Hoplon Shield reconstruction project

[neoptolemos]

Keep it coming man! it looks great!!!

[General Maximus]

Looks gorgeous! Great job, mate.

[Daily]

Yes! Another update! Great work as always Grouchy. The handle looks really well made.

[vietanh797]

This thing look so awesome. I can imagine you holding that shield and pushing the dummy

[Wolar]

What an fascinating project and an excellent in-progress thread! I'll be keeping a close eye on this, keep up the good work!

[grouchy13]

Update

Despite a lack of posts the Hoplon has really took on it's own form, in recent weeks we completed a number of big jobs, while the forming of the difficult Porpax continues!

Perhaps the biggest Job that has been been completed in recently was the fusion of the Rim to the Hoplon body, this was a difficult job that took alot of care and consideration as we had to had to establish what the real radius of the Hoplon was after shaping and applying the leather, once this was overcome we went using a mixture of adhesive and the Pattern Makers filler to join the two pieces. Alsao worthy of consideration is putting very small notches onto the rim where the lip of the Leather joins of the Rim are placed so that the rim fits comfertably and evenly to the Hoplon body.

The final results are, as can be seen amazing IMO.

An view of the face

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The Interior,

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and a close view of the join on the face of the Hoplon,

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After Weeks of work we have finally got the Porpax looking something like, moving on from the previous pictures we constructed a jig that gave allowance for the required bend for putting an arm through, we then began to form the Porpax around the jig and here is how it came out,

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I can't stress how time consuming and difficult the Porpax has been, we have some final smaller details to construct to add finesse to the piece such as extenuated base plates for the Porpax to rest on and small detailed copper pieces for decorating the Porpax. Once these are complete we'll move on to fitting the Rope Handle and Porpax, then will come making sure the Hoplon face is perfectly smooth prior to Paint.

I've been in contact with a local artist who is highly interested in taking on the project to paint!

[General Maximus]

Great job, mate.

Though, make sure you check the strength of that metal piece.

Waiting for the paint.

[Wolar]

It keeps looking better and better.. Can't wait for the next update!

[Octavius Vatco]

That is great Man! wonderful project!

[Wolar]

It's been quite a while since your last update, any news on the Hoplon?

[Oplitis]

Months have passed...

[General Maximus]

Indeed. Hoping to see the next part soon, it has been a long time.

[grouchy13]

hey guys will posting some updated pics soon, in short Porpax is nearly ready to mount. Its been trial and error and we built two test Porpax's some RL issue's have been ironed and production is once agin in full swing

So after a couple of dud Porpax's and deciding to implement a couple of features we after a prolonged period of inactivity came up with this Porpax,

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The Porpax from last October had a number of features we were not so keen upon, the rolled edges which were visible on it were not of an even nature and where the copper had been brazed there were a number of incidences where the bead was either uneven or had not come out even enough to justify mounting on the Hoplon.

The new Porpax was formed from a piece of bronze which took awhile a to source, around 2 months from order to delivery. We elected on bronze for a number of reasons firstly and primarily it is in keeping with materials from the Classical/Hellenistic period. Secondly we devised methods where rolling and forming were simplified by the construction of jig (Will get some pictures of the jig to illustrate this method). As opposed to rolled edges on the side of the Hoplon we went with a fold with a minimal braze on the edges, four spots in total as opposed to a fully brazed lip which had proved difficult to keep even on the previous Copper Porpax. These spot brazes can be seen along with the cleaner edge on the picture below,

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The decorative brass piece was fabricated from brass and straddles the Porpax to provide a nice bit of decoration, the ram you can see on the above picture on completion will be made from left of bronze, we're still debating whether to have this as undecorated cut outs or attempt to to etch the detail in. Further to this we have fabricated some bronze braces that run vertically along the interior of the Hoplon much like this image from an Attic Vase,



In our Hoplon they are very much a work in progress and appear like this,

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We had added the ace of spade like features to tidy up the ends, also you can see we have added faux rivet like features to the brass decoration on the porpax to give it a more realistic nature. Here is a close up of the braces,

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I can only apoligise the prolonged period, through trial and error developing the Porpax and work commitments for my Father and myself (I'm a serving member of the Armed forces) this project did stall. However we are now back in full swing and hope to have the the Porpax mounted in the coming weeks. I also noticed that many of the original images have vanished from the start of the thread, if any can suggest a decent hosting site where images do not time out I'd appreciate it, I'm also gonna contact some TWC staff guys to see if there is a work around for this.

Hope you enjoyed the update and apologies for the delay

[General Maximus]

Great update, mate. The shield is well on it's way to completion, and with such a nice quality too.

I suggest using Imgur if you wish to host your images, it is free and allows the pics to retain their original sizes alongside a few other tools.

[neoptolemos]

Looking sleek and well made!

[Ishan]

@Grouchy
Greak work bro. Now just tell me when we need to leave, brother.

[grouchy13]

Thanks for the kind words guys!

[Wolar]

Excellent news, a real joy to see progress on the Hoplon! Look forward for more..

[grouchy13]

Another quick update guys,

As promised is the jig we produced for forming the Porpax,

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The idea behind is pretty straight forward. We cut the bronze to size prior to forming it around the jig, the Bronze is reasonably formable so it took a bit of bending, allowing it to settle then bending it again. We avoided using heat to prevent burnishing the bronze at this point. The jig is made from Plywood and some thin soft wood which was nailed around the center kink of plywood.

We've been continuing work on the Porpax, joining the bronze brace straps to the main body of the Porpax. We cut some from the straps around the edges giving them a more decorative edge, we then brazed them onto the center body of the Porpax,

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What you can also see is a set of 3 holes on the piece immediatly adjoing the Porpax body, these will be used to house the screws and nails for attaching the Porpax to the Hoplon. These fixings will be conviently hidden by the Bronze Rams heads decorative pieces!

The piece of thick steel plate you can see clamped to the Porpax acts as a heat shield to prevent the Heat produced from brazing the pieces together burnashing the finish of the Porpax. This will be removed prior to installation. Here is a close up the Holes and Heat sink in action.

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Another image of the area, this time with the Rams head cover. These are still are work in progress as we have yet to decide whether to etch these pieces with decorative detail, paint them or leave them as is. What we will be doing heating this pieces to remove the Zinc content and give them a nice burnashed effect whatever the final design decision is!

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A nice image of the ace of spades end piece now attached to the brace body, you will aslo notice the decorative cuts we made along the brace body.

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An now a view from underneath showing the considerable amount of unseen brazing to give the brace body some strength,

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All inall this brazing work took around 1 1/2 days just for one side of the brace! As time consuming as this is its worth taking the time as to prevent heat damage or worse still make a silly balls up on cut and prepped bronze that could really set the project back. We're gonna endevour on the other side prior to crucial fitting of the Porpax, doubtless to say this is major point in the build!!!!

See you soon fella's

[Wolar]

Very nice as always, keep up the good work!