True, what I said had no bearing, I just read through Mart's link and Dan's rely and realized that he might have just been repaying on Mart's usage of Medieval fantasy literature as evidence, and not a comment on shield strength at all. Yes, actually testing strength instead of just theorizing all day is great, now where can I get a to quality short, rawhide, planks of wood, glue, rope, parchment, linen, canvas and primary sources, and a sandbag and rope, cutting and enough enough shield to make average? Experimental archaeology has it's place, theorizing and researching has it's place, any one of these has obvious pitfalls on it's own. Experiment archaeology it only as good as the accuracy if the subjects being used and tested, theorizing doesn't solve anything but can help definite diameters, pure hands off research can give distorted view based on what you read and has no check because of real world application. Finally, we are all guilty of a degree of theorizing here, even you, Milord Craig Peters,through guessing that shield would have similar characteristics of a coconut. To, you credit, you have expressed the most tactile experiences so far, and for having the guts to risk ruining such a expensive, blade to improve martial prowess and elevate your own understand is something to be commended.

My thoughts and experiences regarding hewing of shields. I had build a 'viking' plank shield while I was in Turkey and before my wife and I moved to the States, I wanted to remove the boss, steel bands and handle so that I could re build a new one, since the shield its self was too big to transport along with the rest of our things.

The planks had been glued together horizontally and were 9mm thick at the center, tapering to about 4mm at the edge. the front and back were covered with thin linen (from an old bed sheet).

I decided to split apart the shield to get all of the fittings mentioned earlier with a bearded ax I had. Standing the shield on a concrete slab I hit it with all my might and did little more than getting a small gouge. This would have been cross grain and I figured striking with the grain would get the job done much quicker. It didn't. The whole destruction took me about two hours. The shield was still in usable form until about the first hour.

While this was not a test of any form, it goes to show that with a deliberate attempt, composite construction holds up really well.