Earlier this year, our local medieval dress up group was going to hold a big event at a new site, and their logo is a flying horseshoe. Unfortunately, we were not able to hold the event this year due to all the fires in the area, but I still made a site token, and thought you guys might like to see how I made it!
I recorded lots of footage of the process, and made a short video:
The main things I wanted my new pewter token to have: wings, a horseshoe, and the ability for it to act as a charm hanger (we need more of those in our local pewter market!) I dug up one of my trusty books on historical pewter finds and found a few good references!
First, I needed some horse shoes:
Then I needed some wings (warning, mildly NSFW?)
And while looking for the references above, I found some neat pins that I thought would work well with the horseshoe shape:
And below you see my very scientific diagram of my potential future project:
I wasn’t sure at first about which direction I wanted the horseshoe to face. 1 seems to be more historically accurate, and can be hung from a necklace or hanger pin, but 2 has the ability to BE a hanger pin, which is what I really wanted. I picked 2 in the end, after consulting friends, and mulling it over a bit.
There are a surprisingly large number extant molds with visible pins! Fortunately, I already made a mold that includes a pin, so I am just going to recycle that one, rather than carving a new pin in this horseshoe mold.
This mold ended up finishing up faster than I expected! It helps that I decided to work on it for an entire day, so 8-12 hours spent on a project in one day feels much faster than 1 or 2 hours spent each evening, spreading the project across a whole week or two. Sadly, that’s how most projects have to be done since that pesky day job consumes most of my daylight hours.
Slow progress being made!
Ta-da! A flying horse shoe!
Very sadly, one of the pegs broke after about 50 casts, which means I have to drill out any future casts unless I fix it :/
It works as a hanger! It works better if I pinch the open top ends closer to each other after inserting the pin, it feels more securely attached to the fabric that way.
Also, in recent news, I created a Patreon page to help pay for this blog! If you have enjoyed reading about my projects, or learning from my tutorials, consider sending a dollar or two my way each month! I have also added several new items to my Etsy page (lots of egg pendants!) if you’d like to check that out!
