Now this............
and that kids is why you don't mix iron dust and sun cream!
Hi it's Tod Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here
and today we're going to come back to look at the shield again actually and
this is in response to quite a lot of your
questions because three main points came up.
One, put the shield at an angle, don't shoot it straight on,
the other was it should be covered in rawhide and the third
is it should be shot from further away. Now that gives us a fantastic
opportunity on the third point there to do some distance testing to see how
the power of a longbow drops off over distance.
So I'm going to shoot it at 25, 50, 75 and 100 meters, measure the speed of
the arrow at the point of impact, not of course on
leaving, and then we're going to know how much speed and energy is lost
from the arrow when it strikes. What I'll also do is give an approximate angle
measurement so that we know how steeply the arrow is
entering at a given distance. It'll just be a rough guide like all of
this; it's just a rough guide, it's not absolute science,
it's just indicative, it just points us in the right direction to our thinking.
Now coming back to the first couple of points, a lot of people said
what is the point of shooting the shield front on because obviously you know
you're going to be deflecting the arrows? Well that's an interesting point.
Now in sword combat for instance or if you're fighting an axe or whatever it
might be, you are of course angling your shield,
you're not taking the weapons as a dead blow you are driving them away.
Now I don't know if any of you have done this and I'm not suggesting you should,
but I have stood at a target with blunt arrows shot at me.
At 25 or 30 meters if you are watching the bowman shoot,
and it's one arrow, you can step aside from the arrow that's all right.
If you're not watching him forget it you've missed your opportunity. If
two bowmen shoot it's like the rabbit in the headlights,
your body hasn't got time to decide whether to go left, right, up or down and
you're shot. And the thing is if you are in the front
lines of a body of men and the arrows are coming in, you can't
see them, you can't dodge them, they're just coming. So what do you do?
You use your shield to cover the most part of your body possible which is that,
it is not that. If the arrows are coming from that side great!
but if they're coming from all around, you've got to do that. The second point
that I'd like to talk about is the use of rawhide.
Now there is a fantastic book out there which from my point of view is
unfortunately only in German and that book is this.
It is a fantastic book and it goes through
quite clearly even though I don't speak German, the history of shields, the
construction of them, how to replicate them, all the different
ways how the boards are made up, how the rawhide is laid on or the fabric, or the
gesso, or the painting, how the strapping is done.
Brilliant book if you're in to shields get it.
But a lot of people have been saying use rawhide on your shield.
What I would say is iIve made a shield which is just representative of many
that were in the period, made in many different ways, of many
standards, many thicknesses and so on. When we talk of rawhide I'm sure many of
the shields did have thick rawhide like this sort of dog chew
raw hide, thick hard stuff. Or it could have been
in thin, parchment grade raw hide like this one.
Actually if you look at the pictures and you look at the way the material is
peeling away where it's broken, you can see it see it's really very thin
on the whole. So I don't think that's such a big deal to get hung up about on
that one. Hi we're back at the range now. First up
is 25 meters so we're going to run through
type 7s, type 9s, m2s; no barbed ones on this one because I'm bored of having to
pull them out of targets, and we're going to measure the
the speed and then calculate the energy and see what we've got. 25 meters.
Type 7 needle bodkin.
So I think I'm going to go for another 7 a bit higher, I'd like to see
how it behaves.
My shooting is leaving a little to be desired.
I think that's just about got the beef.
Right so we're going to go on to type 9's which are the short bodkins.
It's sighted in a little left actually so I'm having to compensate for that
it's going to make it interesting at the longer distances.
Maybe not, that went exactly where I was pointing it.
Now we're on to the m2s; there's not going to be a lot left of the shield by
the end of it.
Faster. You can see that's faster.
I hit with all nine of them only only one which was one of the type 7's,
needles, went into the beef, in the maile, so let's
undo and we'll have a look what we got. So what I'm expecting to see, judging by
that head, is that the needle has gone through the maille
and the gambeson and there we go. Straight
in. It's not the string, it is the maille itself is jamming up on the
type 7. It's just sort of.... ah there we go.....
As you can see that one there, it was straight through
the maille and the gambeson, to about 45 millimeter depth, so you've got 10
mill of gambeson, say five mm of maille, so around about 30
mm into the arm. So that type 7 needle
bodkin at 25 meters went through two layers of linen, 15mm of
poplar, three layers of wool, 32 layers of linen, one layer of
maille and about 30 mm into a beef joint.
There's some power there. I could snap these off I'm sure
if i was in a battle situation, but you know, one of those things they say
about is whether you can shoot arrows back? Well
even the ones that are in the ground you can shoot back if the heads haven't gone
or nobody's trampled them. Here we go again so this is the 50 meter
mark.
Okay significantly low but we will get an arrow speed off that.
Right rubbish shooting on my part, but I've corrected now so hopefully the
other ones are going to start getting closer,
so we'll carry on.
It's also remembering the different weights because of course they're
significantly different weights.
Yes! So that's a short bodkin strike on the
shield.
Oh just over.
Now with the m2s. These are lighter again.
Rubbish there you go that's why i've got the back stops. At 50 meters quite
clearly I only got two strikes on the shield,
but that one, to give you an idea there you go, so it's pretty much a hand span
which looks to be about 14 centimeters something like that,
and there's about five centimeters here so it's two inches off. So that's the m2
which is lighter so it's carrying less momentum
and less energy that might be it, might be the arrowhead shape, don't know.
This is quite a heavy one, it's the second heaviest of our head types, the
short bodkin. Good arrows these by Will
Sherman, they don't fall apart easily. I've removed the scope off this thing,
I'm an open sights kind of a guy and it was not good for my karma.
So here we go...., oh just under, but the thing is mostly at
this distance i'd like a shield hit, but mostly
I'm trying to get a speed reading. So these are the type 7's which are
the heaviest on the shafts.
Yes!
Short bodkins type 9's.
Ah! Rubbish! All right fingers crossed for the last of these.
Ugh! Fell short. We're not gonna find out about type 9's.
m2s these are fast.
Yes!
So we should be able to get an angle register for those as well.
Rubbish. Anyway, so we're back with our shield now.
Only two strikes on here an m2 and needle bodkin type 7.
Poplar; great wood for a shield. It is a centimeter from the edge
and it has not broken away, the whole shield has still held there.
And you know? It's still hard to get the arrow out, so oak
just would have blown away if that hit it there. Ash
probably would have held up I think, but it's heavy. Now what is interesting,
and here is our needle bodkin, our type 7 and it has hit onto the beef.
Oh it does jam in! And still is there's about 30 millimeters of
needle bodkin poking out the back. So at 75 meters this has gone through,
four layers of linen canvas, three layers of wool,
15 mm of poplar, 32 layers of linen, one layer of maille
and 25 millimeters, one inch of flesh. That's not bad. Here we are out at 100
meters. I'm going to try and get a speed reading
hopefully i'll even get one on the target.
First up type 7's the needle bodkins.
Excellent! Just top of target. So we got a speed off
that if nothing else.
Type 9's now.
Bit short. m2's. A bit faster so i've got to be a bit
cautious with these; don't want to send them over.
And last arrow for today.
So let's go and have a look what we got. I didn't manage to hit the shield at 100
meters, but i did hit the framework that was
holding it. So that's 50 millimeters, two inches of building grade spruce
and you can see what the arrows are doing to that at 100 meters,
so what are they going to do to you if you haven't got armour on? But we're going
to go back and have a look at the tables and see
how much energy this has lost, or gained, who knows? By traveling this
distance. So back to conclude our shields Mk2.
What was really notable was that the needle bodkin the type 7
at both 25 meters and 75 meters I managed to get that to go through
the shield and the arm assembly behind it, so the gambeson
and the maille. So at 75 meters certainly the arm is still compromised by a needle
bodkin going through that. Now one thing also to
note about the shield is that this has had 20 strikes on it.
12 mm / half inch holes right the way through, and it is still... oh 21 actually! I
forgot the one on the side... absolutely a viable defense. I've jumped
back into this film a few days later hence the t-shirt
change. Because I put together a table of data. I'll show you that in a
minute, but it's also in the notes. But what is interesting about that table of
data is it tells us that the arrows lose
velocity over distance. So at 100 meters
they're losing between 15 and 20 percent of the velocity which is really useful
and great to know and that's something that i didn't know
before, I didn't have any kind of a number,
a figure on it so that's really useful. However.
Under my figures the type 7, the heaviest loses more velocity than the lightest,
the m2, and that doesn't make any sense to me. So
it could be an error in my measurement because I was frame
counting the last 10 meters on a slo-mo camera
and there's always going to be a little bit of error in that. It could be there's
something going on I don't understand. So you know, come back, tell us what's
going on if you know what's going on. But the bottom line is, that we now know
between 15 and 20 percent of the velocity of any given arrow type
is lost at the 100 meter point off an English
Warbow. I'll put up the data table now and then when you see me again I'll be
in my old t-shirt with my rust red look and we'll carry on with the rest of the
film. Now this is, completely counter-intuitive to me I
do not get it. Because the needle bodkin is the
heaviest and I would imagine that it would
maintain its momentum better than the others because drag is going to have
more of an effect on the lighter objects. So what the hell is going on I really
don't know. What can I say? Those are the numbers I got and there
you go that's arrow speeds combined with shooting the shield again
just for the heck of it. So watch out for the next Lockdown
Longbow because who knows what it's going to be? There's so much left to do.
We've got arrows underwater, we have got brigandines,
we might revisit the gambeson again, plate of course,
boiled leather. There's just so much left, but anyway I hope you enjoyed it.