That's not underwhelming horrible
hi it's Tod of Tod's workshop here and matt easton schola gladiatoria and we're back for
weird weapons weird weapons again because the last one we did on the flail we really enjoyed first of
all quick apology i inadvertently last time when i was holding up my blanket did a teaser did a
click bait that wasn't what i was trying to do i genuinely trying to get you to give us ideas
anyway so i'm really sorry for that but we are now back for the real unboxing
so well unblanketed i'm unblanketing you guys are you ready yeah go on i love it it's a pollaxe it's
a it's a whatever it is right i don't know how many of you will have seen one of these before
i hadn't seen one at all so i went to the british museum basically just looking at
other stuff and that was in the cabinet and i have never seen it and here it is behind me
the most amazing well pollaxe they call it i'm not entirely sure that it is but it's an amazing
object and so for years i've been going to the british museum looking at the arms and armor
and then one day i was wandering around some other and i was like whoa what's that cool thing
i don't know what they're called i don't know what they call them yeah because they call it a
pollaxe and i don't for me that's not a pollaxe do you yeah so it's a poleaxe head it's like a sword
axe yeah the sword pollaxe yes i don't know what to call them but a couple of interesting things
about them is first of all not weapons exactly like this but weapons similar to this are shown
in some manuscripts um where they look like a combination between the pollaxe and the wood so
a lot of people will be screaming fiore de libre at the screen because there is a sword axe type
but it's not it's not quite the same it's not like this no that's more of a specialised armoured
fighting sword um that it has a spiky cross guard and a spiky pommel so actually the back
end becomes the pollaxe but the other thing is there there is something like this shown in a it's
a round from about 1400 if i remember correctly um manuscript which does have a sword hilt um and
the blade part if we want to the hitting part we want to call it that is more like a an axe blade
version with little spikes on them okay so so what we need to know first of all matt's
been talking about 1400 i'm familiar with that uh fiore picture um i think there might be something
in talhoffer as well i'm not not certain but the british museum one is dated uh 1649-53
and the reason they've dated it that way is right here on the quillion block i have not done it on
this repro but right there on the quillion block there's a silver panel and it's got the coat of
arms of the commonwealth so when oliver cromwell is kicking around so that four year period
presuming that that wasn't added later on which it could have been it was right okay yeah presuming
it wasn't added later on absolutely dates it for that period but what would this be doing in in
you know the middle of the 17th century it's just it's it would be odd its form its design you know
the the pommel the guard the style of the pollaxe said they don't to me they don't fit in this that
for me certainly certainly doesn't as well you might consider that the shaft would be hollow
but actually the way it's constructed i think it can't be so the thing is solid steel top to bottom
so it is going to be weighty but the other thing of course is i didn't have access full disclosure
again i didn't have access to the object out of the cabinet so i spent a very freaky half an
hour measuring it from outside the cabinet it's quite close to the glass but measuring it all
the different proportions that i could and then getting photos and scalings on i might have made
some errors in that process you know i probably have in honesty so it might be a bit heavier
might be a bit lighter it might be bang on so on this on the surface of it my my suspicion is that
especially if there's another one of these that during the um during cromwell's kind of looting
of various places that this and the other one if the other one does indeed exist um somewhere in
the tower of london um were taken by cromwell and one of them had the commonwealth uh emblems just
graffitied it yeah basically i think that they date to about um end of the end of the 1400s early
1500s they've got to be specialised armoured fighting things i would think we'll set up a
sandbag with a bit of plate on a bit of cushioning yeah and then and then leg a lamb or something for
that side and we'll just have a look and see what kind of mess it makes what we've got here
is a hook you might say well that's for suspension but actually point of gravity it's you know it's
not so i don't think it is for suspension which is why i have this so i have a blunt sword here
and i very strongly suspect it's for that because i cannot see it being for suspension it's either
to act as a bit of a guard or it's controlling i'm i might be you know again cards on table i
might be obsessed by the the controlling factor of these hooks because you see this sort of feature
it's a sword breaker when matt and i were dealing with the flail it was really interesting to have
those guys sparring so i'm going to make some sparring versions of this and then i'll come visit
you again and we'll see so i'll put those hooks on the sparring version as well and we'll have a look
at what happens it's a really weird place to have that hook isn't it because you think why wouldn't
you just attach it to the guard it might be an easier mate and that is the point of balance um
but would you want to i mean to feel the weight of that could you really reasonably walk around
with that you know i don't know i mean if it's for some kind of judicial duel if it's some
very very specific process where maybe they start off with spears um you know we know that
certainly in germany they had a system whereby you had a sort of three weapon set so you had
spear salts or dagger or pollaxe or dagger and so if this was somehow the second weapon
and you had a primary weapon and maybe that could hang engage with something you can't
you can't fight with that dangling off but the problem is the point of balance is yeah
and and like you say we haven't had the one out of the cabinet in in the british no i i think
the point you're making and i'm not going to make matt make this because it's it could be read as an
insult is that i've got it wrong and the point of balance is incorrect that's what you're thinking
but but my point would be is even if we move that down to here the point of balance would be
improved but there's still so much length and mass there it would still be swinging around even even
though it might not actually topple over it would just be horrible i mean it is that thing that
when something gets hit it's going to stay hit yeah but it would not be my first choice to uh i'm
should we find out yeah yeah let's find out all right
i mean it's heavy it was we just weighed it three and a half kilos so
seven and a half pounds yeah so how did it feel it's similar to a full sized pollaxe
or a large two-handed sword um so it's like one of those kind of pole arm length things
but in a smaller heavier package and it's a little bit like a light sledgehammer well seven pounds
it's like a sledgehammer it is actually like a sledgehammer yeah but the balance is completely
different because of course the weight on the sledgehammer is up at the head but whereas this is
is the whole thing but i can't really conceive how that matters in terms of power delivery because in
the head obviously you have all of the momentum in the head and here you have actually relatively
probably 10 15 percent the weight of this is the head and the rest is the whole object absolutely
and the fact you've got a big solid pommel there and across a not insubstantial cross guard in the
middle suggests to me that this is intended to be turned around yeah you know the other thing
to say about it is it's basically indestructible isn't it there is no wooden shaft here there's
it's it is genuinely i wouldn't actually say that no and the reason is there is an account somewhere
where they talk about the head being hardened okay the problem with medieval steels and through
hardening is something like that it's really quite difficult actually on the whole so you
might be able to get bit hardness in the spikes this one i haven't i've just gone with mild steel
most of the mass impact weapons of the period are not hardened that said again the rest of it i've
done in mild steel i'm guessing it was probably really in wrought i doubt it was genuinely
completely in steel so i suspect that if you gave it everything yeah you would be able to
bend the shaft bend it rather than i guess the original could have had hardened steel
really difficult that is nice and thin yeah and you could harden that and you then you could draw
it back with the temper that spike would be really a difficult thing in the medieval period to harden
that fully you could case harden it perhaps but you might make a hole in a bit of mild steel but
you know that you're not i mean how far is that going to go in before it hurts somebody yeah
in terms of the actual penetration and that's going to be what inch and a half two inches
it's going to be up to the shaft it can't it can't go through armour enough to really
prick the person inside i mean here's another thought actually these weapons come around in
the age of plate where actually most surfaces you're striking they're not going to be maille
they're going to be plates or edges of plate yeah so maybe these are more effective
in that era than they would have been earlier on maille i'll tell you what
i've got a bit of brig as well so um yeah all right let's get it out let's have a look
i'm scared and you you're going to realise why in a minute for our first test
we have a brigandine example corazina uh same thing um from Ash actually ASH armor services
historical so we've used that before in my lockdown longbow films and here we go
but i think i'm gonna have to support this target so matt give it your everything you can do come on
what we got all right it did not penetrate the plates but again if you look at that there
you want blunt force trauma you've got blunt force trauma well
go for once up more or less on the spine or up here and we'll go again
i can tell you if you were in that i don't care if it went through or not if you were
in that you were in big trouble i mean again that's it's broken your back it's
you're out the battle but you know what i was saying about bending the shaft yeah
oh my god oh my god you really are a man i didn't expect that
well i mean that's that is that is so we know that is the thinnest point is a 15 millimeter steel
bar which shows i'm hitting it fairly hard though well you're not pretending yeah so what i say is
we go straighten it and then we go for that side on here yeah okay we'll have a look yeah just
look at that so matt this is this is the one that you just struck it there where you actually
bent the hammer and i mean look at that yeah i mean that's a i mean that's a huge amount of
focused force going to that steel sheet there and you can see it's getting close to the stretching
around there isn't it you can see exactly where the points hit and that was the earlier one which
wasn't quite as uh quite as hard and in fact this this plate was more bent to begin with
and i think the second hit kind of straightened that top one out right i think we should be all
right for me to stand here because i really want to see this so go for the current l matt
yeah i should have been there where did that where did that hit oh in fact actually you know exactly
where it is oh wow it's like a tattoo isn't it what's the deformation on the inside like matt
so not as much but there is certainly there is certainly some i mean that plate's uh taking most
of the force i think from one one of the prongs uh which is that one there you'll be pleased to know
that the mighty matt easton bent the shaft again and the other in the other direction in the other
direction uh which again it becomes an interesting thing because one of two things is happening
is either in reality you know back 600 years ago the shafts could bend that's one thing and
it doesn't it's not necessarily not true because actually it's still a viable weapon so and you
just straighten after the battle the other one is that they were making them out of steel shafts
and that could be the case so in that sense you know we've learned a little bit of something there
or maybe for every heavy hit with one direction you make sure you give a heavy
hit with the other direction of course i was i was just saying to Tod off camera i think
that i always thought of these steel shafted weapons as the kind of heavier but indestructible
versions of the wooden shafted cousins of them but actually a wooden shaft's not gonna bend no
it'll spring back it's much more resilient in that sense and i know that some metal shafted uh maces
were hollow with wood inside yeah so they're a tube essentially with with a wooden shaft up the
center um with this one though it's too thin to for that to be the case i think it's too thin the
hollow shaft also tapers so you'd actually need two wooden plugs which would leave you a really
weak bit in the middle the other thing is because of the way it's constructed you can see on the
original there's a bit of leather that's broken away there so you can see it's a slab tang
coming through and then you have the spike at the top here okay i've actually ended up braising it
um brazing and riveting but they just riveted through here and so again um unless they welded
in which they could have done welded in a stub here and actually welded in the stub there they
could have done it yeah but you would have it's a it's a technically quite challenging thing to make
actually very little of the mass if you were going to do it yeah so i am i'm
sure it's solid all the way i i'm really curious what that okay with half swording
type stab right that arm well i think i'm going to hold it again this time right go for it
okay yeah ah okay all right so it has gone through it's the only one which has gone through
but huge story so it's gone through six millimeters it is that thing that
it's just not gonna barely draw blood probably wouldn't draw blood yeah go again
you are hitting that so that one actually hit a hit and nail all right well let's go again
there we go but again yeah it's even through your undergarments it's not going to even draw
blood i think in fiori de liberi treaties he talks about the point of a pollaxe and he says
with a good thrust this might go through a corazina well technically that has gone
through yeah so it may not incapacitate someone or even badly wound them what really surprises me
is that that half sword thrust is able to go through when on paper you'd think
the accelerated leverage of a swing would have more effect i'm going to take a stab in the dark
sorry that's a really bad joke not intended i'm going to take a stab in the dark matt
and when you're swinging actually what what you've got is all of that area of momentum is not working
for you it's working subtracting from that because you're pivoting around that point or a lot of it
in a way okay not necessarily around that point but you have the mass here which is coming through
but a lot of this mass is not behind it yeah when you're half swording everything you've got and my
body is behind it yeah and i think that's what the difference is yeah or maybe my i mean which
is interesting actually i hadn't considered that and we should also say this is just me swinging
this thing i'm sure there are bigger stronger people who can swing this with more force than me
but that being said the fact that i bent the shaft in both every time i swung it basically
suggests that i'm hitting it fairly hard well if you keep doing that it'll harden up quite soon
let's get our leg alarm out cool and see what a mess we can make of that yeah so we're back
with the leg of lamb now and i think coronel strikes sort of a bit of an angle to see
what would happen to your arm or your legs to flesh i don't honestly know
sort of unimpressive oh okay that's quite interesting
separated the flesh from the bone i take it back
it might look underwhelming on the outside just those four little holes
but the entire front face of that hammer has gone into the meat up to there yeah i don't
know it sort of looks a bit underwhelming but why don't you give it go with the main spike
that's not underwhelming it's horrible
oh yeah that's horrible okay and that's a big that's not like a little and i think you know
i'm not a trauma medic but my guess here as well is that not only have you got puncture wound
you've got a hell of a mess around the puncture world huge surface area of bleeding wound yeah
so i think matt that we can both agree that that is not underwhelming it's a horrific great
square bloody hole and the only thing that stopped it was the brigandine underneath
yeah and the shaft i guess i mean that i hate to say it it penetrated up to the shaft
there's no argument that's his department clearly if you're wearing uh no armour
go the other way uh brigandine you're still gonna be in one hell of a mess aren't you
i think it's also worth mentioning as well clothes i mean layers of clothes
are well known to stop cutting and slashing to some extent but but they're never going to stop
a swung spike or a shot no they might stop it going through but i think that's the thing
you know you might you mustn't confuse the fact that something doesn't go through the armour to
the fact that it makes a hell of a mess on the other side of the armour so you take it away
do what you want with it and i'll meet up in a few weeks with some sparring versions and uh and we'll
have a look and we'll find out if my i have got such a fixation about these being trapping hooks
we'll find out if that really is what it's about all right thank you very much guys cheers