Of buckles, revisited

Normally I don’t like slavishly copying WETA stuff, but since this was a quick / easy project to do when I’m brain-dead after work and not good for anything else - and there’s apparently a number of people out there who want them - I thought I’d go ahead and duplicate a couple of the film buckles. I’m not bothering with the Boromir Shield Strap / Faramir Sword Belt buckle since at least two folks are already on that one - I’m just doing the Faramir Quiver Buckle and the Boromir Surcoat Buckle (what I’ve come to call the “Gondor Kit Buckle” since it kept showing up on all sorts of things)

I’m dumping my research / progress notes into this thread so those that come later have less work to do. :)

That little “kit buckle” is also over the place - Aragorn’s quiver, Faramir’s cloak and Boromir’s surcote we already knew: it’s also on Pippin’s little belt bag in Minas Tirith. Probably elsewhere, but that’s all I’ve found so far.

I’ve never tried to actually copy something from photos before, and the lack of solid face-on photos makes getting angles right a challenge. Every photo is foreshortened in some tiny way or another, meaning none of the angles are quite right. Nonetheless, a few are pretty close: I’m going to be using the right two composites from Boromir’s surcoat as a base for the little buckle: gondor-kit-buckle-instances.jpg gondor-kit-buckle-instances.jpg (46.94 KiB) Viewed 22745 times I think the Aragorn quiver version is slightly different - unless I’m looking at it wrong, it seems to use a flatter / less arched bow. I could make both, I suppose.

Anyhow - once I actually started combing through references looking for the things, I was a little surprised just how common both are - especially the “Faramir Quiver Buckle” Virtually every Gondor character wearing a weapon uses that buckle somewhere. Background Rangers of Ithilien? Quiver, naturally. Second Age army of Elendil? Sword belt. Third Age defenders of Minas Tirith? Sword belt. Pippin? Fountain Guards? Sword belt. All of ’em. Very few good reference photos though so far. gondor-long-buckle.jpg gondor-long-buckle.jpg (41.76 KiB) Viewed 22738 times

.. and buried in “Weapons and Warfare” is one tiny grainy picture of the back of that buckle, finally. Looks like they use two hefty rivets for it: gondor-long-buckle-back.jpg gondor-long-buckle-back.jpg (17.59 KiB) Viewed 22736 times