be used for bronze casting.

Bell Casting 08

For the third year in a row at the War of the Lilies we have attempted to cast a bronze bell on-site using period techniques, following in the footsteps of Theopholis (and to some extent Andrei Rublev). The first, rather ambitious attempt in 06 started with a large bell mould and a rather incomplete understanding of the workings of a cupola furnace (built on-site) resulting in 50 lbs worth of a hot, spongy, mass of copper at 2 in the morning, minutes before a major storm rolled in. The subsequent year saw a smaller bell mould and a pre-built cupola in two sections, which probably would have worked had we known that a cupola sized for 60 lbs of bronze will not properly melt only 7 lbs.

Fun was of course had by all (we are playing with really hot fire in the middle of the night [and some would say in the middle of the 12th century]). Plus we did learn a few things. Year 3 started out with slightly less ambitious goals:

• reduce the number of unknown/untested elements
• produce ANY sort of bell shaped object, large or small
• check weather for impending storms before starting the melt

Cupola Furnace

This is my latest interpretation of the cupola furnace for melting large quantities of copper alloy. It is based on descriptions from Theophilous and Birringuccio, along with some modern help from Stewart Marshalls book Building Small Cupola Furnaces.

I set as a goal to push about 90 CFPM into the cupola from a single set of bellows based on suggestions in Stewarts book, using the bellows volume calculator in this site, however by the time the bellows were built the output was significantly less because they operated slower that I expected (need larger in/out holes). They did however produce enough to do the job (probably around 60 CFPM). The calculations in Stewarts book are really for melting iron with coke, so by the time you scale things down for copper with charcoal, it problaby worked out about right.

Make a ring-and-dot cutter for bonework

This article describes how to make a "ring-and-dot" cutter for use on bone from a masonry nail. This is a very useful item if you're going to do any Saxon bone work (and who wouldn't?).

Materials Needed:

• Heat source (torch, Hot Head, forge, etc)
• Large masonry nail
• jar of water
• pliers
• anvil-type object to pound on
• needle file set or small triagular file
• small dowel rod suitable for handle
• means of drilling starter hole in handle
• vice

Roman Buckle

This is a copper-alloy roman buckle found in Britian. Of interest is that it appears to be cast in a 2 piece mould. You can see where the 2 halves were misaligned during production -- on the front top (A) and on the middle back right (B). Objects cast in stone moulds usually exhibit features that rise above the central plane, ie they are less "flat" than pieces fabricated from a sheet of wax or wood. Objects cast in stone moulds are often much rougher in texture. This piece is very smooth and very flat. With all these factors, I would conclude that this piece was cast in a 2 part clay mould.

Of further interest is how the exterior curls of the pelta at "B" did not fill the mould fully.

Riveted Buckle

This buckle is very interesting in that it has 4 rivet holes (1 remaining) that apparently attached it to some material that easily decayed. I would assume bone, ivory, or horn is a good possibility. The length of the existing rivet puts the missing material at 3mm. I have not seen any parallels of this type of construction.

The zig-zag wriggle-work decoration would put this at roughly the 13th/14th century. Of interesting construction note are the rivet holes which are conical instead of a straight sided. This would indicate a reamer or conical drill bit being used.

There is no specific evidence that this was cast. It could just as easily be done from stock. The channel for the tongue is raised slightly above the rest of the buckle and it shows evidence of filing. The back of the buckle is irregular and shows coarse file marks.

There is no place to attach a buckle plate or strap. The decoration goes all the way to the tongue pivot, leaving no obvious place for attachment. It is probable then that whatever substrate this was attached to served as the buckle plate.

If you know anything about this buckle or have seen a reference to one, please let me know.

Copper alloy, 33mm long.

Leaf Hook 1

Basicly an overgrown coathook. I did several of these one year for Christmas gifts. There is so much you can do with such a simple design. I like coming up with different patterns of ties around the stems (to attach it to the wall).

Bellows construction

After a multitude of requests I am finally putting up a brief how-to on making single action bellows. This is more of a general guide than a step-by-step, however you can scale it up and down to suit your needs. It is assumed if you're at the point of wanting period bellows that you have tools for basic woodworking and metalworking, and that you know how to use them, so I will not go into great depth on actual construction techniques.

If you take a look at the Images Of Medieval Bellows page you'll see that they come in all shapes and sizes, so don't take this to be the only way, shape, or size to do them.

The size given here should work fine for the small crucible hearths (the one in the image above is actually too big). There is no good rule for sizing because it depends on several factors, however it is better to have a little more air available than too little. The actual amount of air you pump into your hearth is largely regulated by visual (what color is the fire) and audio (do I have a good dull roar or is it a hissing sound) clues which you will gain through experience.

A nice set of bellows is not a beginners project, however it should be well within the reach of most crafty folks. Last time I calculated everything it, it cost me about $50 and between 40 and 50 hours to construct a set.

To calculate the volume of air your bellows will move, use my Bellows Volume Calculator.

Leaf Hook 2

Another leaf hook, somewhat simpler.

Towel Holders

A towel holder for my sister.