Medieval Pavise in 1/72nd

They are available in Sets like Miniart´s French Foot Soldiers with Rams or Zvezdas French Infantry of the Hundred Years War..but they  come unpainted, there´s too few of them, and I´m too lazy to spend hours straining my eyes to paint them ( they wouldn´t turn out well anyway ) 
So..I came up with this;

First up..the tools etc. Woodglue (not in pic) Scissors, sharpblade, cocktailstick, Thin cardboard, woodgrain and shield pattern printouts. The woodgrain and shield patterns I got of the web..and re-sized (easy with Word)...There are tons of them about but look out for copyright.

Slice the cocktialstick in half (lengthways) and place on the glue smeared cardboard surface. It´s best to leave a bit sticking out as you´ll see later.

Cut the shield pattern out leaving a decent edge all around and place as near as possible with the center of the shield over the cocktailstick, which will form the central rib.  You have to make sure that about half a cm at the top of the shield is stuck just to the cardboard. The little bit of the cocktail stick that is pocking out the bottom can be used to align or push/pull the rib into position. Using your finger nails, push the paper pattern firmly onto the rib and the backing. Turn the whole thing over and apply the woodgrain pattern , making sure that the grain is aligned. You can check this by holding  the shield up to the light.

Let everything dry and cut out.  I´ve found, that to remove the sticking out bit of cocktail stick it´s best to use a sharp blade. The shield now looks like this. 

With the edge of the nib from a markerpen  ( I forgot to put it in the pic!!! :-D ) colour in the edges. I´ve used brown, but red would look nice as well :-D 

Lay the shield along the marker pen and with your thumb press down. This gives the shield it´s final shape. 

To make the stand I used a Staple. Simple make a hole in the back of the shield, under the first layer of paper, insert a Staple with a bit of PVA glue, let dry, bend to the required angle and cut to length.

Hello to Carpet General from The Carpet General blog. he´s doing an amazing job on recreating the battle of Waterloo as a wargame using 1/72nd plastic bods!! 
He also has a link to a site for Free wargames rules ...HERE