I said iron pot, I'll come back to that later. I never did. It's gonna do something
and that's why it's really intriguing, but what is that something going to be?
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today I'm back with my shield,
the one that we put this coat of leather on. I promised in the next film I was going to shoot it,
well it's turned out I've lied. So there will be no action in this film I'm sorry,
but there will be quite a lot of talking, but there's a couple of points that I wanted to
bring up that your comments have changed how I'm going to approach the test. So I'm altering it
and something else that I forgot to mention that I think actually opened the gateway to something
else really interesting. So we're gonna do a recap. Here we have a poplar shield made
in a 15th century way so it's planked, it's glued together, it's not plywood.
Then I came across one of the comments highlighted that there's a recipe in the Ashmolean Museum for
a 'Doublet of Defense', I think it's 14th century. Now doublet of course means coat, but in the
recipe itself it specifically mentions nailing it to your shield, it says nailing it to your shield.
Now maybe that's part of the whole process of manufacturing it, it could be a doublet because
you know of course they made sheet steel into and sheet iron into armour so you can if you like,
tailor garments which are stiff, so it could be that or it could be a shield covering. Don't know,
but the point is what you've got are two layers of half tan leather. Now half tan leather is leather
which has, is rawhide, it's put in the tanning vats and it's taken out part way through the
process, so from the outside what you've got is the soft leather then you've got a rawhide core
and then you've got leather again. Now you stick two sheets of that together and in the case of
the recipe, with ground glass and iron filings glued between the two as well and you have an
extraordinary composite armour there that you have multiple layers with different properties
attached to well either your coat but in this case the front of your shield to do something.
And that's why it's really intriguing, but what is that something going to be? And then actually
a lot of the comments mentioned casein glue and there are Spanish recipes for gluing shields
together specifically with casein glue. Now this is not casein glue, this is a hide glue,
jelly in this case, but a caesin glue you don't really apply hot in this way and it doesn't seem
to impregnate it. Just doesn't seem like the glue for me. Now that recipe is great I get it,
brilliant, but I don't think it's applicable in this case so this is a hide glue. But people
said "well why don't you glue leather on here" so I've actually got two more strips of the leather
and I'm going to glue them on, the half tan leather, I'm going to glue them on without the
iron filings and glass, here and then the bottom of the shield I'm going to leave bare. So we'll
then cover it in canvas. But what it means is wherever the arrow strikes we can compare,
we can see different things but there's something else very important that I mentioned in the film
that is actually tangential to this, so there is a reason for this, so bear with me. When I was
talking about the glue in the pot I said 'iron pot I'll come back to that later', I never did.
Hi I've just interrupted today's film for another "Tod Cutler related interesting fact" and today
we have a broken back long seax. Now the thing is these didn't just end at the end of the Viking age
at sort of like 1066 or thereabouts, you can still find pictures of Knights using these all the way
through to the end of the 12th century. So you'll find this and loads of other similar things on Tod
Cutler, but now back to the film. Now the thing is when you tan leather what you do is you take
lovely dog excrement, 'pure' in medieval terms, there really was a job called 'pure collector',
so you take dog excrement and you take oak bark and you put it in a tanning pit
with water and your skins and what it does is, it's an enzyme reaction that
it changes the rawhide into leather all right, it is actually a process.
But what happens then is that part of that is the oak bark it introduces tannin tannic acid into it,
what that tannic acid does, as any oak worker knows, is react with iron. Because if you have a
lovely nice brand new oak table and you leave your chisel on the top you will get a big deep black
mark right across it and that is the iron. Now you can speed that reaction up by adding vinegar to it
so actually what I've done is I've swept the floor of my forge, mixed in some vinegar in this cup
here, did it a couple of hours ago, but the thing is what then happens is you put it on your leather
and it comes out, at the moment it's grey, I'll show you that in a couple of minutes if
I remember and it will be black. So if you're part of any of the Viking Societies in the UK who ban
black leather, remember, easiest cheapest thing. Now the thing is we now have black leather but
that actual reaction happens between the leather which is in the glue pot and the iron pot itself
so naturally the glue becomes black and thick over time looks almost like engine oil, it really does,
like black treacle and that now becomes really interesting because this one it was fresh that's
why it hasn't really discoloured that particularly but that black glue because that's the colour it
will go if you do it in an iron pot with leather, maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with
gambeson armour as well. Now there's an intriguing thing about gambesons, they are multiple,
in the case of this 30 layers of shirt linen and it's just faced with a hemp canvas,
but the intriguing thing about them is there was a 15th century descriptor that said black gambesons.
Now why would they want a black one? Well it was more defensive, everybody knew black gambesons are
more defensive in the 15th century. Brilliant, 600 years later we have no idea what they're talking
about. That's history for you, but something about black gambesons. So what were they? Were they
steeped in something like pitch? Well possibly but that would be vile to wear, but they might
have done and the thing is what happens if you can get the pitch hot enough and it can impregnate all
the layers and I doubt you could, but if you could, it begins to act a bit like fiberglass.
The linen itself is not stiff you back it out with something even something brittle like pitch
or hide glue and suddenly just like fiberglass you go from flexible fibers and brittle glue,
put the two together you end up with something incredibly tough. Now there is a linothorax which
is an old ancient Greek type of armour which I believe was made of layers of linen and glue,
so there is precedent, maybe that's what they did, I don't know. Now I've touched on this in
Lockdown Longbow tests three years ago, two years ago, but actually what I didn't do was
really soak it and then I didn't press it because I think that actually getting it really tight
and really hard is going to be part of that secret so that's what we're going to do now,
we're going to soak half of this piece and then we're going to press that half and we're going to
do our comparative arrow tests again. Is it going to be the answer to black gambesons; I doubt it.
But will it give you something to think about? Well I hope so. So I'm just going to speed up
the process of making that obviously black if you like by adding a bit of that in there,
so that's going to help. Obviously that's not quite how it was done, I assume of course we
don't know anything at all, but like I said the vinegar is not critical to the process,
all the vinegar really does is just speed it up. So we're now going to put in our bits of leather,
we're going to attach them onto the shield just as we did before
and then I'm gonna let it dry and this time it is a promise the next time you see the shield
it'll be hanging up getting ready to be shot and alongside it just as a slight side issue
we'll have a look at the blackened gambeson. But don't forget if you're interested in this
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come down to the websites check it all out. It all helps. Anyway I'll see you again bye.