This is getting even more interesting now actually, this is not what I would
expect at all. Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here, and today
we're gonna have a look at these three types of medieval crossbow bolt and
we are going to shoot them at these three types of medieval armor from the
year 1250, there abouts, so before the advent of plate armour. This is not an
exhaustive test, it is not going to give us all the answers we need about any of
this, but it's just going to give us an indication and it's something that I'm
interested in. I want to know how these bolts fare against this kind of armour.
The bow I've chosen here is a faux composite so this is actually steel clad
with wood it is not a real composite bow, but the reason I've chosen this look for
it, is it's based on an image from the siege Lincoln Fair in 1217. The bow to me looks
like a composite, it was probably spanned with a spanning belt by a professional
crossbowmen, that is not me, so I've made the assumption he can draw a lot more
than I can.... so I'm cheating. This is a 350 pound draw weight bow, I am spanning it
with the goats foot lever, he probably would have used a belt. Then we have the
maille and the jack. The maille is a riveted link male around about 10 mm or
3/8 an inch links maybe as good as some medieval maille, maybe worse, don't really
know. It'll be better than some, worse than others. It's the maille that I've got. That
would be worn over a garment, because otherwise it's hellishly uncomfortable,
but the garment itself is not armour, not in its own right. So that's just a
five layer wool and canvas jack. Then we look at the gambeson here. We
have late 15th century ordinance that specifies how is made. Doe skin over the
top, 30 odd layers of a soft washed linen. That is a 15th century source, 250 years
out-of-date, but presumably, they did something similar. It's the closest we've
got. This is made of cotton wadding, loose cotton wadding, raw cotton and then a
sheet a fabric top and bottom and the whole lot sewn together with with a
linen thread. I might be butchering this completely,
but I believe that Arabic for cotton is 'al qatn' and this is called an aketon
and there is an assumption, I think it's a general assumption, that the two words
are related and that these were stuffed with raw cotton. Raw cotton is this stuff
here so it's just the cotton fibers. That's just built up and then just sewn
down in channels and what you end up with is, you know, a reasonably supple
definitely sword proof in terms of cutting, stabbing not so sure and again
is it puncture proof from a bolt? Don't know. Let's find out? Talking through the
bolts. We have got on your right hand side, a short bodkin, in the middle we've
got a barbed flesh cutting head and on the left-hand side we have got a needle
bodkin. My understanding of the needle bodkin is that it is effective against
maille and it is effective against fabric. That's really what I want to find out
today. Then we have the barbed head, this is a hunting head but it's also a head
for war, so it's very effective against flesh obviously you you can't pull it
out so easily. But also it should be able to go through fabric relatively well.
The last one that we're going to be looking at is the short bodkin. Now I've
picked the year of 1250, the reason for that is that plate armor starts to come
in after that and things change again, but the thing is, let's say we pick
the year 1400, people will still be wearing simple maille and padded garments
so they will be facing bolts like this with these garments so it's just to see
how this would fare in that situation. My experiment today is not going to be
exhaustive, it can't be, there's so much we don't know I've had to make so many
assumptions. So the armour we don't really know about we don't know quite how the
the aketon was constructed, we don't know quite how the gambeson or the maille
and its undergarment was constructed we don't know the power of the bow. We do
pretty much know the shape of the heads and that really is about it. But what
this will do will give us a comparator of one bolt head type to another bolt
head type and what they do. Whether this is exactly how they would have performed
700,800 years ago? Well we simply don't know.
Does it give us an indicator of what's going on? Well hopefully yes it will. So
we're gonna go shoot this stuff now and if you're interested in any of this this
is available on my websites. Let's go. First up we'll shoot the armour
piercing head. Just loading up with my goats foot.
Straight off. Next up flesh cutter I think.
Well that was straight in. I guess the armour piercer, the plate cutter would
still give you some broken ribs or something though. Now for the needle
bodkin so this is the one specifically designed against this armour and again
straight in. So let's go and have a look at those. This is interesting and not
exactly what I would expect. So this was the aketon sample, now this is the
needle bodkin here which has penetrated around about three inches/75
millimeters something like that maybe a little bit more. That is going to be into
a torso, probably a fatal wound ultimately, maybe not then, but in the
next day, two day. But the flesh cutter here, let's have a look how deep that is
because that has gone in significantly deeper than.....significantly deeper
.....okay so that went all the way through the back. That went in around
about....that deep, so about four inches something like that. A hundred mm so 100
mm into your torso not this is ballistic gel but a hundred mil into
your torso is definitely going to be nasty. But against the aketon, the
flesh cutter was a better performer than the needle bodkin, the short bodkin,
the plate cutter just bounced straight off. Next up we're going to shoot the
gambeson see how it fares with these three bolts again so let's go for it.
Same bow. Same bolts. Different armour.
So this time it's the gambeson. Plate cutter first again. Again it bounced
straight off, broken ribs I think.
So flesh arrow again.... straight in. I was hoping it would be defeated by that.
Then the last is the needle bodkin and again that was in. This is getting even
more interesting now, actually this is not what I would expect at all. So here
is where the plate cutter hit, it hasn't even broken the outside of the surface
so this is without a doubt proof against plate cutting heads.
But here is the needle bodkin which I thought was supposed to be very good
against fabric armour, but look at it. So if I just pull that oh.... it's tough... blimey
this is tough. There we go. What you've got there is 30 mm/inch
and a quarter that's the penetration. So actually
through the other side of that was probably only about here maybe an inch.
So this would be a survivable wound with that. But then let's come down have a
look at this. This is the flesh arrow again, the flesh bolt. I was not expecting
it to fare so well. So if we have a look at this now, this is 40-45 millimetres/
inch and a half in and the barbs are now inside your body as well, so this is
really going to mess your day up, but what's interesting is; I thought that needle
bodkins were against fabric armour but the flesh cutter is working much better
than the needle bodkins. Just so you know, this flesh cutter here, we have a
look, i've not sharpened it like a razor it's relatively sharp but my feeling is
that munition type weapons are never going to be treated like an individual's
personal amazingly kept kit, so I haven't sharpened this like a razor blade and
it's still going clean through. Here we go for the last of our armour samples so
we've got maille, riveted maille over a jack which is five
layers of wool and linen, then onto our foam and the target beyond.
Starting with our plate cutter again let's see how this does.
Well bounced off, not a good day for the plate cutter. I'm
gonna go for the flesh arrow.
Also bounced off, which I think I kind of expected. So what is the needle bodkin
gonna do? Now I thought that it was good against fabric armour, I don't think it is,
in fact we've shown it isn't. Is it good against maille? Yes it is. Let's go and have
a look at that. Well we have some answers. So the plate cutter was shot first again
as you saw bounced straight off. Next up was the flesh bolt, again bounced
straight off. Didn't even think about penetrating, a little bit mullered on
the end here on the edges. And the third one that went through, not so great
against fabric armour, either the aketon or the gambeson, but against the
maille it was... Oh...actually this is jammed in there.... that is how deep it went into
the maille and through the jack. The others were defeated completely by this armour
the needle bodkin, straight on in there. I found the results of this really
interesting it's not at all what I was expecting. It's not a scientific
experiment that's what I'll say again; we don't have the information to accurately
make the armour because there is no information, but this compares what I've
done, I've told you what I've done and we've compared it and this is what we've
got. So the plate cutter performed absolute rubbish. Bounced off everything
the flesh cutter did far better than I was expecting actually, so it penetrated
the aketon, deeper than the needle bodkin definitely to a killing depth. Gambeson
to a killing depth, more than the needle bodkin, bounced straight off the maille and
the jack. Needle bodkin penetrated both the aketon and the gambeson. The gambeson
though, it only penetrated around about an inch and a quarter or 30 mm, probably not a
killing depth. So that was interesting, because I thought that the needle
bodkins were against fabric armour. But. Against the maille
everything else bounced off, that went through and it went through to a killing
depth. So I can conclude from this. In my experiments here today, needle
bodkins, great against maille, flesh heads against fabric armor and against bare
flesh and the plate cutter, bare flesh obviously, but against plate armour. But we
still don't know the whole story of that because if you look at my Arrows versus
Armour video, you'll see that we haven't yet learned everything there is to know
about these things; we'll be visiting that again. So thank
you very much for watching, I hope you've enjoyed it, it's been really interesting
for me and if you're interested in medieval weapons go check my websites
out. It's worth it. Thank you