Minecraft spider pendant

Phew, now I'm not dead, don't worry. A lot of my projects are slowly progressing, and real life is rearing its ugly head. Anyway, ever since I saw the model and made my first minecraft spider, I wanted to make another one - this time in the proper colours. During my last visit to the store where I buy supplies, I finally got properly tinted parts. Aaaand here it is - the minecraft spider. I tried to make is as close as possible to the original, but well, i was still limited by the parts. Took me just a few minutes to make it.  You know that feel when you finally got some lapus lazuli and happily try to get it to your home only to have...

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Home brewed Mead - recipe 1

Right assuming we all got our chainmail and our round shields set all that is left is to find some wenches and something proper to drink. Now  - beer is the obvious first choice but hardly the only one - if you are willing - you can try brewing mead. There are many recipes depending on what exactly do you want to get for your final product, I will write down as many as I can find here in a series of posts, detailing their differences in flavour, taste, ingredients and making. One thing that rings true for all of them is that this will be a long term investment - brewing will take several months, so you should also consider making a sizeable...

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Newest purchase - Russian infantry shield - 13th century

This one falls to the bargain you can't miss type. Today I bought a 13th c. Russian tear drop infantry shield from a local historical reenactor, for 30 euro - that would be 45 USD or something. Its much sturdier than ours - being made from proper wood, and not plywood. It has real leather for straps and on the edges, overall I really can't complain in any way about design, material etc. Even the bolts holding the straps are not bought, but hammered out from pig iron.  It is however, quite smaller than my own norman kite shield, and being a big guy myself, I probably won't be using it personally. Still, a nice audition to have. Here...

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My repeating crossbow

Well then, since we are still on the crossbow thematic - Thats my repeating crossbow  with pump action mechanism. We made it quite a while ago. Well it wasn't me either - the woodwork was done by a carpenter, the trigger by a machine shop worker. Now i don't have the schematics since it wasn't done by me( i was mostly observer), and i can't disassemble it entirely - the trigger is screwed in, but i will take a photo session to show how the parts go. Its very simple and easier to make than the the lever action crossbow - the chinese chu ko ni. A bit lacking in power but thats mostly because well - none of us knows how exactly to dry wood...

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The armour archive

http://www.armourarchive.org/index.html The armour archive is, well as the name suggests an archive for medieval armour patterns. In it you can find the designs for quite a lot of armour pieces, ranging from helms to breastplates, gauntlets and greaves. It has a good ammount of essays on the matter, covering a lot of the basics on finding the right tools and putting them to good use. Its fairly comprehensive and can be quite helpful since you can literally download and print out the patterns you want. On the other hand I don't think it has been updated in quite a while, not that there is much need for it. The site also has a fair amount of links to other pages on the topic, however not all of them are working - the issue of updating is here as we...

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