I have cracked it! But not everything is as it seems...
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today I'm back with these Mariano
Taccola throwing darts, so these things here. Look at those bits of nastiness.
Now I did a film on these recently and I couldn't make them work properly, I couldn't
make them work reliably, but I'm smiling today because after considerable work I have
nailed it, but also some of the lessons I've learned about this I think will be really
useful on other sort of string related throwing projectiles. So let's go through them and then
I'll talk you through the changes, how and why and a little bit more about them because these
are not quite what they seem I think. Down on the range now to actually show you this thing working.
Oh goodness
That was a nice one. So our gopro is out at about the 40 meter mark
So as you can see actually nice to get it to work.
Oh! so that actually that last one, 45 meters, beyond the gopro. It's beyond
the gopro so that's a good throw so we'll go again prove my point.
Nice
Oh dear that was lovely!
Well here I am behind target and I have got a smile on my face because
these throwing darts. I have cracked them, I've got it, I've nailed it,
took a while. So we have the GoPro at 40 meters they're all clustered around that
and then the furthest one actually is 45,46 meters out, that is a heck of a throw for a somebody who
can't throw that well and by a handheld throwing dart, that is quite a result. Now the thing is I
think there is a mystery here so what I'm going to do first of all is talk you through how I managed
to do it because that is interesting step by step process and the next is what are these things?
So let's go right back to the beginning. I was sent this picture from a 1433 book by a guy
called Mariano Taccola, De ingenesis is the name of the book, and there you can see what looks like
a stick and a string and a dart. Interesting to me because that's sort of effectively like atlatl
type technology in Western Europe in the medieval period, I didn't know they did that and so that's
what sparked my interest and then I looked at it I thought fletching's halfway down the shaft
well that's really quite peculiar as well, throwing string, throwing stick, well
it's a little bit more normal, at least if you're looking outside of Western European culture,
so I decided to put my head to it and have a go. So I'll talk you through my development
process of how I got from doesn't work, to does work really quite well.
So I've used throwing sticks and throwing strings before, so you can do it on a smooth stick.
So I tied a knot in the end of my cord and I wrapped it around...
just like that. And a little bit of friction, you pull tight, a little bit of friction and a
little bit of tension on here, doesn't move. But there was something peculiarly fiddly
about this and it kept slipping and not really working very well and also intellectually I'm
thinking you know in the heat of battle you want something a bit more positive,
so what I did is I cut this groove around here and I thought well what that will do then is
that will lodge the string and it will make it a lot more secure and reliable. And it did lodge
the string but then actually what it did which I wasn't expecting at all, is it put a spin on
this and of course if the energy is being used for spinning the arrow around, the dart around,
it's not being used for making it go forward. If it did spin it, which it often did it, would halve
the distance or maybe even a third the distance. So I abandoned that. Then I realised that the knot
on the end of my cord was changing size, it was getting pulled and under tension and that was
changing that, was messing up its release and for whatever reason these are really sensitive and I
think probably because of their fletching here. So I changed the knot to a little wooden bead,
that improved matters a lot and then I went back to a bit of a tail to going around the shaft
like this. But it still left me with it being a little unreliable, it would slip sometimes.
So then I just put here a little groove on one side and then what you do is you wrap your cord
around and it goes in there a bit like the nock on a bow and so now you have a really
solid powerful lodge into that little groove.
You have your bead here which holds it all in place you got your tension on as before,
but this time it seems to hold it more securely. All it was was that tiny little addition of
a groove there and it changed it from hardly ever works to pretty much works all the time.
Nice!
Practice practice practice
Lovely you can get a little bit faster with a little bit of practice.
Not so good sometimes it doesn't help to be too vigorous about it like I was just then.
Nice! Though I did a film recently with Matt Easton about this here, it's one of the weird
weapons films and I showed him this picture, another one from de ingenesis and he looked at
that word there and he said oh I can't quite read it and nor can I, but it looks a bit like plumbata
and it does. My medieval Latin's not great, but it looks like that, however that got me thinking
and I thought well actually you know this was the time of the Renaissance, early Renaissance 1433
and this was another setup that came from De Ingenesis by Taccola and it shows five darts
on the inside of the shield, this has absolute parallels with what Vegetius was talking about
in his treatise, with Roman soldiers having five plumbata on the inside of their scutums.
Now these ones here are mentioned or at least the kestrels, the Greek throwing dart,
is mentioned by Livy in some of his work and I could be wrong, but I have a feeling in some of
the work that I've read about kestros that the fletchings are part way down the shaft, they're
not all the way at the back. These fletchings are part way down the shaft and I wonder
if what's happened actually was that Taccola was reading some of the ancient treaties, Vegetius,
Livy, whatever and he was re-interpreting what he was reading in his thoughts of the day, probably a
lot like what I do when I look at a reproduction is he takes what he knows and he adds it to
what he thinks might be and he comes out with something at the end. In the case of these two,
maybe this was a thing, but I've never seen it anywhere else, in the case of these well the
fletchings halfway along are kind of a little bit weird I don't really get it, some astrophysicists
out there I'm sure will explain it to me, but for me and my tests it hasn't really worked that well,
they work but I'm pretty sure if I put the flechings on the back they'd work better.
Now if we have a look, final look at this picture from De Ingenesis here,
we look again. The length of the stick and the length of the dart and the fact that it's on a
flexible cord means you could not throw this, this wouldn't work, it just wouldn't work,
so you have to shorten the stick down, you have to shorten the cord down and then we can get it
to work and what I mean by that is look at this. So if we set this up now for throwing,
I couldn't have that stick any longer or that string any longer you can see where it is,
that's as long as it can possibly be but the picture shows it much longer than that
and I'm thinking that what he's thinking, is reading the word sling and he's thinking staff
sling because there were staff slings around when he was around, it was a common weapon and so I
think he has put together for this picture here, he's put together his ideas of the staff sling
and the Kestros, the Greek throwing dart and I think that that is where this is from and I
think that this is his idea of a medieval version of what plumbata would be; that's my guess. So
let's go through this again just to finish up and I think we'll call that a day. Here we go again.
Oh straight down on top of the horsey because I think these were anti-horse
in the medieval times because although these might be a little bit made up by Taccola
the whole concept of a flesh dart with a big broad head is very medieval.
oh
Good throw, but offline so as we can tell I need practice.
Does it work? Heck yeah it works. Was it real? Meh (shrugs)