Becoming Captain America Part 1

Part 2: Painting
Part 3: Finishing
Part 4: The Back
Here we go the tutorial you've all been waiting for.  Since this is a budget build, it all starts with a little thing you might know from your childhood. A metal saucer sled, that is IF you can find one. These have been increasingly hard to get a hold of because they're great metal sleds and there's a growing number of people who use them for cap shields. The company pretty much sells out each year and I think(I don't know for sure) They are having a tough time keeping up with the strange new demand.

So step one is to take those holes that the rope handles are going through and connect them to the opposite corner. I use a sharpie since you're going to strip the paint anyway. This gives you an X that marks the center. Drill a hole there and then slather on paint stripper. I get the most caustic nasty stuff I can and usually let it sit on there over night, but it'll start working in about 15 minutes.

I won't lie, scraping it off is probably the worst part of this project and technically you need to do it to the front AND the back.  This is some heavy duty paint so you probably won't get it all over. Here's what I usually end up with.

Now this picture is pretty important because it shows 3 things. The left over red. Some of the are I've cleaned up, and the rust. Now if you're lucky there won't be any rust when you strip the paint, BUT because these saucers are steel they are exceptionally prone to flash rusting. I took too long stripping this but it showed up in about a day or two. If you don't get all the paint off and the sled cleaned up you may have to clean it again to remove the rust.

As you can see here. I used a wire wheel in a corded drill to remove the rest of the paint and the rust. It cleans and polishes as it goes.  Once I've got the whole thing cleaned up I tape the whole thing. I THINK this keeps it from rusting and once you hit this stage you've got a lot more time to work and can stop rushing. I don't know for sure if it prevents rust but it keeps moisture and air away from the surface and I haven't had the metal rust while taped yet so... *knock on wood*

This example is missing the center hole (I forgot it). I have a ruler with holes drilled to lay out the rings and I use that next with some rough sand paper. I took steel wool and polished things up so it wasn't so wire brushy and then I used the ruler as a propeller. It spins around the saucer and you can gouge in the circular lines that are oh so important later once the paint goes on.

Those spun, ground in lines are what make this budget build look similar to the spun aluminum look the movie shields have. I forgot to take a few pictures in this process but have another shield coming up so I'll go back and fill in with those pictures later. One other thing that I find important is I spray the back of the shield with a clear coat at this point because I'm leaving it bare and that keeps it from rusting. It gets the same treatment as the front to get that spun aluminum look.

I usually call this day one, or day one and two if I'm being lazy. At the end of this step you should end up with this. Or at least taped. The rings are pretty quick to draw if you've got your cheat ruler so they can wait until step 2.

If you're reading these write ups and don't know how I got from one point to another, let me know! leave a comment and let me clarify because I get wrapped up in the process and know that sometimes I forget pieces and would love for these to be super clear at the end. Feel free to share and let your friends see and at the end show off the skills you've picked up and make your own!

Check back next week for Step 2 Painting!

As always, follow The Wooden Forge on Facebook to get day to day updates and check out the Etsy shop for new products!

A Full Day of Staying Busy

Another small tease as I make progress on the shield.

Today I did 90% of the work on the star for the shield. Taking breaks on it I started making coasters out of a bunch of old records. Most of them are just the centers, but one exception was a copy of The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's" that happened to be a pressing that had a full color image all over it so I worked my way around grabbing the best parts until I had a full set.

A bit of advice. These are crazy simple to do. IF you have and use a heat gun. I struggled to cut these the other day then I had the bright idea to heat them up until they were fluid and then a sharp blade cuts through them like butter. From there you can just hand sand the edges until you're happy. Depending on whether or not there's a paper label on it, you may want to seal them with something so that water/spilled drinks don't wreck the track listings.


Hooray new ideas! Starting tomorrow I'll start adding a new post walking through the shield project each week. If popular demand says I should do it faster I'll do twice a week but for now I'll post them on Mondays.

If you want up to date, day to day posts showing what I"m working on and where I am on these shields, head over to the Facebook page, like the shop and you'll get regular updates with shiny fun pictures

The Wooden Forge

Captain America Redux

Well, its been far to long since I've updated this and a lot has changed in my world. Since my last post my etsy store transformed into "The Wooden Forge" if you know me, you're well aware of this. But what that means is I'm also more active not only selling things, but making things as well. It has become this sort of nerd haven for me to indulge my need to work with my hands while doing it all with a nerd flair. Its my outlet, my freedom, my "thing" that pushes me to keep trying and learning about more things.

About a year ago I finally tackled what I've decided is THE project for me (at least for now). A Captain America shield, just like in the original Avengers. It has changed some now as the movies have progressed but I still love this original design. SO what that means is I'll be taking my posts on the Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TheWoodenForge) and expanding  the process into a real tutorial so all of you adventurous types can try to make one for yourself.

For now, a teaser of some of the in process shots to tide you over till later. You can see some more at the Facebook page, or my Etsy shop where I have shots of a finished shield.
www.etsy.com/shop/thewoodenforge

Curved Shields and Captain America

I recently decided to start looking into making wooden shields. As a quick side project I built a round buckler just as a test run. It was a simple 20ish" planked shield. Assembled from 1x3 furring strips, the whole thing only cost about $10 worth of materials.

This started me further down the path. I was in the middle of working on a production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the director asked for a shield for the battle. So I started doing some research for methods to make curved shields. So I got online and found plans and instructions for a shield press which I built in the shop with some scrap material. I called for hardwood in a couple of places which I should have listened to. under pressure it popped and I wrecked the first sheets. Reinforced for the second time it all worked.

How the press works

So what you see here is the press, the material inside it is 2 sheets of 1/4" ply. I cut both sheets into 4ths so this is about 2'x4' which leaves a shield anywhere up to that size. You cover the sheet with PLENTY of wood glue and then put it into the press. the 2x4's on top spread the pressure around and then ratchet straps press it all down and hold it in place. The 2 sheets of ply make it easier to bend and once the glue in the middle sets it holds the curve like a rock. I left it for 2 weeks but that's because I was out out town, after about 24 hours it would have been fine to release.

After the Press
After they are free take the jig saw and cut out your shield shape. Its much easier to draw the shield on before you curve it.Cut it out and you've got your rough shape. Sand all the edges to smooth it up and I like to round everything over just because it looks a little bit nicer and makes things a bit less rough on the skin if it hits you at some point. After cutting them out you end up with something like this:

Now I had the cut I needed to do the shield for LWW and I had an extra larger one sitting around. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I kept looking at it and eventually I realized it wasn't too far off from Captain America's World War Two shield. So that's where I went. Note the picture, on these kind of things photo references always rock and you really sort of  need them for anything that already exists otherwise it just won't be accurate.

The white on here was just a primer, which is nice to add once sanded just for a basic shield blank. For added strength and paint-ability people cover the blank with canvas just for another layer. I skipped that here. First step was to measure everything out and figure out spacing. If you look at the center stripe I wasn't perfectly centered but you don't notice it much in person. I'll also note that I use carriage bolts for the handle and straps mostly for ease of repair. If something breaks I can just unbolt it rather than using a rivet which is much more permanent. So I striped things out and hit the red stripes. I won't show it, but let things dry, pull the tape up, do the blue, do the white etc.

Here is a printed out star I used to figure out spacing and size, the center star on Cap's shield is a bit larger. partially because the top bumps up a bit as well, mine was cut straight across the top but there was still space for the larger star. I had to do this for both shields but I HATE HATE HATE painting white over colors. it takes so many layers to get good coverage, it just sucks. I still needed to do the white for all of this, but the primer was white and clean enough that I was able to just to small touch ups and call it good. After the stars are traced and painted I'm just going to add a coat of poly or clearcoat of some kind just to give it a nice shine. I doubt I'll ever use the cap shield for fighting since I want it to stay nice.

Last but not least here's the almost final product. It needs another coat of white on the stars but its basically done. After it I'll add in some more pictures just so you can see other in progress moments and what the other shield ended up looking like.
If I haven't covered everything real well or if anybody wants more details on how I did something just let me know and I can go into more depth. Also let me know if there is interest in any of these I've got the press now and I'm thinking about doing custom shields for people if enough people want them.

Nearly the final product

Size difference between the two shields. The bottom is the Cap shield. These both came out of the 2'x4' sheet I pressed.

The back of the cap sheild. I use a solid metal handle for the grip. Some people use crossed leather straps I like the metal just because its rigid, I don't care if its not accurate. The pad in the middle is nice to soften blows and make it more comfortable to hold.

The final shield for LWW. It was a little quick so my hand was rough in a couple places but this is basically what the custom shields would be. Give me a picture, colors, design of whatever and I'd make and paint them. The next ones I think will just have a coat of arms type center image

Time for a wedding! ...almost.

Well it's getting to that point in our planning that we are needing to get on top of save the dates. Being a creative type that knows photoshop and our wanting to save money, we decided to design them ourselves. We had already talked out what we were thinking about doing so Heather sat down one day while I was at work and made a rough sketch. I got home and went from there. Our general wedding plan is do slip in the nerdy stuff we love without it being an overtly nerd wedding. Basically we're taking the classy parts and certain styles and building on them, if you know what to look for you will likely see the patterns and references but they'll be loose enough that we're expecting some "...did you guys mean to do this? is this _____?" and the answer is probably yes. Then we're fleshing it out with our love for art deco looks and we've got what is, (in my opinion) a pretty stylish wedding. Without further ado, here is the front of our save the date for what promises to be a rather.... timey wimey wedding.

Showing this around to a couple of people (the non nerd types) they immediately (thank god) picked up on the art deco theme. The fanned shape, the rays of light at the top, the background and of course the font helps sell that. But I'm sure all the Whovians out there probably noticed the tardis sitting in the middle and the Galifreyan on the edges. We'd both seen the real Doctor Who save the dates that are floating around, thanks to pinterest, but we both agreed that they were a little too overt for what we were doing. We, ironically enough, are hoping for a real timeless feel here. I suppose if you don't catch the references it could look like the music stand for a big swing band and you'd never know the difference.

For the most part this is our color scheme too, the tardis blue (though this is a bit darker for the purposes of the save the date), yellow, and grey.

The Galifreyan and background continue on the back side of the postcard just to help tie it all together and to keep the style consistent.


While it has been quite a time since I last updated the blog, expect there to be more wedding updates like this as we keep going through the planning. Now that the school year is slowing down I'll have some more time to get into a backlog of posts about my various projects through the year, the next one will likely be covering making curved wooden shields for a show, and a WW2 Captain America shield, so check back for more!