Shipwreck-Wood Shield

Glowing runes, an angry octopus, deeply-carved and weathered wood. A shield commissioned with some specific fun elements to create.

I’ve made a shield before, and I’ve made glowing runes before, but it was an interesting challenge to combine the two. This is also the first large project I’ve done since obtaining a Cricut, which gives me the option of creating a vector file for the machine to cut duct tape out of, rather than purely cutting tape by hand as I’ve done for all previous projects.

I decided to go a bit overboard on the request for “planks that appear weather-beaten as if decking from a ship.” I’ve previously experimented with turning foam and duct tape into organic-looking gnarled wooden shapes, so I figured it is probably possible, but requires a huge amount of time to (a) study the shapes of old naval wood grain, (b) cut all the notches and pieces out of the foam, and (c) shape duct tape, which is famously two-dimensional, along every ridge and 3D valley.

But I was proud of the result.

Next, the wiring.

Got some nice nylon webbing for the shield straps, and Box X stitched them to some hardware to be adjustable for different arm dimensions.

I added some heavy reinforcement around where the straps wrap around the foam on both sides, to prevent them from tearing through.

One of the advantages of the LED strip I used is that it allows the user to choose colors on a whim – so the runes and gems can be any color you’d like, or can change depending on the scenario.

The Cricut made the octopus pattern more precise, but it still required a lot of wrangling to generate, modify, and fix the different elements of vector files, set up and cut all the layers of duct tape, align everything with the separately hand-cut foam, etc. It certainly adds to the possibilities.

Overall, really proud of what I achieved with this build. The entire shield, including all the straps and wiring, is 2 and a half pounds, while being around 32 inches tall, 20 wide, and 2 thick. It feels very solid to use – there’s a bit of flex if you really push into it, but it blocks strikes easily. And I enjoy the challenge of hand-crafting the organic shapes of wood, especially since it’s a fun merge of the artificial slice of plank cuts and the natural effects of grain and weathering.