How Were Medieval Shield Washers Made? What the Surviving Shields Show About Their Construction

The Short Answer

Medieval shield makers used handmade metal backing plates and washers as part of their strap-fastening systems: fastener, enlarged bearing surface, secured end.

Square iron backing plates are the best-documented form in the material considered here. Round and rosette-shaped washers also survive. Some fasteners were bent over their washers, others were peened. What the evidence does not show is a single standard washer, or that every example was forged in the same way.

A Note on the Evidence

This article keeps what survives, what has been described, what has been proposed by others and what I propose myself visibly apart.

A Washer Without a Hardware Store

The modern word "washer" can create a misleading mental image: a perfectly round, uniformly manufactured disc with a precisely centred hole. Medieval shield fittings did not have to conform to that form.

Their job was mechanical. A nail or rivet passing through leather, facing and a relatively thin wooden shield concentrates force into a small area. A wider piece of metal placed beneath the secured end increases the bearing area and helps prevent the fastener from damaging or pulling through the material around it.

On surviving medieval shields these pieces therefore appear in several forms. Some are square plates. Some are round. Some are decorative. What matters is not adherence to a standard washer shape, but the function of the fitting within the complete attachment. My research corpus provides several unusually informative examples.

Seedorf, c.1200–1220: Square Iron Backing Plates

The shield traditionally associated with the von Brienz family at Seedorf is one of the most important surviving high-medieval shields, because substantial parts of its original carrying arrangement survived.

Anton Denier's historical description records four leather straps attached by eight substantial fasteners entering from the decorated face of the shield. On the reverse, the projecting ends were secured against square iron backing plates and then bent over.

This matters because the joint did not require a modern threaded bolt, nut or manufactured circular washer. A comparatively simple iron plate performed the load-distributing function.

Keseberg, c.1250: The Washer Did Not Have to Be Square

The shield associated with the Vögte von Keseberg shows that square plates were not the only solution. Here the attachment evidence recorded by Jan Kohlmorgen includes round washers, with copper fastening nails riveted over them.

This is important for reconstruction because it immediately rules out the idea of one universal medieval shield-washer pattern. A medieval shield maker could use a circular bearing plate just as another used a square one. The choice may have depended on workshop practice, available material, the particular fastening arrangement, or simply the craftsman's preferred method.

Iron was therefore not the only metal used in medieval shield fastening systems, and there was no single mandatory combination of shape and metal.

W. von Liederbach, 1250–1300: Square Washers, Bent Nails and Leather Covers

The shield of W. von Liederbach preserves one of the most instructive fastening arrangements. Nine hand-grip fastening positions can be identified, with eight rounded fastener heads surviving. On the reverse, the nail ends were bent over square iron washers.

But the shield maker went a step further. Small rectangular pieces of leather were associated with the fittings, and these could fold over the exposed metal.

The washer was not an isolated decorative object. It belonged to an engineered assembly of wood, leather and metal.

The maker also appears to have considered what happened after the nail was secured. A bent piece of iron beside the bearer's forearm could snag clothing, abrade leather or injure the arm. Covering the fitting with leather provided a simple solution.

Welfenberg-Helfenberg: Peened Rather Than Bent

The Welfenberg-Helfenberg shield preserves a related but mechanically different solution. Seven fastening positions are reported for the hand grips. Here the fasteners were peened or riveted over square washers rather than bent sideways, and leather flaps were again associated with the strap terminals and fittings.

The distinction matters. Medieval shield fasteners were not all finished in the same way. One workshop might drive a nail through the assembly and bend its projecting end over the washer. Another could shorten and hammer the projecting end so that it mushroomed over the backing plate like a rivet. Both solutions appear in the surviving evidence.

Steinau-Steinrück, c.1300–1320: Another Square-Washer System

The shield associated with Steinau genannt Steinrück, generally dated around the beginning of the fourteenth century, preserves another valuable example. Seven nails and an additional empty fastening hole have been recorded. The surviving fasteners have rounded heads. On the reverse, their ends were bent over square iron washers, and fragments of the original straps also survive.

By this point the square backing plate cannot reasonably be treated as an isolated curiosity. It is a repeatedly documented medieval solution.

Valère / Raron: The Washer Could Also Be Decorative

The shield associated with a Herr von Raron and preserved at Valère provides a very different version of the same mechanical principle. Helmut Nickel notes that its fastener heads are set on rosette-shaped washers. The fitting has become more than a plain square or circular plate: its outline itself is decorative.

The Valère evidence shows that medieval shield fittings existed on a spectrum. At one end are extremely simple square iron plates whose purpose was mainly mechanical. At the other are deliberately shaped fittings where craftsmanship and appearance become more visible.

The engineering principle remains the same: fastener, enlarged bearing surface, secured end. The form of that bearing surface did not have to remain purely utilitarian.

What Shapes Did Medieval Shield Washers Have?

The surviving corpus gives three securely useful categories.

Square plates are particularly well represented in the high-medieval material considered here. That does not mean that "the medieval shield washer was square". It means that square iron backing plates are one of the best-supported forms available to a modern reconstruction. The evidence shows variation rather than standardisation.

Were Medieval Shield Washers Hand Forged?

This requires careful terminology. The surviving shields prove that handmade iron backing plates existed. They do not necessarily prove every step used to make every surviving example.

Hammering is likely to be involved in several of those operations. But that does not automatically mean the washer was forged from a billet, in the way the phrase "hand-forged washer" may suggest to a modern reader.

For reconstruction work, the safest descriptions are "handmade iron washer", "handmade iron backing plate" or, when describing its form, "square iron backing plate with a punched hole".

If a modern reconstruction has actually been worked hot at the forge, "hand-forged" can of course accurately describe the reconstruction. It should not be projected backwards onto every surviving medieval washer unless object-specific evidence demonstrates that manufacturing sequence.

How Thick Were They?

This is another area where reconstruction guidance must not be confused with archaeological measurement.

The broader archaeological lesson is that the backing plate did not need to be massive. Its purpose was to distribute load and provide a surface against which the nail or rivet could be clenched or peened. A relatively thin piece of iron can do that very effectively.

Why Were the Edges Rounded?

A freshly cut piece of iron plate can have surprisingly aggressive edges. That matters when the plate sits directly against leather. A sharp corner or burr can gradually cut into a strap that repeatedly flexes under load.

Two statements should be kept apart here. "The surviving shields used small metal backing plates" is archaeological evidence. "The reconstruction should have carefully rounded edges so that the plate cannot cut its strap" is historically informed reconstruction practice. Both are valuable. They are not the same category of evidence.

Bent Nail or Peened Rivet?

The surviving shields show at least two approaches.

Clenched or bent: at Seedorf, Liederbach and Steinau-Steinrück, projecting fastener ends were bent over against the backing plate. This is an extraordinarily simple joint. A nail is driven through the complete assembly, the washer is fitted over the projecting end, and the end is hammered sideways against the washer. No thread and no nut are required.

Peened: at Keseberg and Welfenberg-Helfenberg the projecting fastener was riveted over the washer. Instead of folding a long nail end sideways, the metal was hammered down into a riveted termination. Again, no threaded hardware was necessary.

Both methods turn a simple piece of iron into a mechanically locked joint.

Why Use a Washer at All?

The answer becomes obvious from the materials involved. A shield strap can experience substantial repeated loads. Without a backing plate, the secured end of a nail or rivet concentrates those forces around a small area. A washer spreads that load across a larger bearing surface.

Rounded fastener head → shield structure → leather strap → iron backing plate → clenched or peened fastener end.

That makes the washer one of the smallest components of a medieval shield, but also one of the most mechanically important.

What Should a Historically Informed Reconstruction Use?

For a high-medieval shield based on the twelfth- to early-fourteenth-century evidence considered here, a very defensible solution is surprisingly uncomplicated.

The result should not look deliberately crude. A medieval craftsman capable of building a curved, covered, grounded and heraldically decorated shield was perfectly capable of producing a small, clean iron plate.

Handmade is not the same as badly made.

Historical irregularity should come from the manufacturing method, not from intentionally damaging or distorting the fitting to make it look old.

What About Modern Hardware-Store Washers?

A modern round washer can perform the same mechanical job extremely well. But mechanically equivalent does not mean historically representative. A modern washer typically has:

• extremely uniform thickness,
• a perfectly regular circular perimeter,
• a precisely manufactured hole,
• identical dimensions from piece to piece,
• modern surface characteristics.

None of those features makes the fitting mechanically unsuitable. They simply belong to a different manufacturing tradition. For a HEMA shield whose primary requirement is repeatable performance, modern hardware may be entirely reasonable.

For a historical reconstruction, however, the surviving shields give enough information that a generic modern washer is not needed. The historical solution can be reproduced directly.

The Evidence Does Not Support One Universal Washer

The most important lesson is the same one that appears throughout surviving medieval shield construction: there was no single universal specification. The corpus contains:

• square backing plates,
• round washers,
• decorative rosettes,
• iron fittings,
• copper fasteners,
• bent nail ends,
• peened rivets,
• exposed assemblies,
• leather-covered assemblies.

Medieval shield construction was a craft tradition, not an industrial standard. Individual workshops solved the same mechanical problem in related but not identical ways. That variation is part of the archaeological evidence.

Conclusion

The humble shield washer says more about medieval craftsmanship than its size might suggest. Surviving shields show that leather carrying straps could be attached with nails or rivets passing through the shield, with small metal plates distributing the load on the reverse.

Square iron backing plates survive repeatedly. Round washers are documented. Rosette-shaped examples show that even a primarily mechanical fitting could become decorative. Some fasteners were bent over their washers, others were peened, and leather covers could then isolate the finished metal from the bearer's arm.

What the evidence does not justify is imagining a single standard medieval washer, or claiming that every example was made by an identical forging process. The most defensible description is simpler: medieval shield makers used handmade metal backing plates and washers as part of their strap-fastening systems.

For the modern shield maker, that is unusually useful evidence. These tiny surviving pieces make it possible to reconstruct not merely how a medieval shield looked, but how one of its most heavily loaded joints was actually engineered.