Because we're coming back bigger and better and with more armour and we're going to shoot from
the front. From the side. Looking for the lucky gaps. What does it do to our helmet?
Hi it's Todd from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today I'm in the Wallace Collection. Toby
Capwell is going to come in, the Arms and Armour Curator here, he'll talk to us about this helmet
in a bit, but right now, why am I here? Well three years ago Toby Capwell and myself and some other
friends got together and shot a breastplate, a really accurately, properly made breastplate,
but it was a very singular film and it was done shooting from the front not from the side. No
helmet, we didn't have a helmet, but we are going to have a helmet because we're coming back
bigger and better and with more armour and we're going to shoot highly, completely authentic arrows
like this one, in quantity at the armour from the front, from the side, looking for the lucky gaps,
what does it do to our helmet? But it's going to be costly, I can't pretend any different,
so we put together a fundraising page and we need you to come and visit, we need you
to come and donate but I can promise you one thing, your money will be really well spent
because this film should be, if we can do what we want, extraordinary. Come to the fundraising,
page see what we've got planned because we are going to shoot the helmet if we raise the money,
but there is so much more we want to do and you'll be able to check out all the detail of
all the things that we're planning to do. So the first question is why this helmet?What's
it about? How does it work? How does it function? So there can't be anybody better than Toby Capwell
to come and tell us about it, So Toby please, why this one? Hi Tod, Hi everybody. Yeah this helmet
is one of the best surviving examples of a visored bascinet of the type that was worn at the battle
of Agincourt. This one has a good chance of actually being French or at least the visor,
it has a French provenance as far as we know and it's closely related stylistically
to a number of other bascinets in Paris that also appear to have an old French origin. Is there the
tiniest, and I'm not expecting you to step out on a limb, the tiniest chance that this very
visor could have been Agincourt? It's not impossible, there were thousands of these
at the battle of Agincourt and it seems that they were developed as a response possibly
in part to mass arrow shooting that when there's so many projectiles coming in to potentially hit
your face and kill you, you need to present some kind of new quite radical glancing surface. You
know a knight can expect to be hit with spears in the face and axe thrusts and all kinds of things,
on the most basic level we can definitely say that is designed to deal with those frontal threats,
you can presume that this is going to be very effective against arrows coming in, but we've
never actually seen it do its thing and and even if it's totally effective and it does exactly
what we expect, we will have actually seen what arrows do when they hit this thing and who knows,
there might be unexpected events too. Well what's quite interesting here of course is that those
holes the breath holes on the side are absolutely at a sharp angle if the arrows are coming in from
that orientation; much more flat to the plate. I would say that those holes are looking pretty
vulnerable by now. Yeah, and the the eyewitness accounts actually says that they became concerned
about the sights and the sides of their visors specifically, it says it! That they're worried
about the shooting from the side. Shall we test it? I think we should. It's a fundamental
truth and inescapable fact of armour design, if you can see out, something can get in and
everyone's aware of that, but there is a functional necessity in being able to see at
least something. So they're just trying to, trying to get what they need in practical terms while
minimizing the risks. But how successful really is the design? If you remember as well, the V
that we had on the breastplate was extraordinarily helpful at sending the arrows away from the face.
One thing that I would love to see is if Joe can land an arrow just above the V,
I just want to see if there's any possibility of driving arrows up and under or through the neck
defences. I would expect that that is an issue, but that's where your mail defences come in.
You've got the aventail hanging down from the helmet which protects the whole chin and neck area
and then you usually have a standing mail collar underneath that, so that's like two
layers of mail and two layers of padded textile that is dealing with that vulnerability and that's
really as far as you can go because you need to be able to turn your head. And that first
layer is loose hanging which is anything loose hanging is also it's like arrow collecting nets,
you hang them loose you don't hold them tight because they're much better. But
I mean that neck issue is a really important one for the history of the evolution of armour as well
because if we're able to say yes, they've got these mail and and textile neck
defences and they're trying to balance the protection versus the mobility of the head,
if that's still if we can show that that's still failing, then we really put some colour into the
the story of what comes next with these helmets. They put steel neck plates on
by the battle of Agincourt a lot of guys are already wearing great bascinets which are like
these except they have big steel collars front and back and if we can, you know, emphasise that
the standard bascinet with the mail defences is just not good enough anymore, that would be
really interesting. I've always assumed that those neck plates are mainly about lance's, that a lance
from a horseman is going to just bash straight through all that flexible armour and you've got
to have a neck plate, but it would be interesting to see if there's an arrow issue there as well.
It was a very singular film last time. We were addressing an issue. Can it go through like the
artwork shows, straight through the center? As it happened, no it couldn't. The side....
much, much thinner, much thinner, so we have to look at that yeah and I mean with the first film
when we put that film out we got a tremendous amount of feedback from the rest of the world
and the next film is our chance to really respond to a lot of the feedback. I mean
we're not the only ones saying you should shoot it from the side, there's a lot of viewers out
there who thought, who saw that issue as well and that's in the eyewitness accounts as well,
it's clear that the French at Agincourt knew they were being shot at from the sides and even felt
that they were being shot at from the back in some cases. There were so many unanswered questions
that we just weren't able to look at what kind of plate materials they had available in terms
of like wrought, bloomery iron, shear steel and so on, what traditional materials they
could have used, how they compare one against the other, what the arrowheads are made of,
how historic mail compares to contemporary mail. All these little foundation films would be great
to do and that's all supposition at the moment. I mean we know that there were different kinds of
metal used historically and we certainly know that we only have certain steels and irons available to
today and how different are those modern materials from the historical ones in their performance?
Is it radically different or or inconsequential? I don't know, but in a few months I'll be able to
tell you, but that depends on the funding, so it really is a case of "if we can raise enough
to do the main film brilliant", but any more money on top of that it brings better cameras,
more cameras, hopefully some high speed cameras, these little deeper diving films where we can
really get information about "is wrought iron best?" "Do we case harden them?" "Can you make
the heads out of 100% steel and do they perform any better?" We don't know, nobody really knows.
It's one of these things that you just can't know unless you get out there and do it. Well
that's it, we can all have the pub conversations about how protective is it. But actually you know
we can all argue, "oh yeah well I know", but we don't know. I want to know exactly what happens
when these arrows hit this shape you know, do they explode and do pieces fly everywhere? Do
they just about ping off into the sunset? What's the behavior? You know, yeah I mean,
yeah actually sorry, I am genuinely getting quite excited thinking about it,
i just imagine one coming in at the snout there and they're just bouncing up and ricocheting and
hitting off the bottom of the eye slots and ah, there's, there will be so much to see,
so come to the fundraising page and see what we're going to do because all the detail of
everything that we would love to do is all laid out, but if we can raise the money we will be
shooting our bascinet here we will be going back at the breastplate, that is a definite
but there is so much more so we'll see you again, but in the meantime, Toby thank you so much,
thank you for the insights, thank you for allowing us here and I'll see you in a few
months for a day of glory shooting this fella I think. Thank you. Whoa! Arrows vs armor is back
for part two, bigger, better and definitely much more armour come and see what the rewards are,
make this thing happen. It will be epic, it will be amazing. Be part of it.
you