metadata inconsistancy

I am trying to create a lv with two pv's of about 750G. After doing a pvcreate, I am able to see both pv's but both are showing:
Allocatable NO

Afterwards, I try doing a vgcreate, and there are no errors, though when doing a vgdisplay I see no vg's, and doing a pvdisplay shows the pv's as not being allocated to any vg.

The history of these drives is that they were in a vg of 1.5T, but I removed it so I could learn the lvm commands and configs. Now, I can't get it back together. I did read in TLDP (and pvcreate man page) that I could dd the volume header, but that is not proving any additional progress.

Am I missing some step that would let me progress to recreate the volume?

Thanks
eric