So here you can see the rectangle section thats in the top layer that lets the handle come through. As well as where the shield failed. After two days of hard use the handle broke. Unfortunate for sure but not the end of this design. Just need to take some steps to work on addressing the point of failure.

But the building steps first. As you may have seen in the previous picture there was some sections of the foam perimeter that were clearly not the uniform perimeter I had hoped to get. As well as the corners of the four perimeter parts that could be seen. Trying to fix both of these issues I cut some small strips from the 2mm foam and used them to wrap around forward into the front of the shield to cover the small breaks where the foam met up and also to try and cover the parts where the foam suddenly went from one level to another. Seemed to work well! And then its adding the now standard googly eye rivets and then plastidip! And I am super pleased how it turned out after that! The 'wooden' cuts I put in coming through well again too.

That was until the handle broke. A big sad for sure. A few people who I was near said 'it would have been better if those went to the end of the shield' - but it did. So it was not the cement itself failing as I can still see it down in there and it is not moving. It also almost looks like the foam handle was cut, not that it ripped apart. What I believe happened is while carrying my new polearm (pictures coming soon) I had on the metal bracers you can see here;
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/58861220/
And then the shield held on my forearm with the metal armor inside the handle itself. Often with my arm 'downward' in relation to the shield. Leaving the bottom of the bracer pressing up against the handle as I was moving around and rubbing it back and fourth and up and down (omur ect). I think this motion was cutting through the foam until it eventually failed the rest of the way. But thats just a theory right now. I'm going to be trying to make another one of these to test that as I think this shield is perfect for a craft day that the park can do. But in addition to no longer wearing the forearm armor while also using this shield I'm going to put cloth and likely other types of tapes up and down the entire handle length to try and make it stronger and try to give it a protective layer. So before the top layer is stuck on top the handle is taped up more. We shall see if it works when the next shield is made!

Hope you all enjoyed the process of building and finding out issues :)
If the version two ends up working well I will likely make a video of how too if you'd also like to make one.