Oh. When it impacts something. That
happens. Hi it's Tod of Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and I'm back with another film about
Roman Pila, Pilum, throwing javelins. So these are the things that well the Romans
used in the last few steps apparently before the two fighting lines engaged and they can
be thrown with devastating effect. Have a look at this little clip of Michael.
So you can see that these things are absolutely awesome and they are made in the regular way that
we do have archaeological evidence for, of two pins holding on the long thin shank. It's long and
thin so when it goes in a shield it goes through deeply, that's the whole point of it, but one of
the things that I said was that I'd come across a reference to a breakable wooden peg plum. Now it's
a simple idea and that is that you have a small wooden peg in here, it keeps everything straight,
so when it impacts it hits straight, but on impact this part shifts down, shears the peg.
Now stupidly I didn't explain any of this in the last film, I didn't show you how it's done,
so I'll show you that in a moment. But what is also interesting is that I knew of the reference,
but I didn't know the source of it, so one of the guys in the comment section, Joshua Fair he
was the one who let me know, lots of others did as well, but he was the first one I came across
and this account was written by Plutarch a couple of hundred years after Marius. Bear that in mind
and he was also a massive Marius supporter. Up to this time it seems that the part of the shaft
which was let into the iron head was fastened there by two iron nails just like this one here,
but now leaving one of these nails as it was, Marius removed the other and in its place put
a wooden pin that could easily be broken. The idea is that when it lands the pin breaks. His
design was that "the javelin after striking the enemy's shield, should not stand straight out,
but the wooden peg should break, thus allowing the shaft to bend in the iron head and trail along the
ground, being held fast by the twist. That being the twist I suppose at the point of the weapon."
So interpreting that, what he is saying there is that when it lands it comes in, it lands, bang pin
breaks, that happens. We're going to come back to that, but I'm going to show you how I've done this
thing first of all. So we have here a slight movement, so this top hole with an iron pin,
this top hole is elongated, it's not round, it's lozenenge shaped, so it's like that. The bottom
hole here, this one is just a regular through hole. Now if I put my wooden pin in you can now
see that it's it's held fast. It is a good weapon. But replacing that pin with a wooden one does this
because it is now still a fully functional thing, everything is still aligned, it's still going
to penetrate hard and deep, but when it impacts something; that happens. It breaks. It shears the
pin. Now in my first trials this hole was just a hole straight through the wood and into here, but
actually what happened was that when it did break that it rounded the inside of the wood there,
because it wasn't like a hard cutting edge and what it did was it just pulled bits of the wood
into the joint and actually it held it pretty fast. So what I've done now, is I've just got
two steel tubes that go in to just inside here, so actually it does create a proper hard shearing
action and that seemed to be really important so it's not just a case of drilling a hole through,
it really does need to be supported. So you've got steel all the way to the edge here,
obviously the gap for this and then steel again. It can cut the pin. Hi I've interrupted this film
for another Tod Cutler related interesting fact. Here we have a bone, horn and brass
stripy handled eating knife based on one from the River Thames . It looks posh doesn't it? Well the
thing is it's all waste materials except the brass, so it looks to modern terms really posh;
historically actually not really so much. Just a little bit of work in there. Anyway you'll find
this and loads of other pieces on TodCutler.com Back to the film. But this is the thing and this
is apparently what Marius said but also bear in mind Plutarch was a massive Marius supporter,
200 years after the date, but what he said was that the plum comes in, sticks into the shield,
bottom falls on the ground and encumbers your progress. Well it does, it absolutely does. He
does not mention, which is what I thought it was about, the inability to throw the javelins back.
He doesn't mention that at all, he mentions the fact that it encumbers the shield. But this is
really where it makes me a little bit skeptical because there is no archaeological evidence for
it. There is one written source and I can tell you, and I can tell you from these films that when
this goes in, that happens. It pulls the shield down, you can't hold that out, that happens and it
is already encumbered, so this actually according to Marius's description, doesn't improve the
utility of the pilum at all. So the one thing that they're writing about and saying that it does,
it already does. You have to question it, interesting, but you have to question it.
Now the thing is when I did this, it was my first development piece and it has to be recognised that
Michael throws like a god basically and the ability for him to throw and therefore change
direction, because your arm is of course rotating around a circle, the spear doesn't linearly
translate when Michael throws it, it will have an arc to it. Now the thing is I did trial this and
my walnut pin was perhaps a little bit too weak. Have a look what happened when Michael threw it.
Oh........ So what was happening was that as Michael changes direction, as he brings it up
and down there is mass here, there's inertia, it was shearing the pin and it was breaking
on launch. Now I have to accept as well with this whole concept of Marius's that unless it was 100%,
or as close to functional every single time you threw it, no soldier would be wanting to
use that weapon right. But of course you know the higher ups do impose their will on lower downs,
because they know better, (sarcastic), but the point being even the higher ups are going to
recognise that if 10% of their javelins which are thrown, break before they even leave the hand,
it's no good. So that massive direction change of Michael's might not be a problem for the
likes of you and me, but in Michael's case it was, so you have to have a breakable system,
if this is what they did, you have to have a breakable system that reliably breaks or
reliably stays in one piece when you throw it and hopefully breaks on landing. Now even if 20% or
30% of the javelins break on landing that's 20 or 30% that can't be thrown back but at what cost?
You're now gaining that, which I would say is of pretty questionable validity because did they ever
throw them back? Marius didn't think so, he never mentioned it. So the thing is you are now gaining
that for added complexity and even if you are now going in the fight and you're all prepared up,
so you've prepared your your plum that's all fine. You trip over, the thing's broken and the guys are
charging to towards you, whatever it may be, there will always be an instant where your weapon now,
because it can break easily, has broken easily. I have to question the whole concept behind it
because of this necessity that it has to stay together on launch and preferably it will break
when it lands. There's going to be a very delicate Middle Ground there where the pin is too big,
or it's too small, or the wood's too hard, or the wood's too soft, or the guys have made the
pins out of cross grain wood. I was very careful to make sure that the grain was very straight
within the pins that I used, well you know mass production's less careful than that. So the thing
is, it's always going to be different and again that just puts the alarm bells up. But then you
talk about the wood itself. Well of course the Empire was a massive area and so what is available
in Judea or in Germania or in Hispania or in Britannia are going to be different, so you would
select the local wood that does what you want. So it's not that the wood is going to be Olive,
or it's going to be whatever. It's going to be whatever has been tested and made to be available,
found to be available here. I had to go looking for those woods, I chose walnut in the workshop,
I wasn't anticipating the extraordinary direction changes, the inertia in the system,
that allowed the pin to break, that Michael managed to subject these things too. So I went to
the trial with one set of walnut pins and that was massively an oversight. I then actually just added
a bit onto the end of the film where I tested different woods. Boxwood unsurprisingly of course,
and I knew from my trials, was much harder than the walnut. I discounted it because I felt that
it just broke with too much difficulty; maybe it didn't. Anyway I was going to put it on a scale,
I couldn't find my bow scale at the time so I didn't do that. So sorry about the lack of
scientific evidence there. But the last thing that I have to mention now is quite possibly
the the solution to my problem and again it's come from the comments section and it's eb282,
lovely name. That I think you might have solved it and it really annoys me because it is so obvious,
so obvious the solution to this. I'm smiling because it's just great, but it's also I have
to say a thing that nobody else came up with and I hadn't come up with so you know well done
eb282. But here it is, that's the top pin that's where my peg goes, basically the same distance as
my regular plum, it's what I was making, just a variation of. But if we move that up now, put our
pin back in. if I impact that it has a force of whatever it is, I don't know, I'm going to call
it a force of one and it shears that right? Great. Michael's throwing direction changes,
there's enough enough inertia in this steel head here that it folds back, shears that pin,
it's going to be the same force, it's a force of one. If you double the distance of this down here
from that pin, now you're going to need a force of two to shear that pin with Michael's direction
changes. I would warrant it's not going to do it. But on impact it is still exactly as it ever was
and it would require that force of one. And so I think eb282 has nailed it, that actually if this
thing ever existed, that distance there would also be critical as well as the diameter and the type
of the wood. So I am going to come back for this and what I'm going to do is just simply move that
there. Unfortunately and this is unfortunate, is I have a spear thrower so I can test a regular plum,
but actually it's the direction change that Michael does because of the rotation of his arm
and my spear throw of course is just completely linear and it is not going to demonstrate that.
So we have to wait until basically Michael is available again and he's now back into
his academic year and it's not going to be until the spring, so hold your breath everybody, hold
your breath. It'll be a while, but this will come back. But before I go I hope you enjoyed the video
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