Hello Andy,
Mine has remnants of cloth under the bosses, what I thought was lacquer I now think is a gum paste like gum Arabic. It is interesting to see that yours has a pad but quite different grips. I see no reason for a pad to just disappear and the fact that mine has shorter padded grips to hold, I do not think anything is missing. I would not be surprised if a whole village just made shields, maybe buying in the bosses. It is quite probable that many villages did this and may explain the variety of basically the same thing. Your post has been most helpful thanks. Tim.
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