Hi it's Tod of Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and we're gonna have a look
at arrow types again today. I recently did a video on six different kinds but
now we're going to have a look at how they penetrate and how you remove them
so my lovely assistant here today is a lump of pork leg and I have three
different arrows so we have a regular bodkin arrow, armor-piercing bodkin plate
cutter call it what you will, short bodkin, so we have that. We have a fairly
sort of standard barbed type head here and again we'll have a look at how to
remove those and then we have the very mysterious crescent-shaped head this one
here which is often called a rope cutter we'll come to that as well, so if we
start with a lovely lump of pork leg here and if we start with something like
a bodkin arrow so this is going to go in well it's gone straight through to the
plate below and you can pull it out clearly that's gonna hurt, but the point
here is that if that is sticking into your leg you are gonna be able to pull
it out, you are gonna be able to run, hobble, off, you are gonna be able to
fight, whatever is needed from you so if it doesn't hit something vital, it is not
immediately disabling. But also it it's an arrow that you can get out and you
can carry on if you must so that comes out with a barbed head whether it's for
hunting or for war I'd call this a fairly regular kind of a war head that
will go in now you can't pull that out without making a mess I'll show you
again there so it goes in and then you can see how it's pulling the meat apart
you're not going to be able to pull that out of your body without an enormous
amount of pain and whether you can inflict that on yourself is really
depends what kind of person you are so let's just say that that goes in and
around 13:03 1304 a Belgian surgeon called Yans
Iberman wrote about this technique where you take two quills, which are
of course hollow, and you probe within the wound until you
find there we are the barbs and then you can pull the arrow
shaft out and you see now how the quills are on the barbs and that stops them
binding in the wound and it allows you to pull them out. Now the last of the
arrowheads we're going to talk about today is this one which is a
crescent-shaped head. Now in the recent video I did I wasn't sure what this was
used for, I'm still not absolutely sure, but I said I haven't seen it used for
birding of course you fabulous people out there then sent me pictures of...
medieval pictures of... these heads being used for birds great I also picked up
another book that I haven't previously had about arrowheads and in that one it
lists them as being for game because the idea is that they go in but not that
deep it is got some resistance far more resistance than either the barbs head or
the bodkin head but it does go in but then it doesn't go in that deep so it's
not that retained and then because of the forward-facing barbs it comes out
very very easily so even if I go so that yeah let's see not far in and that's how
far in it went and the resistance to withdraw it was very slight so the idea
is that this falls out of the wound then rather than the arrowhead plugging the
wound which a small bulking arrow would do that whole cut now is just open and
that allows for a massive amount of bleeding from the beast so at least
this this theory is Birds yes and I get that that it doesn't damage the insides
of the birds too much perhaps it doesn't damage skins and things if you're doing
that kind of hunting but what it also does is when it does go in and create a
wound then that wound is left open to bleed very very heavily now another
slight aspect that might be true I know I mentioned again in my last film that
they do not skid under the grass like like an arrow like that one would do for
instance that they lie on top of the surface so again if you're hunting small
game like rabbits which are down on the ground then you're much less likely to
lose your arrows because they will strike and then they'll flip and land on
the top like a modern judo point perhaps that's also what they were used for but
I'm not sure that the mystery is entirely solved but I think we now know
that they're good for birds they're good for hunting causing big wounds big
bleeding wounds but then they fall out and that they are good for hunting
rabbits I think those three things I think we can now establish as true. Many
people have said oh well they're for cutting the tendons on legs and things
like that I just doubt that and the simple thing is if we say that my finger
is a tendon this arrow is coming well an arrow spins and so yeah great if you
happen to get that amazing shot from 30 yards away and get the tendon on the
deer's leg you're good shot, yeah okay it's possible, but into that calculation
you have to add the fact that this arrow is spinning so if it doesn't land
exactly the way you want it to it doesn't do what it is that you're
intending anyway and and so just simply shooting the arrow I don't know 90% of
the time it's not gonna fall how you wanted to even if you do the shot that
you want. So I suspect not for tendons.
To conclude I've had a closer look at these
three arrow types here so we have a bodkin head well that goes into a wound
and out of a wound very straight forwardly I will be coming back to armor-piercing
Bodkins at a later date with a film that will be fabulous. We have the barbed arrow
head here and I've shown you how to remove those with the technique from
Jans Iperman using two goose quill feathers and then we have lost the
Crescent head here which I think we can now establish is a hunting head of some
form there are three viable uses all our hunting uses which one of those all of
those are true we don't know rope cutter I don't think so
tendon cutter I don't think so but please write in let me know that's what
makes this channel fabulous is the interaction of you and me it's I love it
oh absolutely so thank you very much three medieval
arrow types and a little bit more detail about them
you